How many of you are running 64 bit servers?

[FlyBoy73]

How many of you with leased dedicated or colo dedicated servers are running 64 Bit System? I don't mean that you have 64 bit processors... I mean that you are running 64 Bit Linux.

If you are running 64 Bit.. Have you seen any speed increases that you can attribute to moving to 64 bits and more importantly... have you had any headaches or problems with your 64 bit system?

[Erwin]

Which brings me to another question - which FREE 64 OS is recommended?

Centos vs Fedora Core vs FreeBSD?

[FlyBoy73]

I am using (on my new server) CentOS.

[markA4]

We were planning on trying out the 64 bit version of CentOS on our newly ordered server but it will only be running MySQL. Is anyone actually running MySQL 5.0.19 on a 64 bit server? We are still on the 4.0.x line but are looking at whether to install 4.1.x or 5.0.x on this new server. Seems like as good a time as any to upgrade to 5.0.x.

[adalren]

We're using 64bit CentOS. The openssl benchmark says 64bit is faster. I'm not sure how it translates into real world performance. Make sure you use apc and not eaccelerator. EA segfaults on 64bit OS's.

Here are some benchmark results on Dual 3.4 Xeons with 32bit CentOS.

openssl speed rsa
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.000761s 0.000065s 1313.9 15294.6
rsa 1024 bits 0.003875s 0.000189s 258.0 5286.8
rsa 2048 bits 0.022906s 0.000624s 43.7 1602.1
rsa 4096 bits 0.151818s 0.002230s 6.6 448.5

openssl speed rsa -multi 2
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.000385s 0.000033s 2594.0 30536.1
rsa 1024 bits 0.001927s 0.000094s 518.9 10638.3
rsa 2048 bits 0.011458s 0.000312s 87.3 3200.0
rsa 4096 bits 0.075470s 0.001116s 13.3 896.3

openssl speed rsa -multi 4
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.000304s 0.000026s 3287.5 39120.5
rsa 1024 bits 0.001524s 0.000072s 656.2 13901.2
rsa 2048 bits 0.008759s 0.000235s 114.2 4250.8
rsa 4096 bits 0.056805s 0.000825s 17.6 1212.8


Same thing with 64bit.

openssl speed rsa
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.000329s 0.000027s 3035.4 36386.4
rsa 1024 bits 0.001350s 0.000069s 740.8 14437.7
rsa 2048 bits 0.007782s 0.000219s 128.5 4562.1
rsa 4096 bits 0.050812s 0.000825s 19.7 1211.7

openssl speed rsa -multi 2
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.000283s 0.000024s 3530.5 42109.9
rsa 1024 bits 0.001194s 0.000062s 837.3 16260.2
rsa 2048 bits 0.006929s 0.000195s 144.3 5128.2
rsa 4096 bits 0.045611s 0.000683s 21.9 1464.1

openssl speed rsa -multi 4
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.000141s 0.000012s 7086.0 85568.9
rsa 1024 bits 0.000594s 0.000030s 1684.6 32786.9
rsa 2048 bits 0.003454s 0.000097s 289.5 10256.4
rsa 4096 bits 0.022761s 0.000341s 43.9 2928.8


For comparison, 32bit Dual Opteron 275.

openssl speed rsa -multi 4
rsa 512 bits 0.000149s 0.000012s 6700.3 83333.3
rsa 1024 bits 0.000559s 0.000030s 1788.2 33060.1
rsa 2048 bits 0.003125s 0.000091s 320.0 11049.7
rsa 4096 bits 0.020170s 0.000308s 49.6 3241.6


64bit Dual Opteron 275

openssl speed rsa -multi 4
rsa 512 bits 0.000074s 0.000006s 13425.6 166666.7
rsa 1024 bits 0.000279s 0.000015s 3587.7 66393.4
rsa 2048 bits 0.001566s 0.000045s 638.4 22099.8
rsa 4096 bits 0.010055s 0.000153s 99.5 6525.3

[FlyBoy73]

"Higher is Better" :) Well, on the right side of the results..

Thanks a lot for the results.

[Erwin]

Nice results on the dual/dual Opteron! :D

[Erwin]

I'm currently ordering quad opterons and dual/dual opterons and dual xeons in different combos - apparently cPanel (which I like using as it makes life easier for self-management) doesn't like 64 bit OSes - any experiences with that?

[FlyBoy73]

Erwin just voiced the question I should have posed in the opening post - this is a big concern for me as well. We are about to install WHM/cPanel on my 64 bit CentOS 4.1 OS. My server manager told me he has it running well on a lot of other servers he manages and colos (not where I colo) so I just gave the go-ahead to see how it runs on my server, though if it shows any problems I'm not going to be experimenting for good results. I'm not in a time crunch yet to get off my other servers so maybe I can contribute to some testing.

Will let you all know how that goes.

[kerplunknet]

We're using Fedora Core 4 (64-bit linux, dual Opterons, dual core) for our database server...

I don't even have the vocabulary to explain how fast it is.

[Erwin]

The problem with Fedora is its short lifespan of a few months vs a few years for the others.

[Erwin]

Anyone using Debian with a 64bit kernel?

[Erwin]

FWIW, I've decided to go with FreeBSD for my new servers.

[kerplunknet]

The problem with Fedora is its short lifespan of a few months vs a few years for the others.

It is very, very easy to upgrade from older versions of Fedora. It's pretty much:

rpm -ivh fedora-new-release-here.rpm

yum upgrade

Reboot the server and done!


I have had bad experience with CentOS, for the record.

FWIW, I've decided to go with FreeBSD for my new servers.

FreeBSD is a VERY good choice if you know how to administer it.

[Erwin]

I'm a RH7.3-9, Fedora Core 1, RHEL2and3 kinda guy myself. FreeBSD will be new, but it looks robust and upgrades using the port system looks enticing! Part of the potential issue with Fedora is that it has the impression of being a test OS for commercial RHEL, and as such, is bleeding edge and may be unstable/unsecure.

[dan35]

yeah, FreeBSD rulezzz :p

[TiKi XB]

Anyone using Debian with a 64bit kernel?

Yes for a while but I stepped back to K7 after it caused me too many headaches such as certain apps requiring cross compile environment etc.

[scottct1]

FWIW, I've decided to go with FreeBSD for my new servers.
Erwin, what version of FreeBSD are you going to use? I want to use FreeBSD 6 (64 bit) with Cpanel, however Cpanel says FreeBSD 4 64 bit is the latest they support.

I NEED Cpanel.

I am currently running CentOS 64 bit without issues and am trying to figure out which way to go when I buy a new box next week.

[FlyBoy73]

I am running CentOS 4.1 w/ WHM/cPanel in 64 bit without a problem so far. I know my server manager did some tweaking but he said they have been running / managing 64 bit servers with cPanel now for a few months without any problems. I'm guessing they have resolved the issues themselves since a lot of people have been having bad experiences with 64bit and cPanel

[BrentW]

Athlon 64 / Fedora

[Erwin]

I'm going to use FreeBSD 6.0 - I'm going to go without cPanel this time round. :)

[ramprage]

Don't use Cpanel and a 64 bit OS you'll run into all kinds of problems.

[scottct1]

I have been running CENTos 64 Bit and Cpanel for about 6 months now with no issues.

[ramprage]

Lucky, what version? The last time I tried it it was recently out, so maybe they've fixed most of the issues with it. We were using RHEL

[Erwin]

Even with Centos 64 cPanel has some bugs - at least what I've been told.

[Brad]

I'm going to use FreeBSD 6.0 - I'm going to go without cPanel this time round. :)
Please keep us updated on how this goes for you Erwin. I've always been a BSD fan and I'm intrested in how well it will preform on your site. :)

[Erwin]

Please keep us updated on how this goes for you Erwin. I've always been a BSD fan and I'm intrested in how well it will preform on your site. :)
Sure will. :)

[eva2000]

if i had to go 64bit i'd try SUSE Enterprise Edition - probably the best one for 64bit hardware driver compatibility as that would be one of the top issues with 64bit OSes

http://www.novell.com/products/linuxenterpriseserver/comparative.html

http://www.novell.com/products/linuxenterpriseserver/new_offer.html

Price http://www.novell.com/products/linuxenterpriseserver/howtobuy.html

http://support.novell.com/forums/

http://shop.novell.com

free 60 day trial http://download.novell.com/index.jsp?product_id=&search=Search&build_type=SDBuildBean&families=2658&date_range=&keywords=&x=24&y=12

[Erwin]

Dude, it's still not open source. :) Well, it is, but commercialised. :)

[FlyBoy73]

ATM, the only issue we have run into is getting MRTG to install & run properly. Have a TT submitted with cPanel on this. Other than that.. Running fine still.

[Erwin]

My servers are running FreeBSD 6.0 AMD64 without any problems on Quad Opterons and Dual Processor/ Dual Core Opterons. Initially we had the wrong kernel compiled so only 1 CPU was recognised, but this was picked up quickly - we now run the 64bit SMP kernel, and the forums have never been faster.

FreeBSD is an awesome OS - the ports system is easy - install portmanager and you can easily install ports using single commands - say goodbye to problems with rpm dependencies. :) It's also fairly easy to customise, and is secure.

I documented everything I did to set up a FreeBSD server, so if anyone wants help, let me know. :)

Also, I'm running Lighttpd instead of Apache - this is a fantastic webserver, much leaner than Apache, and is fast! It also load balances php by running php as separate processes - you've got to try it out to believe the difference in speed and reduction in server loads.

[eva2000]

Dude, it's still not open source. :) Well, it is, but commercialised. :)
yeah that's the point for wider 64bit hardware driver compatibility it would probably save alot of hair pulling sessions :)

[Erwin]

We did pull our hair out when we had to try a few RAID cards until one worked with FreeBSD. ;)

[dbembibre]

I have Dual xeons 2.8 with scsi and 2 gb of ram, and planning in a shrort time move all my forums to a new quad opteron.

[PixelFx]

I'm running my sites on dual core amd64 4400+ & 3500+ out of my studio, so far so good. I'm using Apache 2.0.58, php 4.4.2, and mysql 4.1.19 on xp pro other than needing to setup ioncube it seems to be running good.

[titodj]

Quad Opteron (DualCore) 265
120gb sata raid + 120 sata backup drive
CentOS 4.3
Cpanel
And no problems so far...

[kerplunknet]

Some people may get confused...

You can have 64-bit CPUs (x86_64), but run a 32-bit OS. (x86)

I wonder how many people are running true 64-bit systems.

[SFGHQ]

Just for the record, if you are going to run 64bit CentOS, be sure you recompile the kernal.

The kernal it comes with has a nasty bug that causes it to eat up swap for memory usage over 400mb, even if you have more RAM available. Caused me lots of trouble.

[Zachery]

Some people may get confused...

You can have 64-bit CPUs (x86_64), but run a 32-bit OS. (x86)

I wonder how many people are running true 64-bit systems.
I'd probally run a 32bit os with a 64bit processor.

[titodj]

Jeje I think you just give me the answer to my ram usage problem...
I was clue less

Just for the record, if you are going to run 64bit CentOS, be sure you recompile the kernal.

The kernal it comes with has a nasty bug that causes it to eat up swap for memory usage over 400mb, even if you have more RAM available. Caused me lots of trouble.

[wtrk]

Which brings me to another question - which FREE 64 OS is recommended?

Centos vs Fedora Core vs FreeBSD?

freebsd of course.