Re: NT server, pro/con
In article <wgbD68yKw.7rG@netcom.com>, wgb@netcom.com (Bill Bosacker) writes: |> >> The only thing I've heard bad about NT is the fact that it does hit a roof |> >> with large databases and a large number of concurrent users. Also it |> >> scales only up to two INTEL CPUs in reality - some guy I worked with had |> >> NT 3.5 on a two PENTIUM box and maxed it out, he then ran the same ORacle |> >> database on a four Pentium box and it was 10% faster than the 2 Pentium |> >> box. They were looking into Solaris and UnixWare last I heard. |> > I can't speak for Oracle on NT, but conversations I've been having with people who are benchmarking SQL SERVER on NT indicate that while Microsoft SQL Server hits a wall, Sybase SQL Server does not. I don't know what the largest configuration they've tested is, but the Microsoft problem apparently occurs in the 60 users range. Sybase on UNIX goes _way_ beyond that and since it does its own thread, memory, & disk management (it runs as a single process on the host operating system), I would expect it would on NT as well. The point being, it may not be a NT problem with large databases/connections, but a db<=>os tuning issue which Oracle may or may not have addressed. BTW, The Microsoft version of SQL Server is based upon a much older Sybase code line which Microsoft has been extensively revising to use the native NT process/memory/disk management. This would explain why it would have a scalability problem which would be attributed to NT. QUESTION. Byte recently published an article on NT machines in which the three tested Alpha configurations smoked the MIPS and dual Pentium 90 machines against which they were compared (by factors of 2-6 times for different benchmarks, I believe, with the CPU index value for dual-P90 being ~7 and about ~24 for single CPU Alpha). Has anyone done extensive testing of _DATABASE_ benchmarks on NT for which they can share the results? I have not seen TPC-C type results for these configurations, either running Oracle or Sybase. Even better would be some real world experiences for non trivial database applications running on NT INTEL vs. NT ALPHA. much appreciated, marc |> >I have heard that the NT distribution that ships from MS has a HAL |> >(Hardware Abstraction Layer) that can only use 2 procs. If you do |> >obtain a multi-proc (> 2) box, then you have to make sure that the |> >vendor provides a HAL for the system. |> |> I believe that NT off the shelf, will only handle 2 processors. You need to |> obtain licences from Microsoft for the additional processors. Also, a test with |> 30 processors was reported by Info World which should that it was a fairly |> linear scale. Every test I have seen shows that NT handles loads better than |> any other system on the Intel platform. |> |> Later.....Bill |>