[Fwd: NT vs Linux]

[Ghins Mathai <ghins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everybody,

A friend sent me this article. Do not know how much of it is true.
Please go through it.


PC Week Labs' tests show what path Linux must take
By Henry Baltazar and Pankaj Chowdhry, PC Week Labs
June 25, 1999 3:45 PM ET

In a first-of-its-kind open benchmark comparing the performance of Linux 
and Windows NT, PC Week Labs not only found that NT remains
substantially 
faster but also isolated Linux's shortcomings and gained insight into
where 
future development of the open-source operating system should be headed.

These tests follow the controversial NT/Linux comparison conducted by 
independent benchmarking operation Mindcraft Inc. and sponsored by 
Microsoft Corp. The Linux community had cried foul after this April
match, 
which found NT to be 400 percent faster than Linux. All the principals 
agreed to let PC Week Labs arbitrate a rematch.

After a tortuous five days of tests, audited by the best and the
brightest 
from Mindcraft, Microsoft and Red Hat Software Inc., and despite 
significant tuning improvements made on the Linux side, Windows NT 4.0 
still beat Linux using the Apache Web server and Samba in every
performance 
category, although the margin of victory was smaller than in Mindcraft's 
tests.

But far more interesting is that, in all the areas in which the Linux 
community cried foul, its assumptions were wrong. Where kernel problems 
were found, fixes are already under way.

For instance, the open-source community objected to Mindcraft's use of
the 
Apache Web server in its benchmarks, claiming that using the fastest 
open-source Web server, Zeus, would improve results. We tested Zeus on 
Linux and found its performance peaked almost exactly where Apache's
did.

Working with Red Hat programmer Zach Brown, we traced the problem back
to 
the lack of a multithreaded IP stack in the Linux networking subsystem, 
which caused a performance plateau in the operating system, not in the
Web 
server.

The problem is being fixed in the next version of the Linux kernel, and
a 
beta is available in the 2.3-kernel series. However, the upcoming 
improvements don't stop there. The next version of Apache will have a
new 
static page engine, similar to the fast path in NT's IIS (Internet 
Information Server).

Zeroing in on the Web server

In the open benchmark using Ziff-Davis Benchmark Operation's WebBench
2.0, 
which Mindcraft used as well, the IIS 4.0 Web server pumped out an 
impressive 4,166 requests per second, compared with 1,842 requests per 
second on Red Hat's best run (see top benchmark chart).

In comparison with Mindcraft's initial report, IIS 4.0's performance was 
126 percent better than Apache, as opposed to the 400 percent difference 
Mindcraft found. And where Linux's performance collapsed after the
client 
load exceeded 16 computers in Mindcraft's original Apache benchmark,
Linux 
fared better under heavier loads in our tests. The discrepancy in
results 
may stem from the differences between the Mindcraft and PC Week Labs 
testbeds.

We also tested both operating systems on a single-processor box with
256MB 
of RAM to evaluate performance on lower-end hardware. NT still had a 
performance edge over Linux (1,863 requests per second compared with
1,314 
requests per second in WebBench, for example). This amounted to a 41 
percent performance difference but showed that, even on cheaper systems,
NT 
came out ahead.

File server: Also not on top

Running ZDBop's NetBench 5.1 to test file service performance, we found 
that Linux running the Samba file gateway did not top NT in any test
(see 
bottom benchmark chart). Linux and Samba's best numbers (which were 
achieved while running on NT workstation clients) were considerably
slower 
than NT's best numbers (155.9M bps vs. 338.3M bps).

Previously, we had found that Samba could outperform NT 4.0 using NT 
workstation clients (see "NOS crossroads," PC Week's Shoot-Out of
network 
operating systems). As a direct result of that Shoot-Out, Microsoft's 
performance engineers were prompted to find ways to enhance file
throughput 
from NT servers to NT workstation clients.

Upon closer examination of the NTFS (NT File System), Microsoft found
that 
when the data volume was configured as a single partition, the
contention 
for NTFS' transaction log slowed file transactions significantly.

By breaking up the data volume into four NTFS partitions (each with its
own 
transaction log), we were able to distribute transaction entries, 
eliminating the bottleneck.

Linux and Samba had their most favorable performance comparison with NT 
when we ran both on a single-processor server with 256MB of RAM. In this 
configuration, NT performed 52 percent faster than Linux running Samba 
(165.2M bps vs. 108.7M bps).

Technical Analyst Henry Baltazar can be contacted at
henry_baltazar@xxxxxxx 
Senior Analyst Pankaj Chowdhry can be contacted at
pankaj_chowdhry@xxxxxxx

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