Windows Server 2003 better than Linux (Inquirer) [LWN.net]

Windows Server 2003 better than Linux (Inquirer)

Posted May 6, 2003 20:47 UTC (Tue) by backtick (guest, #364)
In reply to: Windows Server 2003 better than Linux (Inquirer) by chill
Parent article: Windows Server 2003 better than Linux (Inquirer)

If you read the article and the report, you see all the benchmarks are based on exactly one thing: PEAK throughput. Hrm. If I want to download a 100 MB file, let's review the possible scenarios involved.

A) Computer 1 downloads the file at a initial rate of 20 MB/sec for 1 second, then drops to 1 MB/sec for the remainder of the file. Total DL time is 81 seconds, with a peak rate of 20 MB/sec.

B) Computer 2 downloads the file at an initial rate of 8 MB/sec for 1 second, then drops to 4 MB/sec for the remainder of the file. Total DL time is 24 seconds, with a peak rate of 8 MB/sec.

sarcasm=ON
Oh yeah, CLEARLY computer #1 is what you want to buy. Who cares that in the real world, computer #1 took almost 3 times LONGER to actually accomplish the task at hand than did computer #2, when the PEAK rate for computer #1 was 2.5 times FASTER than computer #2?
sarcasm=OFF

Benchmarks without the supporting data (which the testing folks refuse to release) are useless. Only open becnhmarks, with the *complete* raw data, mean anything.

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Windows Server 2003 better than Linux (Inquirer)

Posted May 7, 2003 5:38 UTC (Wed) by C.Gherardi (subscriber, #4233) [Link]

> If you read the article and the report, you see all the benchmarks are based on exactly one thing: PEAK throughput.

I was listening to Andrew Tridgells talk from LCA 2003 recently and he mentions this. Samba tries to have a good throughput in all scenarios whereas Microsoft has a peak performance and an exponential falloff as load increases. Some may find it an interesting listen.

http://mirrors.uwa.edu.au/lca2003/loopback/papers/Tridge_Talk/Abstract.html