Moving to 64 Bit

I never been too keen on the benefits of switching to 64 bit, I know a lot of places install centos32 on any server despite the processor. So I was working in a centos64 box and I seen that I can run everything just like in centos32 except performance was better, load balancing was much better.

So I decided to get my next servers as centos 64 bit. I have one up now, its in Intel Quad Xeon, Centos 5 64 bit. It seems a lot faster and more stable and scores much higher on unix benchmarks. They say it uses more resources but I havent seen it but that server does have 4 gb ddr2 ram so it will probably be a while before I can test average work on it.

I plan to migrate this server and my other server to 64 Bit within the next month. Will be a lot of work but I will be able to do it with not much downtime at all. I will at least get this server migrated this month.

So yeah, if you got a 64 bit compatible processor go for it, no reason not to. Also you will be getting optimized software right off, You wont get that i386 crap. It amazes me they still make almost all packages compiled for i386. Really, who still runs that? But I would say software optimization was always something I was trying to do in 32 bit, I dont think Ill have to do it as much now.