5 ms·

> PerformanceTest software only runs on Windows OS I think this excludes huge population of servers as we know Windows is not dominant there.

mey 5y ago
How many people outside of a homelab/lab going to run a performance test suite on a fleet of servers? The sample size must be interestingly skewed. This may be more useful information for the server market, even if old. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vs-intel-q3-2020-cpu-market-share-report https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vs-intel-q3-2020-cpu-m...
- lumost 5y ago
  It’s pretty common actually. A server buy can easily be an 8 figure deal, getting servers that turn out to be stupidly configured for your apps that your stuck with for 5 years is exceptionally dumb.
  - mey 5y ago
    I should've emphasized lab before of homelab. Agree, doing a full stack hardware validation (managed to even get a full multi-vendor stack deployed into a Dell validation colo to do our internal performance test). Even then, we only ran out own performance tests, as we cared about our workload, not a generic workload suite. Edit: Additionally, we only did that work on a single set of systems prior to purchase, not the systems post purchase, so 1 of N, instead of rerunning on N. It was presumed that performance would remain the same on same hardware configuration etc.
    - wumpus 5y ago
      That's a telling edit. It's easy to misconfigure a few machines, or have an OS update hurt performance of your entire fleet.
- wumpus 5y ago
  When I had a fleet of servers, I ran a performance test suite after every boot to make sure the machine was OK.
qw3rty01 5y ago
Are you sure? Statista has windows at a 71% server market share in 2019: https://www.statista.com/statistics/915085/global-server-share-by-os/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/915085/global-server-sha... Edit: Because people seem to think that the numbers are made up, here's some more sources with not quite as high, but similarly dominant numbers: Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-continues-lead-linux-server-market https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-continues-lead-linux-... - microsoft @ 49% in 2017 t4: https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-share https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-sh... - microsoft @ 47% in 2018
- sacomo 5y ago
  I wonder if this only considers the OS that a server was shipped with? Which is typically nuked as soon as the customer receives it.
  - qw3rty01 5y ago
    This may be true for small companies, but larger businesses tend to use windows due to support contracts.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      Larger companies have no problems finding people to pay to support Linux, or if they are really large (say, Amazon), supporting it themselves and being who people (including big companies) pay to support and host Linux systems.
    - MobiusHorizons 5y ago
      it all depends on size. some larger (typically older) companies with smaller engineering teams will make the tradeoff you are describing. But the big players today, who manage hundreds of thousands to millions of servers are not going to pay per machine / per core license counts for support. They build and maintain most of their own software for their own needs.
  - Symbiote 5y ago

mey 5y ago

How many people outside of a homelab/lab going to run a performance test suite on a fleet of servers? The sample size must be interestingly skewed. This may be more useful information for the server market, even if old. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vs-intel-q3-2020-cpu-market-share-report https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vs-intel-q3-2020-cpu-m...

lumost 5y ago
It’s pretty common actually. A server buy can easily be an 8 figure deal, getting servers that turn out to be stupidly configured for your apps that your stuck with for 5 years is exceptionally dumb.
- mey 5y ago
  I should've emphasized lab before of homelab. Agree, doing a full stack hardware validation (managed to even get a full multi-vendor stack deployed into a Dell validation colo to do our internal performance test). Even then, we only ran out own performance tests, as we cared about our workload, not a generic workload suite. Edit: Additionally, we only did that work on a single set of systems prior to purchase, not the systems post purchase, so 1 of N, instead of rerunning on N. It was presumed that performance would remain the same on same hardware configuration etc.
  - wumpus 5y ago
    That's a telling edit. It's easy to misconfigure a few machines, or have an OS update hurt performance of your entire fleet.
wumpus 5y ago
When I had a fleet of servers, I ran a performance test suite after every boot to make sure the machine was OK.

qw3rty01 5y ago

Are you sure? Statista has windows at a 71% server market share in 2019: https://www.statista.com/statistics/915085/global-server-share-by-os/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/915085/global-server-sha... Edit: Because people seem to think that the numbers are made up, here's some more sources with not quite as high, but similarly dominant numbers: Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-continues-lead-linux-server-market https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-continues-lead-linux-... - microsoft @ 49% in 2017 t4: https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-share https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-sh... - microsoft @ 47% in 2018

sacomo 5y ago
I wonder if this only considers the OS that a server was shipped with? Which is typically nuked as soon as the customer receives it.
- qw3rty01 5y ago
  This may be true for small companies, but larger businesses tend to use windows due to support contracts.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    Larger companies have no problems finding people to pay to support Linux, or if they are really large (say, Amazon), supporting it themselves and being who people (including big companies) pay to support and host Linux systems.
  - MobiusHorizons 5y ago
    it all depends on size. some larger (typically older) companies with smaller engineering teams will make the tradeoff you are describing. But the big players today, who manage hundreds of thousands to millions of servers are not going to pay per machine / per core license counts for support. They build and maintain most of their own software for their own needs.
- Symbiote 5y ago