Jack of all trades, master of none: That's how general-purpose servers have been described in the past. By contrast, as our tests show, the latest generation are versatile enough to excel as e-mail, database, file/print, and application serversor even as Web servers.
to view our benchmark test results.
Although the Linux-based HP and Penguin units lagged in WebBench performance compared with the servers running Windows, they performed just as well on our NetBench test, where the network operating system is much less important than the RAID controller and hard drives. Just as the HP server had similar NetBench scores under both Linux and Windows 2000, the other Windows-based machines would presumably have yielded much the same results using Linux.
As shown in a separate pair of charts, the Sun Fire 280R outperformed the other servers on the dynamic WebBench test, thanks to its off-chip memory controller, which frees up processor cycles by off-loading some of the work its CPU has to do to move blocks of data from the system memory to the network interface (the Quad Fast Ethernet adapter). The CPU can then concentrate on processing dynamic Web data.
We checked for factors that could explain the Aberdeen's inferior NetBench throughput with more than 20 clients.
All the servers have opportunistic locking enabled by default. This setting lets a client reserve a file on the server for that client's exclusive use. It allows all clients to work using cached files, resulting in a throughput that can exceed the theoretical maximum of the network adapters.
Moreover, the Aberdeen's RAID cache size is in line with the other servers here; the drive speed is 15,000 rpm (as on the Compaq server), and all servers' NICs were set to 100 Mbps and full duplex. We even reseated the Aberdeen's memory, CPU, and RAID card (this server's NICs are integrated). We found that its Adaptec 2005S RAID adapter, with 48MB of cache, reserves 16MB of memory for IOP (I/O parity). Perhaps the parity checking caused some overhead that hurt performance.
Otherwise, we can only surmise that one or more of the Aberdeen's components were not operating correctly. With this one exception, all of the Windows servers showed comparable performance. Those who use Linux for scalability, configurability, and affordability may have to sacrifice some amount of Web server performance as well as protection from Windows-based viruses.