Re: [gentoo-amd64] i386 vs amd64

[Francisco Perez]

I guess I'll just drop my two cents in to disagree as far as AMD64 
Gentoo not being production worthy.  I have had a very pleasant 
experience running my GX-28 server in production for 7 months now 
without a single problem.  Since the server was installed, it has had 
100% uptime, except for 3 reboots for kernel upgrades.  The price for 
the server was $2,600 and I have been able to use it to completely 
replace 3 different Dell dual 1GHz Xeon servers with it that were bought 
for far more than this one.  During testing I kept added apps from the 
other servers and the fully loaded AMD server's performance (I'm 
comparing total CPU usage %) was better than any of the Dell's were with 
far fewer apps install.  Something else to mention is that the Dell's 
had SCSI 320 with 4 Seagate Cheetahs each and a hardware raid controller 
while the AMD server is SATA with a hardware raid controller.  I realize 
that's a faulty comparison because the Dell's had a combined 2 GHz each 
while the AMD server has dual 246 opterons, but my real point is just 
that in my experience (so far) everything has been as stable as the 
Intel servers.  Another thing I noticed is that the AMD server produces 
  FAR less heat than the Intel servers and is also quieter.  However for 
the first thirty seconds when the server boots up it is LOUD, but the 
the fans slow down and then eventually turn off (I have a way too big AC 
unit dedicated to my clean room/server closet).  Also speaking purely of 
personal preference, I find that Gentoo's portage is a much more 
efficient in managing a business environment where we are managing a 
handful of linux machines, all of which are Gentoo.  What I have been 
doing is every time a PC needs to be replaced, I have been switching it 
from WinTel to an AMD64 Gentoo box, with the exception of my 2 
Engineering and drafting staff which I am stuck with Windows because I 
haven't found a suitable replacement for AutoCad or SAP2000.  The idea 
is to have our office running all AMD Gentoo at some point in the near 
future.  So far  I have 5 AMD Gentoo boxes (including the server), and 5 
WinTel workstations including the 2 Eingineering and drafting ones.  If 
anyone else is doing a migration like this I'd love to share notes.

Frank Perez


> If you're running a commercial server I wouldn't go anywhere near amd64
> unless it is just running a small set of core apps (like apache) and you
> expect to benefit from the improved performance.  On the other hand, if
> you're deploying a non-saturated general-purpose server you really should
> be going with something more stable (probably debian).
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