Thread: 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

From
Bjørn T Johansen
Date:
We are going to be setting up a PostgreSQL server on a guest under VMWare ESX 4... Is there any performance improvement
bychoosing 64bits Linux over 
32bits Linux as the guest OS or is it almost the same?


Regards,

BTJ

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bjørn T Johansen

btj@havleik.no
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Someone wrote:
"I understand that if you play a Windows CD backwards you hear strange Satanic messages"
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Re: 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

From
Magnus Hagander
Date:
2010/1/21 Bjørn T Johansen <btj@havleik.no>:
> We are going to be setting up a PostgreSQL server on a guest under VMWare ESX 4... Is there any performance
improvementby choosing 64bits Linux over 
> 32bits Linux as the guest OS or is it almost the same?

How much resources do you plan to give the machine?

If you're setting up a very constrained machine with little memory, go
with the 32-bit version. It'll use slightly less memory which can be
important if you're constrained.

If you're setting up a medium size or bigger machine (2Gb+ memory),
use a 64-bit version. If you plan you may eventually need to increase
the size of the machine, go with the 64-bit one from the beginning,
because changing from 32 to 64 bit requires dump/reload.

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

Re: 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

From
Bjørn T Johansen
Date:
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:43:31 +0100
Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:

> 2010/1/21 Bjørn T Johansen <btj@havleik.no>:
> > We are going to be setting up a PostgreSQL server on a guest under VMWare ESX 4... Is there any performance
improvementby choosing 64bits Linux 
> > over 32bits Linux as the guest OS or is it almost the same?
>
> How much resources do you plan to give the machine?
>
> If you're setting up a very constrained machine with little memory, go
> with the 32-bit version. It'll use slightly less memory which can be
> important if you're constrained.
>
> If you're setting up a medium size or bigger machine (2Gb+ memory),
> use a 64-bit version. If you plan you may eventually need to increase
> the size of the machine, go with the 64-bit one from the beginning,
> because changing from 32 to 64 bit requires dump/reload.
>

ok... we were thinking about 2GB RAM, so maybe we should try 64bit.... :)

BTJ

Re: 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

From
"A. Kretschmer"
Date:
In response to Magnus Hagander :
> 2010/1/21 Bjørn T Johansen <btj@havleik.no>:
> > We are going to be setting up a PostgreSQL server on a guest under VMWare ESX 4... Is there any performance
improvementby choosing 64bits Linux over 
> > 32bits Linux as the guest OS or is it almost the same?
>
> How much resources do you plan to give the machine?
>
> If you're setting up a very constrained machine with little memory, go
> with the 32-bit version. It'll use slightly less memory which can be
> important if you're constrained.
>
> If you're setting up a medium size or bigger machine (2Gb+ memory),
> use a 64-bit version. If you plan you may eventually need to increase

Really? With ONLY 2Gb? Why? What is the performance improvement, with
64Bit all pointers and so on needs more memory so i'm expecting lesser
memory for the data.

I'm wrong?


Andreas
--
Andreas Kretschmer
Kontakt:  Heynitz: 035242/47150,   D1: 0160/7141639 (mehr: -> Header)
GnuPG: 0x31720C99, 1006 CCB4 A326 1D42 6431  2EB0 389D 1DC2 3172 0C99

Re: 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

From
Magnus Hagander
Date:
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:45, A. Kretschmer
<andreas.kretschmer@schollglas.com> wrote:
> In response to Magnus Hagander :
>> 2010/1/21 Bjørn T Johansen <btj@havleik.no>:
>> > We are going to be setting up a PostgreSQL server on a guest under VMWare ESX 4... Is there any performance
improvementby choosing 64bits Linux over 
>> > 32bits Linux as the guest OS or is it almost the same?
>>
>> How much resources do you plan to give the machine?
>>
>> If you're setting up a very constrained machine with little memory, go
>> with the 32-bit version. It'll use slightly less memory which can be
>> important if you're constrained.
>>
>> If you're setting up a medium size or bigger machine (2Gb+ memory),
>> use a 64-bit version. If you plan you may eventually need to increase
>
> Really? With ONLY 2Gb? Why? What is the performance improvement, with
> 64Bit all pointers and so on needs more memory so i'm expecting lesser
> memory for the data.
>
> I'm wrong?

While the theoretical limit is a bit higher, the fact that you have to
reinstall once you've realized you wanted to add a little bit more
memory.... More important to me at least :-)

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

Re: 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

From
Bjørn T Johansen
Date:
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:01:29 +0100
Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:45, A. Kretschmer
> <andreas.kretschmer@schollglas.com> wrote:
> > In response to Magnus Hagander :
> >> 2010/1/21 Bjørn T Johansen <btj@havleik.no>:
> >> > We are going to be setting up a PostgreSQL server on a guest under VMWare ESX 4... Is there any performance
improvementby choosing 64bits 
> >> > Linux over 32bits Linux as the guest OS or is it almost the same?
> >>
> >> How much resources do you plan to give the machine?
> >>
> >> If you're setting up a very constrained machine with little memory, go
> >> with the 32-bit version. It'll use slightly less memory which can be
> >> important if you're constrained.
> >>
> >> If you're setting up a medium size or bigger machine (2Gb+ memory),
> >> use a 64-bit version. If you plan you may eventually need to increase
> >
> > Really? With ONLY 2Gb? Why? What is the performance improvement, with
> > 64Bit all pointers and so on needs more memory so i'm expecting lesser
> > memory for the data.
> >
> > I'm wrong?
>
> While the theoretical limit is a bit higher, the fact that you have to
> reinstall once you've realized you wanted to add a little bit more
> memory.... More important to me at least :-)
>

I also thought that the fact the 64bit system can move more data in parallell would also make the system faster....

BTJ



Re: 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

From
Vincenzo Romano
Date:
2010/1/21 Bjørn T Johansen <btj@havleik.no>:

> I also thought that the fact the 64bit system can move more data in parallell would also make the system faster....

That's true ad the chip level (registers and cache).
Anything else depends on the surrounding hardware (design and implementation).
A 32bit system with a good SAS subsystem can outperform a 64bit one
with poor PATA disks.

--
Vincenzo Romano
NotOrAnd Information Technologies
NON QVIETIS MARIBVS NAVTA PERITVS

Re: 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

From
Adrian von Bidder
Date:
On Thursday 21 January 2010 13.01:29 Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > Really? With ONLY 2Gb? Why? What is the performance improvement, with
> > 64Bit all pointers and so on needs more memory so i'm expecting lesser
> > memory for the data.
>

I'm not in any way a performance expert, but IIRC 32 bit Linux has to use
some quirky logic (HIGHMEM) to address more than 2G physical memory, which
might reduce performance somewhat.  So 2G is fine, but ...

Aside of memory: if performance is an issue, and assuming your db is bigger
than available memory: have you thought about the physical disk layout?
Having indices on different disks (physical disks matter, here!) from data,
splitting WAL from tablespaces etc. might all be much more important for
your performance than the 32bit vs. 64bit issue.

cheers
-- vbi

Attachment

Re: 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

From
"Larry Rosenman"
Date:
I have seen no difference in performance.  Now, if you want large memory for
a DB server, and you should, 64 is the way to go.

I'm currently running CentOS 5 64-Bit vm's for the SaaS app I support.

Works great on ESX 4U1.



--
Larry Rosenman                     http://www.lerctr.org/~ler
Phone: +1 512-248-2683                E-Mail: ler@lerctr.org
US Mail: 430 Valona Loop, Round Rock, TX 78681-3893

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Bjørn T Johansen
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 1:07 AM
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: [GENERAL] 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

We are going to be setting up a PostgreSQL server on a guest under VMWare
ESX 4... Is there any performance improvement by choosing 64bits Linux over
32bits Linux as the guest OS or is it almost the same?


Regards,

BTJ

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------
Bjørn T Johansen

btj@havleik.no
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------
Someone wrote:
"I understand that if you play a Windows CD backwards you hear strange
Satanic messages"
To which someone replied:
"It's even worse than that; play it forwards and it installs Windows"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------

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Re: 64bits or 32 bits on ESX?

From
Bjørn T Johansen
Date:
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:01:29 +0100
Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:45, A. Kretschmer
> <andreas.kretschmer@schollglas.com> wrote:
> > In response to Magnus Hagander :
> >> 2010/1/21 Bjørn T Johansen <btj@havleik.no>:
> >> > We are going to be setting up a PostgreSQL server on a guest under VMWare ESX 4... Is there any performance
improvementby choosing 64bits 
> >> > Linux over 32bits Linux as the guest OS or is it almost the same?
> >>
> >> How much resources do you plan to give the machine?
> >>
> >> If you're setting up a very constrained machine with little memory, go
> >> with the 32-bit version. It'll use slightly less memory which can be
> >> important if you're constrained.
> >>
> >> If you're setting up a medium size or bigger machine (2Gb+ memory),
> >> use a 64-bit version. If you plan you may eventually need to increase
> >
> > Really? With ONLY 2Gb? Why? What is the performance improvement, with
> > 64Bit all pointers and so on needs more memory so i'm expecting lesser
> > memory for the data.
> >
> > I'm wrong?
>
> While the theoretical limit is a bit higher, the fact that you have to
> reinstall once you've realized you wanted to add a little bit more
> memory.... More important to me at least :-)
>

I also thought that the fact the 64bit system can move more data in parallell would also make the system faster....

BTJ