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BSD Operating Systems

SunWorld Explains *bsd 71

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
ehovland writes "There is an interesting article about the BSD variants in the latest SunWorld. Nothing new for the experienced reader but lots of good info on what makes them different for those with no experience with them. What is especially scathing is the paragraph which compares the cdrom archive with Microsoft's suggestions for a good ftp server cluster:" In contrast to Microsoft's 6 GB of downloads per day, however, it routinely transfers more than 700 GB of data a day for to up to 3,600 concurrent users." " I think we need a generic BSD icon.
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SunWorld Explains *bsd More

SunWorld Explains *bsd

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  • Don't accuse the BSD supports of FUD -- first, that's a SunWorld article. Second, neither of those is FUD. The first is an observation, one which isn't particularly harmful/insulting. The second is arguing /against/ the usual "support support!" FUD.

    Please read more carefully.
  • That's an average daily transfer rate. What the guy whose comment you replied to was saying was that when a major app/update is released by microsoft, they have many more concurrent users than cdrom.com does (he said 100k concurrent users - i have no idea what the numbers are myself). So even though cdrom.com transfers more data on average daily, Microsoft's servers can still have a higher peak load. When Microsoft's teardrop patch came out, there were quite a few people downloading it all at once, which would put a strain on the FTP server, but since the patch is small, it doesn't add much to the overall files transfered. Small files take more server overhead than large files do, and cdrom.com seems to have a lot more 10MB+ files than microsoft.com does.

    That's not to say that FreeBSD isn't better than NT - it might very well be, but is probably isn't over 100 times better.
  • MS has (or had) at least two Linux servers running (linus.microsoft.com and egg.microsoft.com). Due to the Open Source nature of Linux and the GNU programs, it would be laughably easy for MS to come up with a "concept" Linux distribution (complete with an MS window manager, and maybe even a compatible version of Office). What is improbable is the outside world being able to obtain it.

  • 5MB/sec sustained throughput hard?! It is child's play. I could do that with a single Seagate Cheetah 9gb hard drive without the hard drive even breathing hard. Note that ftp.cdrom.com has a 4-channel Mylex RAID controller, meaning that they can pretty much saturate the PCI bus (you can count on being able to burst at least 80mb/sec, 5mb/sec is DEFINITELY child's play!).

    Also note that cdrom.com is definitely NOT using a lousy little T1 line. They have multiple DS-3's plus one of the BIG pipes (I forget what it's called, go see the original article and click on the link at the bottom that goes to ftp.cdrom.com).

    -- Eric
  • Near the top, Microsoft says their site serves 6gb per day via FTP.

    Near the bottom, Microsoft says that they have three quad-PPro servers dedicated solely to serving FTP. They don't do one thing more.

    Pitiful, eh?

    -- Eric
  • or wcarchive
  • I can't get netscape's "find" function to register matches after the advertisement in the middle section. Ugh.

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by DaBuzz ( 878 )
    Maybe I'm missing something, but I find no mention of "ftp" or "microsoft" in that article. Where is this quote coming from?
    -
    DaBuzz.net [dabuzz.net]
  • Maybe your search was case sensitive?
  • Isn't the daemon a generic *BSD icon anyway?

    You just need to rename the section from FreeBSD.

  • Gawd! (Score:1)

    by marcus ( 1916 )
    Look at those stats! The sucker is really pumping that 100M pipe hard. Looking at the ramp-up on the year graph and the maxed-out peak stats, I wonder how long it's going to be before they have to add an eth1 card or mod the box.
  • "..Buy a PC and install Microsoft software on it. For a large server, you'll need Windows NT, and the software license will cost about as much as the server. Microsoft has a solutions and best practices Web page (see Resources below) that states that you can expect to move about 6 gigabytes (GB) a day from three Compaq ProLiant 5000s or 5500s with four Pentium Pro processors and 512 megabytes (MB) of memory each. In order to maintain availability, Microsoft recommends that you install multiple systems with failover.


    Buy a PC and install FreeBSD on it. The hardware would appear to cost the same, but you don't pay anything for the software. In fact, as the hardwareconfiguration for wcarchive.cdrom.com shows, this is misleading. wcarchive is only a single system with a single CPU, also a Pentium Pro. In contrast to Microsoft's 6 GB of downloads per day, however, it routinely transfers more than 700 GB of data a day for to up to 3,600 concurrent users. This is over 100 times the performance of three larger Windows NT machines combined. On December 2, 1998, wcarchive transferred 820,097,694,368 bytes of data, making it the busiest FTP server in the world."
  • >

    Good point. The Microsoft file servers serve up the greatest bytes around. They use only the choicest ones; and they are seasoned "to perfection" with select zeros.

    They are then braised lightly in a red wine and garlic sauce, wrapped lovingly in an IP wrapper, and carefully carried to your computer, where they are presented with a flourish and much fanfare.

  • Seems to me they are comparing one service with an identical service: 3 FTP boxes (with more scattered around in other departments) serving up a portion of 6GB/day, vs. 1 FTP server serving up a total of 700GB/day.

    Funny how that works.

    MS has *other* servers (at least 20) that serve up the "active" content-- a few web servers, some MS-SQL7.0 servers, etc. Now, a lot of these will be redundant servers, sharing the burden, but they are there mostly to take over from a BSODed server.

    Go back and read MS's page again. Note how they almost *brag* about how many machines they use. Also note, the three FTP machines are *only* FTP machines.

    Cool, huh?
  • Let's see we're talking about a large FTP site here:

    "and the software license will cost about as much as the server"

    What the hell kind of server can you buy for $700? That's all the NT Server license will cost you.

    "you can expect to move about 6 gigabytes (GB) a day from three Compaq ProLiant 5000s "

    That's not what the Microsoft article says. It mentions that it handles an average of 6 gigs of downloads a day.

    Microsoft doesn't run a large download server such as cdrom.com. There primary content is web pages, with a few downloads. Obviously when something new is released that requires a download such as NT Service Pack, DirectX version, etc. they get hit hard and have to have server capacity in place to accomodate that increased load.

    NT4 SP4 was about a 75 meg download with all the extra stuff. 6 Gigs a day would allow maybe 70 people to download it, which is more likely the number of people who downloaded it every minute.

    Let's see, what else:

    "In order to maintain availability, Microsoft recommends that you install multiple systems with failover. "

    Doesn't everybody?

    If you have a hardware failure, can you afford for your site to be down several hours or even several days while you fix it?

    I used to subscribe to SunWorld years ago, and then they stopped their paper publication and went to this web based magazine. I haven't bothered to read it for the last year or so, and it appears that the quality of their articles has suffered tremendously.

    I can only assume a moron wrote this article. I'll have to send him email as well to help educate him.

  • Perhaps per minute is a bit of a stretch. Still just one server on 100baseT could server about 9 Meg/sec or rougly 9*60 = 540 Meg/minute. That's still substantially faster than the stupid 6 Gig/day claim.

    As far as cost. Even if you do consider 3 servers with $2100 in software costs...

    You still aren't going to be able to buy a server for that little. A good sized Proliant is going to set you back $20k, probably more like $40k when you throw in UPS, DLT drives and such. Multiply that by three as you apparantely desire to do.

    As far as multiple machines... Consider you also need machines to handle peak capacity. Or do you think sites like CNN.COM and YAHOO.COM are only run off one machine?

    Oh, and machines die from more than just harddrives.
  • I recently heard from a damn reliable source that approx 1000 heads are now involved at MS with Linux. In what capacity and to what end was not disclosed.

    I have a hard time believing it would be OSS.
  • My first warning sign was the URL: ..../~fullermd/freebsd/....
    ^^^^^^^

    I think most of those "testimonials" were posted to a FreeBSD newsgroup. Now they may or may not be true (in whole or in part), but overall (I didn't read them all), you can't expect it to be unbiased.

    BTW, where's your cookie damnit?
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • Before all of the Linux folks get their underwear in a knot over these comparions, keep the following in mind:

    1. They are simply opinions. If you agree, that's OK. If you don't agree, that's OK, too.

    2. They are a bit old. The latest appears to be from April 1998 - 8 months ago (an eternity in 'net time). Linux has come a long way since some of these statements were made. (So has *BSD).

    3. Linux vs. *BSD, Pepsi vs. Coke, Ford vs. Chevy...the list goes on.
  • MS can't kill Linux like that. If they have an OSS interface to Linux called MS-Windows, then they can't hide the source or programming.

    I don't see how we can have an MS Linux unless MS made a closed app that runs on top of Linux (like wine, except working properly because MS coded it), and made it so that it can run windows applications. If they are the only ones capable of running Windows applications under Linux, people will buy, and they can replace the MS tax with Linux.

    However, wine already runs many windows apps.

    They could do any number of things with Linux.. All they need to do is start selling a value-added linux that has many closed applications developed by them running on top of it.

    The only problem with that is that then they will be on a level playing field with everyone else.

    And then we'll have gotten what we want, no?


  • Free software is free software.

    There's no sense in attacking each other here.

  • *BSD (Score:1)

    by Akira1 ( 5566 )
    I'm actually considering giving BSD a shot, not to replace linux, but for something else to learn. How different is BSD from linux, i.e. is there a point to my endeavor..... I've gotten into some major discussions on IRC about BSD, and it seems like people that are "in the know" (in quotes because its BS) claim that Linux is insecure, and that the various BSDs are alot more secure. From info I've collected, I think the only one that is more secure then Linux _out of the box_ is OpenBSD, but your Linux box can be much more secure then that with a little bit of work. But I could be completely wrong..... Thats just my experience so far. Also on a side note, I got a rumour from my friend that M$ is working on M$-Linux. He said it will be OSS, but have a M$ designed GUI, but that GUI will also be OSS. He said essentially its the Windows GUI running on top of the Linux kernel. He also said that Win apps will run through it no problem. I basically told him to quite spouting BS, that this would never happen, the community wouldn't allow it to happen, then he tried to tell me that Linus was working on it. I told him to shut up and went to class. Now if this isn't food for thought I don't know what is. I keep on seeing images in my head of a linux BSOD...... *fear*

  • I coulda sworn I saw him smoking a white rock before he started spouting these comments... =)
    I don't know if you know the type, but my friend is one of those people that thinks he's a GREAT deal cooler then he actually is, and tends to spout of complete nonsense that he thinks is TRUE. We have discussed some real topics before, but the conversation usually degenerates into some kinda bull shit facts that he seems to pull out of his ass. I have been secretely trying to re-educate him, and it seems to be working. I told him where to get his news, I told him I would help him learn what the hell linux is, etc etc etc
  • Well, I once ftp-ed between two computers, a P66 and a P133. They both had a PCI El-Cheapo(tm) NE2000 compatible NIC, connected on a dedicated coax network. The image I transferred was about 380MB, and it was sent from a to b in about 375 seconds. That's more than one MB/s!! Go figure.

    Intosi
  • Well Let's see you have 700,000,000 bytes per day, 86,400 seconds per day, and 8 bits per byte so by my calculations you would need a 64,810 bps connection to move that much information.

    Problem is, it wasn't 700MB; it was 700GB.
  • To my knowledge, the source for every BSD-tool
    in Mac OS X Server is available on the Distribution-CD's.
    As for Mas OS X, it hasn't been released yet...

    However, the GUI (non-BSD), the yellow-box (non-BSD),
    the kernel (non-BSD) and other NeXT/Apple-thingies
    doesn't include sources...
  • that this comparison is acurate. Take for example hotmail, which runs on Solaris and FreeBSD. After it was bought by MS, MS tried to migrate everything over to NT, but NT could not handle the load. I have read other cases just like this, but I have no details, anyone care to cite more such cases?

  • Yes, see the example of Mac OS X selling for $999.00 -- a BSD-based system with the source code now secret. BSD is harming the free software movement more than helping it.
  • I didn't think that *BSD supporters would stoop to FUD - but just look at a couple of these quotes:

    "while there's no hard evidence that BSD is more reliable or performs better than Linux, there are surprisingly few claims to the contrary from the Linux camp."

    So? The Linux camp isn't fighting against the BSD camp - it's MS that the Linux camp is fighting against. I think the Linux camp would be happy to see BSD gain a few million users from MS's direction...

    "Who do you call if something goes wrong? ... Traditionally, free operating systems have been tech-supported via mailing lists in which volunteers answer questions, usually correctly. The problem here is with the word usually. How can you tell if the advice you're given is correct?"

    The author has obviously never tried to actually follow Microsoft documentation or get intelligent support from them. "How can you tell if the advice you're given is correct?" It's simple - either the advice works or it doesn't. Just because a big corp says that something will work doesn't mean that it really will. Just look at Windows.

    James Ojaste

  • [MacOS X is]
    a BSD-based system with the source code now secret.
    What's so secret about it? Do you have trouble going to the NetBSD [netbsd.org] FTP site [netbsd.org] and downloading the NetBSD-current source? In there you will find a fair number of code commits from Apple developers. Apple not only took NetBSD code and paid people to fix bugs and add features, but they even paid someone to integrate this work back into NetBSD. I fail to see how the GPL would have improved the situation. (In fact, if this code had been GPL'd, Apple probably would just have gone elsewhere for the code, and NetBSD would not have gained what it now has.)

    BSD is harming the free software movement more than helping it.
    BSD and its license making its code easy to integrate into commercial products was probably the biggest factor in driving TCP/IP to be where it is today. It gave vendors a strong incentive to use that code and stick with fully open standards, rather than buy or write code that implements proprietary standards. If you'd rather that the Internet was much smaller and used Novell IPX, well, you're welcome to your opinion. But I think it's fairly obvious that open standards are even more important than open source, and the BSD licence encourages the promulgation of open standards much more than the GPL. With some programs that doesn't matter; with others it's very important.

    cjs

  • You sort of read it right. The 6G is for all data pushed through. In order to accomplish this, MS uses 25 Compaq 5000 and 5500s. Each of them is a quad PPro 200 w/ 512 MB RAM. Three of these are dedicated exclusively to ftp. Therefor, those three ftp servers aren't even pushing 6 Gig.
  • How exactly should I do that? How am I supposed to afford a 100 MBps connection to the internet? I have no desire to go into the business that cdrom.com is doing, and I can't really prove this in any other way.

    Also, I heard that the people who set up the avalon cluster didn't do any tweeking to get Linux to fill a 100MBps ethernet cable without any tweaking (while doing its actual computing work), so this does say a lot.

    Also, I'm glad that *bsd is around, they're great too. I've never used them, but I know that they are open just as linux is, so among equals, to each his own.
  • "What the hell kind of server can you buy for $700? That's all the NT Server license will cost you."

    Well, 3 NT licenses will cost you $2100, which will buy you some nice hardware compared to >$100 for any variety of free unix that you want. Let's say a bsd. The rest of the money ~$2000 could buy you another PII 450 + dual motherboard. Or let you go for a nice alpha. And lots of ram. True, you won't pay as much for NT as for the unices, on a budget, you'll get less hardware for the expenditure.

    "NT4 SP4 was about a 75 meg download with all the extra stuff. 6 Gigs a day would allow maybe 70 people to download it, which is more likely the number of people who downloaded it every minute. "


    Let's see... First, that's actually about 80 people downloading it ((6000 MB\day) \ (75MB\person)) = 80. Now, at 80 people\second, that makes it 5.184 * 10^8 MB/day. ((75 MB/person) * (80 people/sec) * (60 sec/minute) * (60 minutes/hour) * (24hours/day)) = 5.184 * 10^8 MB/day. Oh, that's 6,912,000 hits per day. If you use your number of 70 ftp hits per second, that's 6,048,000 ftp hits per day for 4.536 * 10^8 MB/day. I'll leave the translation into gigabytes to you. Are you sure that you have your numbers right?


    "If you have a hardware failure, can you afford for your site to be down several hours or even several days while you fix it? "
    As someone else pointed out, 2 servers (I will assume with a hardware raid system and some extra drives stored for just in case) would be plenty of backup. You've got to be running a really important system to need much more backup than that. Of course, if you site is that important, you should have it in at least two different physical locations, etc. How many people are running sytems that important for any sort of file sharing (http|ftp|nfs|etc.)?

  • Gawd! (Score:1)

    by DES ( 13846 )
    I don't know about Linux, but in Unix network adapters don't have device nodes.
  • I'm a FreeBSD enthusiast, but I thought that the LinuxWorld article listed in the 'References' section of the article in SunWorld is a good article, esp. in that it says how the FreeBSD core team (and most sane FreeBSD users) view Linux.. as a partner.
  • Well, as someone who has taken advantage of learning as much about every OS I can, I can say completely unbiasedly - YES! Try them all!!!

    Between Linux & FreeBSD, the most noticable differences from the start will be:

    1) Internet Installation -

    To successfully install RedHat (for example) I needed to download the entire sources to a seperate machine and perform the installation via NFS. The direct FTP "should" have worked, but my ISP connection timed out halfway through.

    FreeBSD's direct FTP installation doesn't download anything until "after" you've selected which sources you want. This means installing a minimal system download just the minimal requirments - My ISP can handle this.

    Ported Apps -

    Checkout FreeBSD's ports mechanism - it makes updating sources so much easier than Linux. I can't count how often I've tried installing the latest GNOME and ended up breaking something else because of lib dependencies.

    Kernel updates -

    Again, so much simpler to configure and compile a custom kernel.

    These are NOT slams against Linux, merely some of the differences in architecture between the two.

    I presently run/work on the following:

    AIX, Solaris, OpenServer, UnixWare, FreeBSD, Linux, BeOS, NT, Win9x, and Netware - in no particular order.

    They all have strengths, they all have weaknesses. Take advantage of learning as much as you can - Knowledge is the only one true power.

    Feel free to email me privately if you want any other insights to various OS's - playing with them is a major hobby of mine.

    oski@jps.net
  • Well, the 20 years may not amount to much, but have ye ever bothered reading more of what Greg wrote? He is knowledge about a lot of things which have to do with Unix, not just BSD. And I have to say that with most discussions I had with him were never bad regarding Linux nor its users.

    If ye truly believe that Greg is biased towards BSD, then why profile yer own bias towards Linux with the GNU generation line?

    And if his 20 years of experience don't amount to anything, I cannot see the relevance in yer diverse system programming.

    But, as my topic says, to each his own, and I respect Unix and Unix-like OS users for their choice and support of OpenSource...
  • Um.. Do you know who Greg Lehey is? Obviously not, but he has over 20 years of experience in the unix industry, and is among the founding fathers of BSD in general.

    Come on, Linux users, learn some stuff about the REAL unix world...

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