Hello All,
Please, Can somebody tell me if it is better (performance) to have your bigfix core on Linux with DB2 or Windows with SQL?
Regards
JO
I’m sure some folks here will disagree with me, but from my perspective and use of BigFix over the past 5 years the Linux/DB2 variant is the clear winner with regards to performance. This is supported by the IBM BigFix : Performance & Capacity Planning documentation, which is a must read for any BigFix administrator.
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Not to dispute cmcannady’s comments at all, but I think you’ll find that very few deployments have changed from Windows to Linux, or vice-versa, so it’s somewhat difficult to make a direct comparison.
I think you will also find that there are large, well-tuned deployments running efficiently on both platforms, and there are probably sone poorly-tuned, poorly-performing deployments on both.
Anecdotally, I think there might be some slight performance benefit in one platform over another, but I think there’s only a very small performance margin. If your deployment is less than a few hundred thousand endpoints at least, I don’t think performance should be the main driver for choosing one platform over another.
I think by far, your main concern should be how well-tuned your platform is going to be. And that depends largely on the expertise of your systems administrators and database administrators. Let the platform choice be driven by their expertise. If you have a good Linux/DB2 knowledge base and infrastructure, then use that; if your platform and admins are Win/SQL, then use that.
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@JasonWalker, makes an excellent point. MS/SQL Server is a good RDBMS, but I prefer DB2. MS/WIN Server is a popular OS, but I prefer CentOS/RHEL. However, if you do not have solid in-house Linux/DB2 resources, then the performance benefits may be outweighed by the general administrative and maintenance challenges due to that lack of in-house knowledge. Ultimately a BigFix administrator needs to be comfortable with the OS and RDBMS backend for their respective BigFix implementations.
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Performance is one thing…
From a supportability perspective:
Question: Is your IT team more familiar installing / configuring/ troubleshooting Windows + MSSQL platforms or Red Hat + DB2 platforms.
Your Answer:
The differences in performance between the two platforms may not justify using one over the other if the experience in supporting one over another is not there.
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Hi All,
Thanks!!!
I do understand that BigFix Performance relies on How well-tuned BigFix is running (actiones, sites, computers, etc) and where the Database is located (SSD + Raid 10).
We are currently planning a migration from BigFix installed on a Physical Windows Server 2008 r2 + sql 2008 to a virtual Linux RedHat 7.3 + DB2 for these reasons:
- The Hardware where BigFix is installed is seven (07) years old.
- We need a HA on our BigFix infrastructure cause is a critical service and we manage around 5000 servers (Windows, Solaris, ESX, AIX, LInux, etc)
- We do not have licenses for Windows Servers and SQL. However, we have licenses for Redhat and DB2.
Once again thanks everybody, I was looking for some field experience of BigFix over Linux + DB2.
Regards
Jose Osorio R.
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Despite a few setbacks over a nearly 5 year period (some software & some environmental), I can tell you that our Linux-based BigFix implementations have performed well at scale.
We’re currently directly managing (i.e. BESClient) nearly 100k endpoints and indirectly managing (i.e. custom content & services) over 70k endpoints across 4k sites… and those numbers are growing daily.
There are some considerations when virtualizing a RHEL root BES server. You’ll want to ensure with your virtualization admin that the guest had guaranteed resources (i.e. CPU, RAM & I/O). Fast storage is also highly important for both the application and databases. Finally, with DB2 you’ll want to configure it’s memory utilization so that the BES services have sufficient resources available.
Good luck with your migration P2V and WIN-to-NIX migration. If you’re able to share, I’d be interested in hearing how it goes.
Best,
@cmcannady