Re: Linux vs FreeBSD

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 10:02:07AM -0500, Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 11:03 PM, François Beausoleil
> <francois(at)teksol(dot)info> wrote:
> > Hi all!
> >
> > Does PG perform that much better on FreeBSD? I have some performance issues on a Ubuntu 12.04 which I'd like to resolve. iowait varies a lot, between 5 and 50%. Does FreeBSD better schedule I/O, which could alleviate some of the issues, or not at all? I have no experience administering FreeBSD, but I'm willing to learn if I'll get some performance enhancements out of the switch.
> >
> > $ uname -a
> > Linux munn.ca.seevibes.com 3.2.0-58-generic #88-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 3 17:37:58 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
> From the research I've done online, this is likely your issue. Kernel
> 3.2.0 has some issues that directly and severely impact I/O wait times
> for PostgreSQL. The suggested fixes (that seem to have worked for
> most people reporting in) are to revert the OS to Ubuntu Server 10.04
> or to install one of the HWE (HardWare Enablement) kernels into the
> 12.04 system (this would be one of the kernels from a later release of
> Ubuntu provided in the 12.04 repositories).

This highlights a more fundamental problem of the difference between a
workstation-based on OS like Ubuntu and a server-based one like Debian
or FreeBSD. I know Ubuntu has a "server" version, but fundamentally
Ubuntu's selection of kernels and feature churn make it less than ideal
for server deployments.

I am sure someone can post that they use Ubuntu just fine for server
deployments, but I continue to feel that Ubuntu is chosen by
administrators because it an OS they are familiar with on workstations,
rather than it being the best choice for servers.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ Everyone has their own god. +