Today we were configuring Squid on a RHEL 5. box. Building from source, we knew we’d get a nice 64-bit Squid caching server, ready to quickly process the cache and what have you. We run a filtering plugin from Secure Computing, which had to be compiled in with it. Unfortunately, Squid won’t build with the module because it doesn’t support 64-bit. This is extremely frustrating, as there are a number of limitations that we will face.
First and foremost, in order to capitalize on high memory quantities available at low cost, 64-bit is nearly a must. While PAE helps, there are virtual address memory space limitations that can’t be overcome. Secondly, the additional speed for CPU calculations would be useful. Our current Squid proxy runs at approximately 95% utilization. While having the additional 6 cores will help, obviously, nothing takes the load off like moving to native 64-bit apps.