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Xref: sserve news.software.nntp:14894 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:4221 comp.os.linux.advocacy:15742 Path: sserve!euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.uwa.edu.au!classic.iinet.com.au!news.uoregon.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!brasil.moneng.mei.com!not-for-mail From: jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com (Joe Greco) Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Sun/Solaris or Pentium/Linux for new server ? Date: 1 Aug 1995 19:25:59 -0500 Organization: Marquette Electronics, Inc. - Milwaukee, WI. Lines: 142 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <3vmgmn$jt6@brasil.moneng.mei.com> References: <3vlpgk$rdk@graphite.comco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: brasil.moneng.mei.com In news.software.nntp article <3vlpgk$rdk@graphite.comco.com>, dougmc@comco.com (Doug McLaren) wrote: :We currently have a Sparcstation 2 with 48 megs of ram running Solaris :2.4 running as our news server (running INN.) The news is on a 3 gig :disk which is rapidly proving to be inadequate (but that's not :relavent here.) :-) :It works, but not very well. It's slow, it crashes every few days, :etc. It has two news feeds, and rarely has more than five people :reading news at once - i.e. most of the time it's far more busy :accepting/giving newsfeeds than handling news readers. That's an easy load.. :[...] :Should I move news to the PC? Around here, news is one of those :things that everybody wants, and wants to work well, but nobody wants :it on *their* machine, and my attempts to dedicate a machine to :anything, including news, have failed. So basically I can either :leave it as it is, or move it to my machine (since I'm the one who :runs it.) Depends on the system... for the workload you describe, I would probably throw a 486DX/33 or better at it, with about 48MB of RAM if you plan to do anything else with the box. A Pentium is certainly overkill. :I don't do too much on my machine, mostly using it as an X terminal, :so that's not a big concern. More memory is probably unlikely to :happen in the immediate future, neither is more disk. I could :probably get them to spring for another NCR scsi card (so the machine :would have two SCSI buses) if that would help (putting another SCSI :card in the Sun isn't so easy/cheap.) With one spool disk and five clients, it would be a mild benefit but not great. :Also, I could probably go Net/FreeBSD instead of Linux. Right now, :the management is kind of interested in Linux, but since Net/FreeBSD :is also free, I could probably switch to it. I've played with FreeBSD :for a bit at home, but am far more familiar with Linux. From personal :experience, Linux's disk I/O is far faster, but Net/FreeBSD may make :up for it in other areas/ I see no evidence of that being true - the only exception that I am aware of is when a Linux filesystem is switched to async metadata updates, but then you don't run with that kind of configuration from day to day unless you're a fool (or don't mind newfs'ing your disk when you crash.) :-) :Anybody have any suggestions? I'm NOT looking for `Linux sucks!' :dogma - I'm fully aware of the merits and problems of Linux, and :somewhat less aware of the benefits/problems of FreeBSD or NetBSD :... I'm far more interested in success/horror stories of other people :who have run busy news servers under Solaris, Linux and Free/NetBSD :(especially if they've done two or all three of these options.) Well, I have the Solaris, SunOS, and FreeBSD experience. Solaris is really not a great choice for a news system. It tends to be slower, eat more resources, and be less stable than an equivalent FreeBSD or SunOS system. You can "fix" the performance problems by throwing a faster CPU, more RAM, and more I/O (SCSI) at the machine, but that's costly and an inelegant solution. (I am currently maintaining such a system at a local University - a SS10/30 with 128MB RAM, about 50 feeds, and between 10-40 clients on average. Uptime generally averages 7 days, load around 3 or 4, and feels like a slug when doing interactive work on it). A similar SunOS-based system handles the load somewhat better and totally loses the slug feeling. I no longer have one to play with though. I've been running a 486DX/33 with 32MB for the last half a year as news.sol.net, and the situation is quite similar to the one you described - dual AHA1542 controllers, nine disks, 2 full newsfeeds (recently trimmed to one due to some performance problems), and several simultaneous clients. Under FreeBSD 2.0R, this system had an average uptime shy of 14 days, an average load of 0.8, and ran reasonably well, although it had a tendency to crash after two weeks due to an obscure but known VM bug. I knew that would be a problem when I switched to the box, but I really wanted to retire the Sun workstation that the system replaced, so I bit the bullet and took the uptime hit. Recently upgraded to FreeBSD 2.0.5R, it had an initial uptime of 13 days while I pounded the living daylights out of it, after which it crashed.. died around the start of July when somebody tripped on the power cord... and since then has had 22 days of continuous uptime, which pleases me greatly - only one true crash, and that was under unrealistic demands. :-) I also installed an experimental news server for a client - 486DX4/100, PCI, 40MB RAM, 3 NCR810 SCSI channels, FreeBSD 2.0.5R. Installed on June 30th, it ran continuously on a GENERIC kernel until two days ago, when it rebooted. I do not know what happened as I just came back from a week's vacation and I haven't talked to them. But that's a month's uptime... average load is very low, two full newsfeeds, I've run the system up to around 70 simultaneous clients before things start looking a little too ugly for comfort. Ultimately they will be moving onto a Pentium box (and the system they have will become the new news.sol.net) :-) My impressions from all of this: pick your server specs wisely. A good OS buys you a lot - I would not recommend Solaris even though some things (like ODS) could be very useful in a news environment. SunOS is demonstrably more stable. Last I checked, FreeBSD's networking was far better than Linux, and the ability of ffs to deal with the massive and crazy storage requirements of a large news server tended to be better than Linux's. Both of those items will give you quite an edge. I can't speak for uptimes as I don't know of anybody running INN on a Linux box... Also: pick your hardware wisely! Spending those few extra bucks for a good piece of hardware over a mediocre piece of hardware is invariably worth it in terms of grief spared, etc. All of these are very busy machines - both the FreeBSD systems take a FULL newsfeed, while the Solaris box takes about a 75% newsfeed. If you were to ask me what I would recommend as a software/hardware combination for a news server, I would probably suggest FreeBSD and a good PCI motherboard (ASUS SP3G for a 486 probably) and a well provisioned system as being the most cost effective platform. A SPARCstation 20 running SunOS 4.1.4 would be a good Sun-based solution, although it may require somewhat more memory to get similar performance. Both will afford you a high level of reliability and performance. I probably would not recommend using either Solaris or Linux for a news server. That is not to say that it can't be done, or that people have not had success with those operating systems - but both have failings that make them somewhat less preferable. Solaris is resource hungry and buggy. Linux is best at an end-user's desktop, and is not really oriented towards heavy duty pounding on a large scale system 24/365 - and there seem to be lots of Linux people with lots of ugly questions in news.software.nntp, which is a Bad Sign(tm) in my book. I don't care to get into a religious war with any Linux freaks out there. I realize that Linux is a perfectly acceptable operating system for some folks. I realize that DOS is a perfectly acceptable "operating system" for my mother's word processing needs. I realize that some people pray to the Solaris gods for another few hours without a crash (I also make my living at a Solaris shop - so I am quite qualified to speak frankly). But I would not recommend running a news server on DOS (or Solaris for that matter)... or Linux. So this is in no way a Linux flame, just an opinion that FreeBSD or SunOS will tend to provide a much stabler platform. ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/342-4847