On Thu, 8 Mar 2001, Thierry Herbelot wrote:

> David Brownlee wrote:
> >
> >         Looking to add a bunch of good spec machines to an existing
> >         site.  4 * (1GB RAM, dual CPU) behind a load balancing
> >         switch.
> >
> >         Does anyone have a recommendation for a hosting company
> >         with good connectivity and reliability. Obviously I'd prefer
> >         NetBSD, but until SMP is in -release I'll take FreeBSD or
> >         Linux....
>
> You should note that SMP in -Stable FreeBSD won't give you **any** I/O
> performance increases, as the kernel is still protected by a single
> "Giant Lock".
>
> so, if your hosts are essentially web servers, you may have a better
> performance/price ratio by buying just single-processor boxes (for
> example, buying 8 UP boxes instead of 4 SMP)
>
	Thanks for the info!

	We're also planning on having some fastcgi perl postgresql running
	on them, with the 1GB of RAM hoping to keep most things resident.
	There is also the issue of keeping the site synced across all the
	boxes, which tended me towards fewer bigger machines :)

	Do you know how much IO gain SMP on linux gives?



		David/absolute		-- www.netbsd.org: No hype required --