Which OS best for file serving? Does file AIO increase performance significantly?

Server NGINX
1

Hi,

I’m interested in setting up Nginx server for image serving, mostly
small images such as icons or thumbnails.

Usually I use Linux, but I understand that file AIO doesn’t work on
Linux. A few questions:

  1. How much performance increase does file AIO realistically provide for
    file serving - 10%? 50%? 100%?

  2. If the performance increase is significant, which OS do you recommend
    for file AIO - FreeBSD, NetBSD, Open BSD, OpenSolaris?

  3. Is it a steep learning curve moving from Linux to one of the
    aforementioned OS?

Thanks.

Posted at Nginx Forum:

2

在 2011-08-22一的 10:58 -0400，Andy写道：

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Why do you think that File AIO not work on GNU/Linux?

In nginx website(ABOUT page),it says: "File AIO (FreeBSD 4.3+, Linux
2.6.22+); "

–
Best regards,
Sharl.Jimh.Tsin (From China Obviously Taiwan INCLUDED)

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3

In my experience (very similar usage to you) aio on freebsd made slim to
no difference over standard setup on Linux so I stuck with Linux which
is what I know best

4

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 03:05:01PM +0800, Sharl.Jimh.Tsin wrote:

file serving - 10%? 50%? 100%?

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[email protected]
nginx Info Page

Why do you think that File AIO not work on GNU/Linux?

In nginx website(ABOUT page),it says: "File AIO (FreeBSD 4.3+, Linux
2.6.22+); "

nginx supports Linux AIO. However, Linux AIO works only together with
O_DIRECT, that means that all I/O must be aligned to sector boundary
(usually 512 bytes) and are not cached by the kernel.

–
Igor S.