FreeBSD 12.0 Performance Against Windows & Linux On An Intel Xeon Server

Last week I posted benchmarks of Windows Server 2019 against various Linux distributions using a Tyan dual socket Intel Xeon server. In this article are some complementary results when adding in the performance of FreeBSD 11.2 against the new FreeBSD 12.0 stable release for this leading BSD operating system. As some fun benchmarks to end out 2018, here are the results of FreeBSD 11.2/12.0 (including an additional run when using GCC rather than Clang) up against Windows Server and several enterprise-ready Linux distributions.

Tacked onto the Windows Server and Linux benchmark results from last week on this Tyan GT24E-B7106 1U server are now the FreeBSD performance numbers. The server configuration was obviously maintained the same with two Xeon Gold 6138 CPUs yielding a combined 40 cores / 80 threads, 12 x 8192MB DDR4-2666MHz memory, and a Samsung 970 EVO 250GB NVMe solid-state. On top of the Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2019 WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux using Ubuntu 18.04), CentOS 7.6, Clear Linux 26850, Debian 9.6, Fedora Server 29, Ubuntu 18.10, and openSUSE Leap 15.0 are now the following FreeBSD tests:

- FreeBSD 11.2 using its release packages, including the default LLVM Clang 6.0.0 code compiler. FreeBSD was installed using ZFS.

- FreeBSD 12.0 that debuted earlier this month using its release packages, including the default LLVM Clang 6.0.1 system compiler and ZFS file-system.

- The same FreeBSD 12.0 installation but when switching to the GCC 8.2 compiler. This was done to rule out differences with FreeBSD using the Clang compiler unlike GCC on the Linux distribution tests, even though the default code compiler is one of the conscious decisions made by each of the OS vendors in crafting their distribution/OS.

The Phoronix Test Suite was used with its full support for Linux / BSD / Windows benchmarking across these platforms with a variety of benchmarks. Let's go on to look at our last benchmarks for 2018. And as one last call, if you appreciate the daily Linux benchmarking and news coverage on Phoronix, consider showing your support before year's end.