Subject: Re: ballpark ratio users:cpu for a [345]86 NetBSD box? <[email-masked]>

From: Ken Hornstein <[email-masked]>

>no matter how much you guys flame back and forth.  In this case,
>I'd have to suspect that the newer OS was at fault, probably
>something having to do with context switching, virtual memory,
>or configuration of some sort.  Maybe you had people running
>multiple xtanks on the Sparc 10's?
>[...]
>I'm curious; what are you doing on these 4/???s?  Can you think
>of any reason they would beat a Sparc 10?

I didn't really want to add to this thread, but here's my $0.02:

I _think_ I know which one of your competetors tried doing this (if it's the
same bunch of clueless yahoos, one of my friends bought connectivity off of
them for a while).  The main reason they had all their problems was that their
Sparc 10's were running Solaris, while I assume your 4/xxx's are running
SunOS.  Last time I was on there, their system was pretty screwed up (they
obviously didn't know what they were doing), and as far as I could tell the
only reason they were running Solaris was because it was newer than SunOS.
Of course, their problems may be attributed to just lousy system management.
But I'm pretty sure that a well-configured Sparc 10 will outperform a 4/xxx
series machine on all tasks.

(If you want to respond to me, just send me private e-mail; this has choked
up current-users long enough).

--Ken