[gentoo-amd64] 32 or 64 for web server and mysql

[gentoo-amd64] 32 or 64 for web server and mysql

[P.V.Anthony]

Hi,

I going to built a 1U server which will have the following.

1. Apache 2
2. Lighttpd
3. qmail
4. vpopmail
5. mysql
6. postgres
7. ruby
8. php
9. perl
10. tinydns
11. pureftpd
12. high availblity tools for fail over

The question is which way to go 64bit or 32bit? Which more stable? Which
is better?

The reason for this questions is that there are some information on the
net that says that there is no much difference between them.
Is that true? Thought that 64bit is always better.

Please share some opinions.

P.V.Anthony
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] 32 or 64 for web server and mysql

[Mark Haney]

P.V.Anthony wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I going to built a 1U server which will have the following.
> 
> 1. Apache 2
> 2. Lighttpd
> 3. qmail
> 4. vpopmail
> 5. mysql
> 6. postgres
> 7. ruby
> 8. php
> 9. perl
> 10. tinydns
> 11. pureftpd
> 12. high availblity tools for fail over
> 
> The question is which way to go 64bit or 32bit? Which more stable? Which
> is better?
> 
> The reason for this questions is that there are some information on the
> net that says that there is no much difference between them.
> Is that true? Thought that 64bit is always better.
> 
> Please share some opinions.
> 
> P.V.Anthony


Okay, here goes.  64-bit has performance advantages.  Primarily a 64-bit
data path.  Now if the app running doesn't know how to handle that much
data (compiling for 64-bit doesn't always guarantee that it will play
nice) then you won't see much improvement.

Now, here's where my opinion comes in.  I've found Gentoo's 64-bit to be
much better than, say, Fedora's 64-bit because I didn't compile much of
anything for a GUI of any type.  (On my server that is.)  I have no hard
numbers, but I can tell you it's pretty noticeable in performance with
identical apps (web apps like PHP/MySQL, etc) on it.  Specifically for
me it was cacti.

That said, you really won't see a heck of a lot of difference except
under pretty heavy loads.  Normal web traffic is limited more by network
bandwidth than by system resources, so unless you're gonna beat the crap
out of that server day and night, either might be fine.



-- 
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem!


Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415

Call (866) ERC-7110 for after hours support
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] 32 or 64 for web server and mysql

[Bob Sanders]

to add to what Mark said -


P.V.Anthony, mused, then expounded:
> Hi,
> 
> I going to built a 1U server which will have the following.
> 
> 1. Apache 2
> 2. Lighttpd

Why both web servers?

> 3. qmail

   (Can't comment on this, using postfix)

> 4. vpopmail

   (Haven't used any pop mail)

> 5. mysql
> 6. postgres
> 7. ruby
> 8. php
> 9. perl
> 10. tinydns

      (Have only used this on 32-bit systems)


> 11. pureftpd
> 12. high availblity tools for fail over
>
      (Haven't used thes, as I've had no failures)
       
> The question is which way to go 64bit or 32bit? Which more stable? Which
> is better?
>

I've run a couple of servers, 64-bit, for several years now - one since 2004,
and have had only one minor issue with the LSI MPT driver, but that was fixed
in 2.6.18.

My main uses have been file serving and some mail, along with backing up other
servers via rsnapshot on a daily basis.

Unlike more conservative admins, I run daily updates, with the exception of
critical software - kernel, dhcp, tftp, ftp, and nfs.  And those still get
updated after I verify them.

 
> The reason for this questions is that there are some information on the
> net that says that there is no much difference between them.
> Is that true? Thought that 64bit is always better.
>

There are issues with digital media codecs and web browsers.  But these are
servers.  Also, note that the vast majority of Unix and Open source tools have
been run 64-bit for several decades on Unix and BSD boxes.

While the amd64 instruction set is a bit newer, and 32-bit code has been run
on millions of boxes, the 64-bit variants are as stable as anything else.

Bob 
-  
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] 32 or 64 for web server and mysql

[Dustin J. Mitchell]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 09:21:10PM +0800, P.V.Anthony wrote:
> The reason for this questions is that there are some information on the
> net that says that there is no much difference between them.
> Is that true? Thought that 64bit is always better.

Building a system 64-bit buys you:
 - wider integers (so math with 64-bit integers is faster)
 - wider pointers (so an application can have a *lot* more address space
   allocated to it)
 - bigger binaries and data structures (so more RAM consumed)
 - future-proofing (in a few years, 32-bit hardware will not be
   available new)

There's no "better" and it's not inherently faster in any way.  As
another poster said, most UNIX apps have been running 64-bit on other
architectures (SPARC being the most common) for years, so compatibility
isn't a big deal.

Those are the points on which I base my 32/64 decisions.

Dustin
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Re[2]: [gentoo-amd64] 32 or 64 for web server and mysql

[Leonid Eremin]

On AMD64 there's also number of named general-purpose registers is
increased from 8 to 16 - new capabilities for optimization :)

> On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 09:21:10PM +0800, P.V.Anthony wrote:
>> The reason for this questions is that there are some information on the
>> net that says that there is no much difference between them.
>> Is that true? Thought that 64bit is always better.

> Building a system 64-bit buys you:
>  - wider integers (so math with 64-bit integers is faster)
>  - wider pointers (so an application can have a *lot* more address space
>    allocated to it)
>  - bigger binaries and data structures (so more RAM consumed)
>  - future-proofing (in a few years, 32-bit hardware will not be
>    available new)

> There's no "better" and it's not inherently faster in any way.  As
> another poster said, most UNIX apps have been running 64-bit on other
> architectures (SPARC being the most common) for years, so compatibility
> isn't a big deal.

> Those are the points on which I base my 32/64 decisions.

> Dustin



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С уважением,
 Leonid                          mailto:Leon.Programmer@gmail.com

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] 32 or 64 for web server and mysql

[Daniel Gryniewicz]

On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 09:43 -0500, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 09:21:10PM +0800, P.V.Anthony wrote:
> > The reason for this questions is that there are some information on the
> > net that says that there is no much difference between them.
> > Is that true? Thought that 64bit is always better.
> 
> Building a system 64-bit buys you:
>  - wider integers (so math with 64-bit integers is faster)
>  - wider pointers (so an application can have a *lot* more address space
>    allocated to it)
>  - bigger binaries and data structures (so more RAM consumed)
>  - future-proofing (in a few years, 32-bit hardware will not be
>    available new)

And a few more for amd64 vs. x86, specifically (don't apply to
sparc/sparc64 or mips/mips64 or...):

   - Twice as many registers (which can be a big win for some workloads)
   - More than ~1G of RAM without HIGHMEM (which is a win in memory
access speeds, if you're using that RAM)
   - More than 4G of RAM without HIGHMEM64 (which is a *huge* win in
memory access speeds, if you're using that RAM)

Downsides are lack of support for many (most?) binary-only packages.

In my limited speed testing, my 64-bit installs were all faster for my
general use cases (basically desktop) than 32-bit on the same hardware.
My server is also 64-bit (I run lighttpd/php/netqmail/mysql), and it's
rock solid, but I never did any performance testing on it.

Daniel

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] 32 or 64 for web server and mysql

[Antoine Martin]

> In my limited speed testing, my 64-bit installs were all faster for my
> general use cases (basically desktop) than 32-bit on the same hardware.
> My server is also 64-bit (I run lighttpd/php/netqmail/mysql), and it's
> rock solid, but I never did any performance testing on it.
>   
I did do some benchmarks of 32-bit vs 64-bit databases on the same 
hardware (via JDBC), and generally speaking 64-bit was faster (but not 
much) - except for MySQL Inserts (I never figured out why that was):
http://devloop.org.uk/documentation/database-performance/JavaLinuxDatabases/architecture.jsp

/shameless plug

Antoine
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: 32 or 64 for web server and mysql

[Duncan]

"P.V.Anthony" <pvantony@singnet.com.sg> posted
46A0B6C6.5000803@singnet.com.sg, excerpted below, on  Fri, 20 Jul 2007
21:21:10 +0800:

> I going to built a 1U server which will have the following.
> 
> 1. Apache 2
> 2. Lighttpd
> 3. qmail
> 4. vpopmail
> 5. mysql
> 6. postgres
> 7. ruby
> 8. php
> 9. perl
> 10. tinydns
> 11. pureftpd
> 12. high availblity tools for fail over
> 
> The question is which way to go 64bit or 32bit? Which more stable? Which
> is better?
> 
> The reason for this questions is that there are some information on the
> net that says that there is no much difference between them. Is that
> true? Thought that 64bit is always better.

Generically, 64-bit can at times be worse, because some things (integers, 
memory addresses, etc) take 64-bits rather than 32, meaning bigger 
binaries on disk, more memory used, more bandwidth necessary between disk 
and memory and memory and CPU, larger cache required for the same effect, 
etc.  Thus, on many archs other than x86, it's quite common to have the 
kernel as 64-bit to allow addressing larger memory and etc, but run a 32-
bit userland -- basically everything but the kernel.

On x86, it's a bit different.  32-bit x86 was always severely register 
constrained, among other things, and one of the improvements AMD made 
with the 64-bit extensions was that the spec required more registers.  As 
someone else already posted, this is often a big win on x86_64 as 
compared to x86 (32), especially when apps are optimized to efficiently 
use all those extra registers.  The difference the extra registers make 
is generally way more than the cost associated with the larger integers, 
so on x86, 64-bit is generally better than 32-bit, even with the 
additional expense of the larger integers and as a result binaries and 
etc.

There are additional considerations, however.  The biggest one is whether 
you'll be running any closed source software.  Often, that's not 
available for 64-bit, or is available but with less testing and support.  
Of course, if it's Oracle or the like, they should support 64-bit no 
problem.

On a server, most of the typical 32-bit only binary-only stuff isn't an 
issue, and if you ARE running any binary-only stuff, it's far more likely 
to have native Linux 64-bit binaries available and well supported (xref  
Oracle as already mentioned).  Be sure to look before you jump, however.

If you are going to be running 100% FLOSS on your server, as with the 
desktop, things lean rather more 64-bit.

How much memory are you going to be running?  If >3 gig, you almost 
certainly want 64-bit if you can, as 32-bit gets rather more inefficient 
at addressing >4 gig.

Also what sort of CPUs are you running?  True AMD64 or Intel em64t?  True 
AMD64 CPUs tend to be better at 64-bit than Intel, which still optimizes 
for 32-bit even on their em64t stuff.  If you are running true AMD64 and 
there's no closed-source-ware preventing it, 64-bit will almost certainly 
be your better choice.  If you are running em64t, you just might be 
better on 32-bit, depending on your exact app and load profile.

Finally... 64-bit /can/ be more secure from a hardware perspective.  
There's certain features built into the 64-bit extensions that improve 
resistance to buffer overflows and the like, or more precisely, compiling 
a hardened profile, as you may be doing on a server, doesn't cause the 
performance penalty on amd64 (generically, so em64t also) that it does on 
x86.  If you are going to be using a hardened profile, I'd strongly 
recommend going 64-bit for that reason.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: 32 or 64 for web server and mysql

[P.V.Anthony]

On this day, 21-July-2007 2:08 AM,  Duncan wrote:

> Finally... 64-bit /can/ be more secure from a hardware perspective.  
> There's certain features built into the 64-bit extensions that improve 
> resistance to buffer overflows and the like, or more precisely, compiling 
> a hardened profile, as you may be doing on a server, doesn't cause the 
> performance penalty on amd64 (generically, so em64t also) that it does on 
> x86.  If you are going to be using a hardened profile, I'd strongly 
> recommend going 64-bit for that reason.

Thank you to all for sharing the opinions. I have found them very useful.

P.V.Anthony

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