Re: [squid-users] Squid NT vs. Squid Linux

On Friday 14 November 2003 10:33 pm, Cafe Admin wrote:
> I'm currently running 2.5-Stable3 on a dedicated RH9 box, and I know my
> hardware is being underutlized (2.0GHz Xeon , 2x10k RPM SCSI, 640MB,
> 1000Mbps NIC). I'm thinking about converting the machine to Windows File
> Server/PDC/SquidNT.

I can think of several reasons to reconsider:

1) Domain controllers and file servers are very critical systems - run as
little additional services and software on them as possible, for both
security and performance reasons.

2) Even though your CPU and RAM may be underutilized, the extra load file
serving will put on your disks likely will push the throughput near/beyond
the available limit, and you'll see a performance hit.

3) Have you considered Samba on Linux instead of Windows Server? Recent
benchmarks (linked to from the Samba website) show Samba 3 consistently
delivering over twice the throughput of Windows Server 2003 under similar
loads (averaging about 2.5 times the throughput).

4) SquidNT probably doesn't deliver the same level of performance as Squid on
Linux (or other Unix variants), simply because of underlying OS performance
issues.

My suggestion: Don't do it. Move Squid to a smaller box if you're concerned
about underutilization, and use the former Squid box to run Samba to provide
domain controller and file services.

Adam