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Old 10-31-2007, 02:11 PM   #1
th3joker
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Linux vs Windows 2003 Server - Which is the fastest file server


Hi,

My server at home just failed and I have had a replacement here waiting for this as I knew it was imminent.

My question is this: -

I have a 10 user license for Windows 2003 SBS but would like to consider a Linux Server as an alternative.

I mainly need to transfer pretty large files (800MB+) to and from the server.

What would be that fastest performer for 'File Serving' only - Linux or Windows 2003 Server. Also which would be faster NFS or Samba. Finally if I use Linux which FS would be quickest and best for this environment EXT2/3, XFS, ReiserFS etc..

I have 2 Mac OS X systems both running Leopard (10.5) OS, I also
have 4 PC's all running Vista & XP in Dual Boot setups.

I am unsure if NFS would perform better than Samba for the 2 Mac's, if I use Ubuntu for a server. I can use DiskShare for NFS on the PC's or Samba whichever is the fastest.

Apologies if I have posted in the wrong section, please let me know if I should post it elsewhere.

Any help or pointers would be most gratefully received.

Adrian :-)
 
Old 10-31-2007, 02:24 PM   #2
kilgoretrout
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Just my opinion and I'm sure you'll get plenty more:

xfs, samba and linux.
 
Old 10-31-2007, 02:31 PM   #3
th3joker
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Hey thanks for the advice it's much appreciated.

I've spent the best part of today trying to find a definitive answer. There seem to be lots of reports and studies but they are mostly from biased sources or very out of date.

I forgot to ask for a distro recommendation, can anyone point me in the right direction for a flavour that supports XFS and Samba nicely.

All the best,

Adrian :-)
 
Old 10-31-2007, 02:42 PM   #4
dguitar
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Quote:
Originally Posted by th3joker View Post
NFS or Samba
NFS is faster but Samba is your only choice because of this:

Quote:
Originally Posted by th3joker View Post
running Vista & XP
As for distro... I'd suggest Slackware or Debian - but I might be a little biased Really any distro should fit your needs (All the major distros have XFS support, afaik). Also XFS might not be the fastest depending on your hardware.
 
Old 10-31-2007, 09:17 PM   #5
nass
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well i don't think you can be asking if win or linux server is faster... especially not in a linux forum lol..

still you couldn't be asking that in the 1st place...

i will agree with kilgoretrout that a suiting combination would be xfs (filesystem performing generally better than the other file systems when it comes to large files), along with samba , if I used iy in a linux box. The key here is that i would use a linux server because of its stability not because it might be faster.
Statistically speaking windows crash far more often than linux distros. Yes even win2k3 small business server that i had the opportunity to see being set up in an internal office network. So linux is the sort of really stable solution.. if u don't even need to install additional software, then rest assured that an out-of-the-box installation of a distro will be very stable.

i have experience with slackware 10.2 and 11 only.. im fitted my own home server with slackware 11. it hasn't let me down once and i have been tweaking it for the last 6 months! having raid,vpn,vnc,ftp,http,firewall,NAT,routing,svn,samba,nfs,rsync services running all at once, doing code development, and even using this machine for personal leisure and i haven't got a single complaint. and did i mention its running on a PIII ??

well win2k3 certainly can't do that :P, however u can boost the linux speed freeing up resources that are not necessary. the X window system is not even needed to be running on a server machine. u can omit loading it altogether along with other unnecessary services (its up to u).. so you can get a possible boost from there...

well i hope you are convinced now:P
 
Old 11-01-2007, 06:07 AM   #6
hackintosh
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1)windows to linux and vice versa ?
2)windows to windows ?
3)unix to unix ??

which one u refer to ?
 
Old 11-01-2007, 06:54 AM   #7
megerdin
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Offcourse linux. If u know something about it.
 
Old 11-02-2007, 04:42 PM   #8
msound
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Can you tell us what the hardware specs are of your new file server? If it's a new machine with decent specs then either would work fine. You could probably have Windows SBS configured and serving your files in less time than a Linux server.

If you're working with older hardware then I'd be more inclined to recommend Linux because you'll get more out of your hardware. Once you've configured the server you can disable the gui (and any other background services you don't need) and save your limited resources.

I'm not sure how much experience you have with Linux, but if you're new to Linux then I'd suggest CentOS or Ubuntu as the distribution. Both have good documentation and a lot of community support.

In the end I think the performance difference between a Linux and Windows file server would be trivial. I've never seen any benchmarks proving this assumption, so take it for what it's worth. Honestly the best thing you could do for speedier file transfers is buy a nice gigabit switch and some gigabit nics. If you already have a gigabit lan then you'll probably be happy regardless of which OS you choose.

Cheers!
 
Old 11-03-2007, 09:26 AM   #9
th3joker
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Hi All,

Thanks for all the help and suggestions :-)

I ran some tests with a variety of file types, sizes and Server set ups.

2003 server was the slowest to upload to but the fastest to download.
Debian Samba was the fastest to upload to but the second slowest to download.
Debian NFS to Mac NFS was the 2nd fastest to upload to but the slowest to download.

So a mixed bag really, the set up for Debian was straight out of the box, defaults all round but the FS was xfs. 2003 Server all defaults too. Same with the Debian NFS setup.

I was quite surprised that the NFS didn't do better, quite a few people thought this would win hands down. I didn't do any tweaking with the NFS or Samba configs though so that may explain it. I did find it a pain to get working with my Mac running Leopard but this seems to be quite common with the Leopard version. Tiger was nice and easy.

I am going to stick with 2003 Server in the short term as I need a couple of big drives to backup the data, reformat as xfs and then move over to Linux (not sure which flavour) samba. I may experiment with NFS & Samba tweaks to see if I can improver throughput.
 
Old 11-03-2007, 09:37 AM   #10
th3joker
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Oops forgot to mention the server spec:

Abit AB9 Pro

2 GB RAM

Intel CPU Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz

1x 500GB Western Digital SATA-II 16MB Cache: Boot drive
3x 750GB Seagate Barracuda SATA-II 16MB Cache
1x 1TB Hitachi Deskstar SATA-II 32MB Cache
 
  


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