Re: Performance statistics

On 1/04/2010 9:03 PM, Michael Gould wrote:
> Without asking for any blood letting, I'm wondering if there are any
> hard statistics available to prove if Windows Server is faster than,
> slower than or the same as for performance to one of the various Linux
> distributions.

I haven't seen any hard windows vs linux on same hardware benchmarks on
this list or -performance, at least recently.

Pg is certainly more mature on *nix, though the only obvious and
lingering win32 bug ("cannot detach from shared memory") appears to have
been nailed now.

> While our application is a commerical application, in our
> survey we've been asked for information on running the server on a Linux
> box vs a Windows Server.
>
> I suspect that running on a Linux server will be faster, however I'm
> concerned about maintenance at customer sites who have no Linux support
> and are a Windows based shop. The application is written with a Windows
> based language.

Yep, that's a big one. If everything else is on Windows, should another
platform be introduced just for your app? You'll be expected to support
Linux+Pg, not just Pg.

OTOH, is it worth another Win2k8 license + CALs?

If your app and DB can happily live on an existing server with other
apps the client uses, then sticking to Windows is a no-brainer.

Otherwise, can your app run on the same machine as the DB, or will load
force the DB to a separate host? If it can run on the same machine and
needs Windows anyway, adding a Linux box seems rather unnecessary.

If you expect lots of load from the start and intend to separate
app-host from db-host anyway, then perhaps a Linux system is worth
considering. Support it as a DB appliance.

Not all virus scanners play well with Pg. If your client is one of the
nuts ones that has a "virus scanner must be on every Windows machine,
even sealed servers" policy, you might want to look at Linux to get
around that. Of course, if they require a virus scanner on every machine
no matter what platform, and expect to be able to specify a certain
vendor, you might be in trouble no matter what.

It probably depends a bit on the client, too. Do they have platform
policies? Do they have in-house IT? If so, even if they're completely
useless with Linux, they may be willing/able to learn a bit and can at
least be useful as a human remote console. At the very least they'll be
able to set up ssh access via vpn or port forward.

Personally I'd want to be prepared to support both Linux and Windows DB
backends, depending on client needs, deployment scale, etc.

--
Craig Ringer