Waiting for diapers.com to get back to me about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has given me the chance to return to my other obsession besides load and that is speed. How fast is your server? Is it faster than mine? Is it faster than it was before the last patch or memory upgrade? How much slower is it running in a virtual machine? What about on the Cloud? Or, one of my favorites, which one is faster, Linux or Windows?
I know, those are trick questions because there's no way to know if you don't have a way to easily and effectively measure such things. Well, the CapCal Performance Rating Test is exactly that and you're welcome to use it yourself if you wish - just write to info@capcal.com and we'll send you a form to fill out with a download link. But if you just follow along here you'll see what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about a performance test that takes the CPU, the OS, the database, the network stack and overall throughput into account, and a way of doing the same thing on both major platforms. The Java Pet Store is one of Sun's benchmark reference applications and Microsoft thought so highly of it they developed the .NET Pet Shop equivalent. So this is what we use in the CapCal Performance Rating Test and we think it's the ideal choice, especially since it's been blessed by the powers that be.
Oh yes, and did I mention that I am a total Linux idiot? I know I did at least once. I tried to install the Java Pet Store on Debian Linux and got it copied to the hard drive. Then I realized I didn't have the Apache web server installed, and the word Apache reminded me of how Custer must have felt surrounded by all those Indians. I didn't feel that bad, but I can tell you I felt a similar desperation. If someone will help me, or if I can find the time to blunder through it, I will begin the Linux vs. Windows Speed Races, right here at the CapCal Blog!
Gentlemen, start your engines!
No comments:
Post a Comment