FreeBSD bind performance in FreeBSD 7

[Adrian Chadd]

(Sorry for top posting.)

Its not actually -that- bad an idea to compare different applications.
It sets the "bar" for how far the entire system {hardware, OS,
application, network} can be pushed.

If nsd beats bind9 by say 5 or 10% over all, then its nothing to write
home about. If nsd beats bind9 by 50% and shows similar
kernel/interrupt space time use then thats something to stare at. Even
if its just because nsd 'does less' and gives more CPU time to
system/interrupt processing you've identified that the system -can- be
pushed harder, and perhaps working with the bind9 guys a little more
can identify what they're doing wrong.

Thats how I noticed the performance differences between various
platforms running Squid a few years ago - for example, gettimeofday()
being called way, way too frequently - and I compare Squid's
kernel/interrupt time; syscall footprint; hwpmc/oprofile traces; etc
against other proxy-capable applications (varnish, lighttpd, apache)
to see exactly what they're doing differently.

2c,



adrian


On 28/02/2008, Sam Leffler <sam at errno.com> wrote:
> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>  >
>  >> -----Original Message-----
>  >> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>  >> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Kris Kennaway
>  >> Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 12:18 PM
>  >> To: Oliver Herold; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org;
>  >> freebsd-performance at freebsd.org
>  >> Subject: Re: FreeBSD bind performance in FreeBSD 7
>  >>
>  >>
>  >> Oliver Herold wrote:
>  >>
>  >>> Hi,
>  >>>
>  >>> I saw this bind benchmarks just some minutes ago,
>  >>>
>  >>> http://new.isc.org/proj/dnsperf/OStest.html
>  >>>
>  >>> is this true for FreeBSD 7 (current state: RELENG_7/7.0R) too? Or is
>  >>> this something verified only for the state of development back in August
>  >>> 2007?
>  >>>
>  >> I have been trying to replicate this.  ISC have kindly given me access
>  >> to their test data but I am seeing Linux performing much slower than
>  >> FreeBSD with the same ISC workload.
>  >>
>  >>
>  >
>  > Kris,
>  >
>  >   Every couple years we go through this with ISC.  They come out with
>  > a new version of BIND then claim that nothing other than Linux can
>  > run it well.  I've seen this nonsense before and it's tiresome.
>  >
>  > Incidentally, the query tool they used, queryperf, has been changed
>  > to dnsperf.  Someone needs to look at that port - /usr/ports/dns/dnsperf -
>  > as it has a build depend of bind9 - well bind 9.3.4 is part of 6.3-RELEASE
>  > and I was rather irked when I ran the dnsperf port maker and the
>  > maker stupidly began the process of downloading and building the
>  > same version of BIND that I was already running on my server.
>  >
>  >
>  >> * I am trying to understand what is different about the ISC
>  >> configuration but have not yet found the cause.
>  >>
>  >
>  > It's called "Anti-FreeBSD bias".  You won't find anything.
>  >
>  >
>  >> e.g. NSD
>  >> (ports/dns/nsd) is a much faster and more scalable DNS server than BIND
>  >> (because it is better optimized for the smaller set of features it
>  >> supports).
>  >>
>  >>
>  >
>  > When you make remarks like that it's no wonder ISC is in the business
>  > of slamming FreeBSD.  People used to make the same claims about djbdns
>  > but I noticed over the last few years they don't seem to be doing
>  > that anymore.
>  >
>  > If nsd is so much better than yank bind out of the base FreeBSD and
>  > replace it with nsd.  Of course that will make more work for me
>  > when I regen our nameservers here since nsd will be the first thing
>  > on the "rm" list.
>  >
>
>
> Please save your rhetoric for some other forum.  The ISC folks have been
>  working with us to understand what's going on.  I'm not aware of any
>  anit-FreeBSD slams going on; mostly uninformed comments.
>
>  We believe FreeBSD does very well in any comparisons of the sort being
>  discussed and there's still lots of room for improvement.
>
>  As to nsd vs bind, understand they are very different applications w/
>  totally different goals.  Comparing performance is not entirely fair and
>  certainly is difficult.  Kris investigated the performance of nsd mostly
>  to understand how bind might scale if certain architectural changes were
>  made to eliminate known bottlenecks in the application.
>
>
>     Sam
>
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-- 
Adrian Chadd - adrian at freebsd.org