FreeBSD 5.4 or 6 for DB server with 9500S-4 ?

[Claus Guttesen]

> > My policy is to never be the first kid on the block to test something new -
> > especially not in production.  FreeBSD 5.4 has been hammered on for a long time
> > and works really well.  5.4 is an evolution of 5.2.1 and 5.3 - all of which are
> > very mature and very stable.  I've been running FreeBSD in production since
> > version 5.2.1 and have been using FreeBSD since 4.9 (previously we used Redhat
> > linux for our production servers).  Anyway, when I build a machine, here is
> > exactly what I use:
> >
>
> I disagree. First-off, 6.0-RELEASE may be new to the block, but 6.0 has been
> kicking it almost as long as 5.4-RELEASE has been out. Most of the experiences
> I've heard back from other users are saying 6.0, even RC-1 before -RELEASE
> actually runs better than 5.4-RELEASE. Certain key optimizations in 6.0 will
> help you out, (eg filesystem changes, SMP support, hardware drivers, etc).

I just phased in a new postgresql db-server based on the 6.0 release.
I did stress-test it doing an import, making buildworld and
buildkernel, reinstalling ports etc. trying to put as much load on the
cpu and disk-io as I could and it behaved fine.

Three things changed, I went from four single core opterons to two
dual cores, from four to eight GB ram and from FreeBSD 5.4 release to
6.0 release. My timing is not optimal since we're somewhat busy but we
need the additional four GB ram. Postgresql only got the minor upgrade
from 7.4.8 to 7.4.9.

The improved smp- and disk-io (from what I read) under 6.0 and the
stability during my testing made me go for this release. I'll let you
know on monday how it went.

regards
Claus