"Trenton D. Adams" wrote:
>
> A while back I heard that NT outperformed Linux in networking in a message
> from this list! The person writing the message even gave a link to a
> Microsoft site that stated this FaCt??? I was very silly, and simply
> trusted microsoft not to be biased. I don't know what I was thinking!!! I
> have now found information that states that when tested with Ziff Davis
> NetBench, Linux and Samba outperform NT. Not only that, but as we all know,
> Samba integrates into an NT domain seamlessly!
> NetBench, Linux and Samba outperform NT. Not only that, but as we all know,
> Samba integrates into an NT domain seamlessly!
>
> http://lwn.net/1999/0121/samba.html
Ah yes, the ever so painful ZD / Mindcraft fiasco. IIRC, the way it
went was that ZD tested Linux+Samba vs NT and Linux 'won'. Then, an
'independant' company, Mindcraft tested NT vs Linux as a server and
found that NT was superior (The test was paid for by Microsoft). Why?
Because given the right test parameters any benchmark can be made to say
anything you want. Benchmarks tend to have little relevance to
real-world performance. I mean, sure Server A may be 30% faster than
Server B, but if that comes at the cost of significantly higher downtime
/ management costs, then Server A isn't really that good after all.
In the real world, it's been my experience that on low-end to moderate
hardware, Linux will mop the floor with NT. On high end machines with
large RAID arrays, >2 Gig of RAM and 4+ >=100Mbps NICs, NT tends to
scale better. (Although, it's my personal opinion that when you're
looking at that kind of hardware, you're better off with a SPARC, but
that's just me...but I'm a UNIX bigot.) I hear that the main goal of the
2.4 kernel is to improve scalability, so this may change in a few
months.
Ultimately, it's probably a better idea to look at the resources you
have and your project requirements than worry over perceived performance
differences. Just keep in mind that no matter what you put into place,
it's not going to last forever and will have to be upgraded at some
point anyways, so it's better to go for a system that will be easy to
maintain and will fit your specific requirements, than with a system
that ZD/Mindcraft/<insert benchmark here> says is x% faster *under test
conditions*.
Jonathan Kovacs
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