Virtual Appliances Are 32Bit?

[alphadog]

Are the virtual appliances downloadable from Proxmox 32bit? If so, is there a reason they aren't 64bit?

Thanks.

 

[tom]

Are the virtual appliances downloadable from Proxmox 32bit? If so, is there a reason they aren't 64bit?

Thanks.

yes, currently all in the downloader are 32-bit. you can find some 64-bit OS templates here.
ftp://pve.proxmox.com/appliances/

we think using 64-bit for most applications provides no benefit, just using more memory (e.g. apache on 64-bit needs more memory).

if you need a lot of memory in your applications there is no reason not to go for 64-bit. I just think of a Zimbra server with high load - here I would go for the 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04 base template.

 

[Morten]

yes, currently all in the downloader are 32-bit. you can find some 64-bit OS templates here.
ftp://pve.proxmox.com/appliances/

we think using 64-bit for most applications provides no benefit, just using more memory (e.g. apache on 64-bit needs more memory).

But wouldn't 64-bit applications perform considerably better than their 32-bit equivalents? (like a factor 2-5?)

I'm about to setup a Openvz virtual mailserver running Ubuntu Intrepid x64 and Postfix and Courier for our customers. I have no problem with memory (the host have 1xQuad-core Xeon L5420 and 8GB memory and will get whatever I think is necessary up to 2xQuad-core and 48GB), but just want the best performance/response time. Do you suggest that I make this setup running 32-bit software instead?

I'm very far from being an expert on these matters, and would like very much to hear both your own opinion and the common opinion at Proxmox.

And now we're talking about Apache and memory: I've been converting all our Linux servers from Apache2 to nginx with an incredible performance boost. Our load-balanced reverse proxies were having a hard time being quite the bottle neck in our web setup. Installing and configuring nginx were fairly easy and now they are serving content with rocket speed. The most crazy thing is that they use only 1/10 of memory at the most compared to Apache.
You might want to consider changing the webserver on the PVE host to nginx instead.

 

[Nemesiz]

OpenVZ VM dont have its kernel. So VM is running with 64-bit kernel and you can chouse 32 or 64 bit programs to run.

 

[Morten]

OpenVZ VM dont have its kernel.

OpenVZ VM don't have who's kernel?

So VM is running with 64-bit kernel and you can chouse 32 or 64 bit programs to run.

Yes, but don't I gain anything performance-wise by running 64-bit kernel and 64-bit programs instead of 64-bit kernel and 32-bit programs?

 

[Nemesiz]

OpenVZ VM use host kernel. As tom said the 64bit programs uses more memory for doing the same task as 32 bit can do.

32 bit can hold 3.2 GB of RAM. 64 bit - 64 gb of RAM. I dont think a program needs more then 3.2 GB of ram.

 

[thefool808]

Really, if you want to compare the performance of one against the other, just setup a test and test it yourself. Saying that a 64-bit application should theoretically run faster than a 32-bit application is not the same as saying this particular setup runs faster than that. Also, I might guess you would get more performance gains by fine tuning the filesystem and network parameters.

 

[dietmar]

But wouldn't 64-bit applications perform considerably better than their 32-bit equivalents? (like a factor 2-5?)

I never meassured any performance gain for 64 bit applications. But memory usage grows by a factor of 2-3.