IRQ Balancing on Linux

Having a multi-core machine is great, but if you do alot of I/O (Fileserver, network router, etc) then it is likely that you have more than one kind of I/O in your machine at a time.

The easy one is a fileserver. You have requests from the network to read/write files and you have the actual disk activity to fill the requests. Lastly you have network I/O sending the reply's.

With a multi-core system, letting different cores handle different operations is how performance is increased. In linux there is a service called IRQBalance which activly monitors the machine and attempts to insure that the I/O load is distributed.

Check out the link provided

Sun Buys Mysql

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Sun Microsystems Inc. has acquired MySQL AB, the maker of the MySQL database management system, a move that Sun hopes will make it a more substantial player in the database market. But as these forces join, it also raises questions for IT shops juggling diverse hardware, database and operating system platforms.
[/QUOTE]

Maybe Sun is onto something here. The linux comunity dismantled the Solaris product line by providing no-cost replacement for Solaris and taking innovative ideas into kernel development.

What sun is doing amounts to taking the best Linux products and incorporating them into their product line at the same time as leaving them Open Source(d). A good clustered File System (see earlier post), a Database and other tools.

Clustered File System

GFS as built into linux is a nice idea, but doesn't scale when you get into it. Along comes "lustre" a new filesystem for linux.

If you wanted to see if its a valid product, Sun went and bought it last fall ..

Check it out

Making Windows File Copy Better

Teracopy from codesector is a nice add-in that punches up the speed of copies. It does it by removing the local "windows cache" feature and using rawread and rawwrite when accessing the files.