Re: PostgreSQL on VMWare vs Windows vs CoLinux - Mailing list pgsql-performance

Using VMware myself quite extensively, I wonder what the disk
configuration was that you created for the VM. Where the disks
preallocated and did you make sure that they are contiguous on the NTFS
filesystem? Did you install the VMware tools in the guest operating system?

What did you use to measure the "performance"?


Jan

On 6/1/2004 6:56 PM, Vitaly Belman wrote:

> Hello pgsql-performance,
>
>   I was using the native windows PostgreSQL 7.5Dev and was adviced by
>   several people to use an emulated PostgreSQL instead, as it is just
>   a beta.
>
>   Well, I give it a whirl and tried both commercial VMWare and the
>   freeweare open-source CoLinux, both work under Windows and both
>   emulate Linux, that's a quick review of my experience with them, may
>   someone in need learn from it.
>
>   This might be not the best place for such a post, but since the
>   subject was brought up here, I'll post it here as well. If someone
>   thinks it should be posted somewhere else, let me know.
>
>   Installation & Configuration
>   ----------------------------
>
>   VMWare:
>
>   On the bright side, the installation went quite smoothly, VMWare
>   configured all the network stuff by itself and I had no trouble
>   using the net right away. On the grim side, the installation itself
>   took ages, compared to the plug & play feel of CoLinux.
>
>   Installing PostgreSQL on VMWare was quite straightforward, just as
>   the the PostgreSQL documention goes.
>
>   CoLinux:
>
>   As I said, with CoLinux the installation itself goes very quickly.
>   To get Linux running you need to download practically less than 20mb
>   which include the distribution (Debian in my case) and the CoLinux
>   setup. Configuring CoLinux took a bit longer than VMWare, yet, not
>   long as I thought it would take. In fact, it can be very easy if you
>   just follow the documention of CoLinux Wiki stuff, there are some
>   very easy to follow tutorials there.
>
>   Installing PostgreSQL on CoLinux proved a little more difficult
>   (again, Debian), but I posted a quick tutorial that should smooth
>   the process: http://www.colinux.org/wiki/index.php/PostgreSQL.
>
>   Performance
>   -----------
>
>   This was a totally subjective test (especially since one of the
>   participants is in a beta stage), yet, that's what I tested and that's
>   what I needed to know.
>
>   To make the test as fair as possible, I did an exact dump of the
>   same database. I ran the SQLs (around 10) in the same order on all
>   of them and repeated the test several times. I also did an EXPLAIN
>   on the queries to make sure all the databases work on the query the
>   same way. It wasn't a full test though, I didn't test mass select
>   load, nor inserts, nor work under heavy load, nor I tried different
>   types of joins. All I did was to run some heavy (in execution time)
>   queries. So you should take these "tests" just for what they are.
>
>   That's what I got:
>
>   The native window port performed poorly lagging
>   30%-50% behind the VMWare/CoLinux solutions in execution times,
>   rather sad, but not unexpected, I guess.
>
>   CoLinux and VMWare give AROUND the same results, yet CoLinux did
>   give slightly better performance (I'd say 5%-10%) but with such
>   slight improvement and inconsistency I wouldn't count it as much.
>
>   Conclusion
>   ----------
>
>   With all that said, VMWare is badly suited for running a database,
>   while CoLinux can be run as a service (didn't try it yet though),
>   VMWare always sits there, it is slow to go up, slow to go down and
>   generally feels like a system hog.
>
>   I'll go on with CoLinux for now and hope it will act as good as it
>   looks.
>
>   http://www.vmware.com/
>   http://www.colinux.org/
>
>   Thanks to Bryan and Matthew for their advices regarding the emulations.
>
> Regards,
>  Vitaly Belman
>
>  ICQ: 1912453
>  AIM: VitalyB1984
>  MSN: tmdagent@hotmail.com
>  Yahoo!: VitalyBe
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend


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