I ran an identical DB (about 1GB in size) on WinXP, WinXP Embedded and Ubuntu. The PC was a fanless 800MHz, 512M RAM, with a 60G 5400 RPM disk. Basically, it is an embedded PC for harsh environments. Generally, we have few connections that do dozens of inserts per second while running real-time calculations on energy consuption.

I had timers on (almost) all transactions (there were a few exec SQL transactions that were not timed), and I got almost 30% better throughput on the Ubuntu system.


I don't use Windows any more; we install fairly often on small platforms like the one mentioned and 30% bump on performance for $89 less money is a no-brainer.

I have no comment on Win2003 Server (or anything since).

Kurt.
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Never underestimate the Power of Denial.




________________________________
From: Anderson Farias <peixedragao@...>
To: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 10:57:51 AM
Subject: [firebird-support] Windows Server 2003 vs Linux


Hi all,

Most of my experience with FB have been on Linux servers. Now, I need to
check on a FB 1.5 Classic server running on a Windows Server 2003 (SMP) box for performance and stability issues.

This is an FB DB dedicated server, that deals with about 300+ concurrent
connections (and going to 400+ soon). One of my first thoughts were to get
Windows Server out and install Linux since I have the 'feeling' this would
be a first step on getting more from the machine.

But, before I do that, I'd like to hear from your experience (on using
Windows Server as FB DB server and, even better, from those who have
comparisions between Windows and Linux for this matter)

So, is changing from Windows Server to Linux (RHEL 5.0 for instance) an
important step *or* I'll probably see no difference at all?

If it's important, the machine is a Dell system with 2x 4-core Xeon
processors, 4Gb of RAM and SAS disks. The DB is about 3Gb only, 8k page size and 75 cache pages.

One of the big problems is that some of the C/S apps that use this DB do not
handle transactions well and db gets stuck with many record versions...
than, also there are a lot of bad indices (hi MaxDup, like 80% of table
records) than when garbage collect get to run, the server gets too busy and
kind stop handling new connections (People are already working on get rid of
these bad indexes)

Thanks for any info,

Regards,
Anderson Farias







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