PostgreSQL on VMWare vs Windows vs CoLinux

Hello pgsql-performance,

I was using the native windows PostgreSQL 7.5Dev and was adviced by
several people to use an emulated PostgreSQL instead, as it is just
a beta.

Well, I give it a whirl and tried both commercial VMWare and the
freeweare open-source CoLinux, both work under Windows and both
emulate Linux, that's a quick review of my experience with them, may
someone in need learn from it.

This might be not the best place for such a post, but since the
subject was brought up here, I'll post it here as well. If someone
thinks it should be posted somewhere else, let me know.

Installation & Configuration
----------------------------

VMWare:

On the bright side, the installation went quite smoothly, VMWare
configured all the network stuff by itself and I had no trouble
using the net right away. On the grim side, the installation itself
took ages, compared to the plug & play feel of CoLinux.

Installing PostgreSQL on VMWare was quite straightforward, just as
the the PostgreSQL documention goes.

CoLinux:

As I said, with CoLinux the installation itself goes very quickly.
To get Linux running you need to download practically less than 20mb
which include the distribution (Debian in my case) and the CoLinux
setup. Configuring CoLinux took a bit longer than VMWare, yet, not
long as I thought it would take. In fact, it can be very easy if you
just follow the documention of CoLinux Wiki stuff, there are some
very easy to follow tutorials there.

Installing PostgreSQL on CoLinux proved a little more difficult
(again, Debian), but I posted a quick tutorial that should smooth
the process: http://www.colinux.org/wiki/index.php/PostgreSQL.

Performance
-----------

This was a totally subjective test (especially since one of the
participants is in a beta stage), yet, that's what I tested and that's
what I needed to know.

To make the test as fair as possible, I did an exact dump of the
same database. I ran the SQLs (around 10) in the same order on all
of them and repeated the test several times. I also did an EXPLAIN
on the queries to make sure all the databases work on the query the
same way. It wasn't a full test though, I didn't test mass select
load, nor inserts, nor work under heavy load, nor I tried different
types of joins. All I did was to run some heavy (in execution time)
queries. So you should take these "tests" just for what they are.

That's what I got:

The native window port performed poorly lagging
30%-50% behind the VMWare/CoLinux solutions in execution times,
rather sad, but not unexpected, I guess.

CoLinux and VMWare give AROUND the same results, yet CoLinux did
give slightly better performance (I'd say 5%-10%) but with such
slight improvement and inconsistency I wouldn't count it as much.

Conclusion
----------

With all that said, VMWare is badly suited for running a database,
while CoLinux can be run as a service (didn't try it yet though),
VMWare always sits there, it is slow to go up, slow to go down and
generally feels like a system hog.

I'll go on with CoLinux for now and hope it will act as good as it
looks.

http://www.vmware.com/
http://www.colinux.org/

Thanks to Bryan and Matthew for their advices regarding the emulations.

Regards,
Vitaly Belman

ICQ: 1912453
AIM: VitalyB1984
MSN: tmdagent(at)hotmail(dot)com
Yahoo!: VitalyBe