Re: Postgres performance on Linux and Windows

On 8/3/2011 11:37 AM, Dusan Misic wrote:
> I had done some testing for my application (WIP) and I had executed same
> SQL script and queries on real physical 64-bit Windows 7 and on
> virtualized 64-bit CentOS 6.
>
> Both database servers are tuned with real having 8 GB RAM and 4 cores,
> virtualized having 2 GB RAM and 2 virtual cores.
>
> Virtualized server crushed real physical server in performance in both
> DDL and DML scripts.
>
> My question is simple. Does PostgreSQL perform better on Linux than on
> Windows and how much is it faster in your tests?
>
> Thank you for your time.
>

Given the exact same hardware, I think PG will perform better on Linux.

Your question "how much faster" is really dependent on usage. If you're
cpu bound then I'd bet they perform the same. You are cpu bound after
all, and on the exact same hardware, it should be the same.

If you have lots of clients, with lots of IO, I think linux would
perform better, but hard to say how much. I cant recall anyone posting
benchmarks from "the exact same hardware".

Comparing windows on metal vs linux on vm is like comparing apples to
Missouri. If your test was io bound, and the vmserver was write
caching, that's why your vm won so well... but I'd hate to see a power
failure.

It would be interesting to compare windows on metal vs windows on vm
though. (Which, I have done linux on metal vs linux on vm, but the
hardware specs where different (dual amd64 4 sata software raid10 vs
intel 8-core something with 6-disk scsi hardware raid), but linux on
metal won every time.)

I think in the long run, running the system you are best at, will be a
win. If you don't know linux much, and run into problems, how much
time/money will you spend fixing it. Compared to windows.

If you have to have the fastest, absolute, system. Linux on metal is
the way to go.

(This is all speculation and personal opinion, I have no numbers to back
anything up)

-Andy