Subject: [netatalk-admins] We're doing benchmarks (tips, tricks, help, info)

From: Harry Zink <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 08:50:35 -0800

Preamble:
At the company I work with, we've been looking for a viable server 
solution for a while for our Macintosh support environment. We've run a 
crappy Mac (Performa 630) with personal file sharing for a while, with 
terrible stability.

We've had a meeting the other day, examing alternate solutions, and 
decided on doing a 'shoot-out' between the various solutions. Currently 
selected are: Windows NT with Macintosh services, Windows NT using the 
DAVE 2.0 client, AppleShare IP 5.0x - and I want to throw a Netatalk 
system into this as well to show that Linux/Netatalk *IS* a viable 
alternative. One of the department's directors generally just smiles, and 
discards anytime I bring up UNIX/Linux based solutions... but mostly I 
want to be able to really put netatalk to the test, and possibly even get 
us all some real-world benchmarks as a result.

Playing Field:
Mac server will be a G3, 64 megs of RAM, with UltraSCSI card, and drives, 
and 10/100 baset-T ethernet card, AppelShare IP 5.0x.

PC will be a compaq with 200MHz Pentium Pro, running Windows NT 4.0 
server.

For the Linux box, I have a 233 Cyrix motherboard, with 1 meg cache, 128 
megs of RAM, a FAST SCSI card, an IDE drive, and a SCSI drive - running 
Red Hat 5.0.

Crieria - all systems need to be able to serve over IP.

The tests:
We will be using several different files - large, single files (300 megs 
or more), as well as large folders, with tons of small files (around 300 
megabytes).

We will be doing transfer tests from 5 different Macintosh workstations 
simultaneously, during peak times, on a loaded network (12 noon, and 9 
AM), as well as on a dedicated loop with no other network traffic - so we 
get best case, and worst case.

So, I'm asking, since I've read about various problems (notably the 
trash-can issue), if any of you can contribute special hints, tips, 
tricks, configuration information (even concerning motherboards and 
hardware, as I'm willing to out on a limb here), but this is THE 
opportunity to demonstrate what this platform, and netatalk can do.

Thanks for all your help.

Harry

---

From: Alistair Riddell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 01:11:12 +0000 (GMT)

I think you will find the results as follows:
NT - crap and slow
linux/netatalk - fast for copying large files but poor for lots of small
files and especially for browsing folders.
G3/ASIP - slower than netatalk for large copies but faster for browsing
folders.

The reason for this being that ASIP handles all the resource fork and
browsing stuff natively, whereas linux has to perform a large number of
system calls to achieve the same. Linux however is much more efficient at
networking in general.

Bear in mind that the G3 is way faster than either of the x86 machines you
have there, at least in terms of processor speed...

--
Alistair Riddell - BOFH
IT Support Department, George Watson's College, Edinburgh
Tel: +44 131 447 7931 Ext 176       Fax: +44 131 452 8594