Return to BSD News archive
#! rnews 4416 bsd Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix,comp.infosystems.www.servers.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!serv.hinet.net!spring.edu.tw!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!unlisys!news.maz.net!news.ppp.net!news.Hanse.DE!wavehh.hanse.de!cracauer From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer) Subject: Re: Apache much slower than Netscape ! ? Message-ID: <1996Nov26.165122.9658@wavehh.hanse.de> Reply-To: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de Organization: '(a (cons)tructive site)) References: <aak2.848946036@Isis.MsState.Edu> Distribution: inet Date: Tue, 26 Nov 96 16:51:22 GMT Lines: 68 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix:22414 comp.infosystems.www.servers.misc:6204 comp.unix.solaris:90514 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:31585 aak2@Ra.MsState.Edu (Atif Ahmad Khan) writes: >We have just setup a test Pentium PRO 200 server running Solaris X86 2.5.1 >(all latest patches applied) and got Stronghold secure server (Apache >with SSL patches) and tried to run some benchmarks. >We were very excited about the new server and were thinking that it was >going to beat the pants off of our Netscape 1.2 on FreeBSD 2.1 Pent 90 combo. >Imagine our surprise when we found out that Netscape is roughly 6 times >faster. I am not sure what to blame, the Solaris OS or Apache or Stronghold. >Something is not right somewhere and I am not sure how to pin it down. >Any helpful hints would be greatly appreciated. To make your request for information useful you have to try at least how Apache performs on your FreeBSD box. FreeBSD-2.1 is, BTW quite outdated. You didn't choose Solaris-2.1, either? Apache is a forking server, Netscape's uses threads. Solaris has a rather slow fork (to be fair: Solaris enforces thread usage and clearly has better threads than FreeBSD). If you have more than 4 active processes, things will be even slower. FreeBSD's fork under load is among the fastest. So things are likely to be different when you run Apache on a recent FreeBSD system. Additionally, you have to make sure you have a benchmark that reflects your workload. Apache pre-forks and reuses processes it created for later requests. For a normally-loaded and properly configured Apache (that is: the number of initial subprocesses is right), Apache will not fork when doing its work, although it is a forking server. This applies to Solaris as well as to FreeBSD. If you have a benchmark that doesn't reflect your workload, you will force Apache to fork. If it isn't be forced into forking for your real workload, your benchmark numbers are meaningless. Try to get a benchmark that replays your logfiles. Although that is still far from perfect because the logfiles doesn't have information on how it take to deliver the data. Therefore such a benchmark can't reproduce the number of subprocesses/threads running concurrently on the Server at a given time. Since you'll probably try it on your local network, Apache might look too good on this benchmark. Summary: - A forking server is not the right choice for Solaris. - If you want to go with Apache, use it on a recent FreeBSD version. - Your benchmark numbers are probably far from realistic. - If you want best performance, try Netscape's server on Solaris, Netscape's on FreeBSD and Apache on FreeBSD. FreeBSD-2.2 is around the corner, maybe you want to try 2.2-Alpha. I wouldn't be surprised if Apache on FreeBSD is the fastest. If you have equally fast disks and controllers on both machines, the P90 (if it has a good mainboard, Triton or above) may even be not noticable slower than the P6 (under FreeBSD, Solaris needs more CPU time). I hope your expensive P6 didn't ship with soem braindead RAID (most are slower than pure disks). I might add that your netnews group selection was a bit extensive and it might be a good idea to feed some of these numbers back into the newsgroups, so we all have gained some information :-) Martin -- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Martin_Cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org Fax.: +4940 5228536 "As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't ex- plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin