Re: Which Server Platform?

* David Meadows <david(at)goldenheroes.softnet.co.uk> writes:

> Ok, I guess a discussion of web servers is valid for the theory list. If
> you are writing server-side stuff, it's going to be platform-specific
> and you need to make sure that it is future-proof. 

Actually, it should go on the server list...

> So here goes:

> Robin S. Socha <r.socha(at)control-risks.de> writes:

>> will "run" under NT. But who uses NT for mission critical applications
>> these days?

> Uh, you are joking aren't you? Do you actually read any of the IT
> trade papers? Every week, every day almost, another big corporation
> announces a committment to NT.

So they do. Can you *really* spell "mission critical"? High availability
NT systems? 10.000 hits on your server at once? C'mon David, you're a
grown up man - this must be a joke. NT is well renowned for its inability
to take bigger workloads. Read the advocacy newsgroups for a couple of 
weeks.

> NT will take over the world. 

Not my world. But then again, you're from that island which, when the
Channel tunnel is out of order, goes "continent cut off from Britain",
right? Start here: <http://www.bitwizard.nl/unixnt.html> and especially
here: <http://www.kirch.net/unix-nt.html>. The problem is that an entire
generation of IT people has grown up with Windows and the real admins
are slowly fading away. What you get these days is IT managers with
suits and mice. Not to mention the "XY certified engineer" kind.

> I neither condone nor condem this. I merely state it as an inevitable
> fact. It doesn't matter how much you hate Microsoft, you can't deny
> that they *do* take over any market they aim for.

That is correct. Do the words DR Dos, OS/2, Visual Basic or Win95 Beta
ring a bell? I really, really like America, but whatever the people in
the DOJ are smoking, it's not doing justice any good. In Germany, MS
would never have been able to take over all the markets they have now.

> Recently Compaq (you may have heard of them? Used to make laptops or
> something...) took over Digital (maybe you heard of them? Small
> company, used to be big in the mid-range market...). This week, news
> broke of Compaq pledging to push NT Server as their network server
> of choice. Compaq and Digital have a *huge* client base between
> them, the sort of clients that NT is targetted towards.

What a very strange way to say: "Admins, you may trash your Alphas and
start doing H". Here's a funny little story from my University: I know
of at least 50 servers that are officially running NT. But they're
not. The admins trashed it after a couple of days because they simply
couldn't provide satisfactory uptimes. So they installed Linux. No
problems since then. I mean - what does NT do except file- and
print-services? Why should a small company go for a "NT server" if a
486/32MB running Linux can provide that plus web-, mail-, news-,
ftp-... server for free?

> Sorry, I have temporarily lost the URL for that story. But here's a
> couple more reasons why NT will dominate the world in the coming
> years (these are just stories that crossed my desk today... I have a
> million others if you're interested).

I know them very well. Most of them written by people who scored F's
in CS when it came to U*ix. The NT admins *I* know start crying after
a beer or two when they think of VMS or Solaris.

>      http://www.isdmag.com/edabenchmark/
> The latest benchmarks published by ISD magazine, pitting the newest
> Windows NT machines against much more expensive Sun Ultra 60s,
> showed the NT platform significantly faster.

*sigh* If you want raw power, get a Beowulf cluster running Linux. And:
there are no "NT machines". There are Intel boxes running NT. Put Linux or
Solaris and Apache on them (or a full scale SQL database) and see NT turn
belly up. These are *old* stories. NT chokes under heavy workload. And it
crashes more than once a year. I'm talking production here, not "playing
the admin".

>      http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/press/1998/Jun98/NTWorkPR.htm
> Customers are purchasing almost 200 Windows NT Workstation
> licenses every hour, resulting in more than 15 million licenses
> sold to date, a 36 percent increase in the past seven months.

News about Mircosoft from Mircosoft themselves? Cool.

> My prediction: Within 2 years (5, tops) your ISP will tell you
> that they are switching to NT and you will have to port all your
> server-side scripts to that platform.

My facts: more and more large companies are turning for (free) U*ices
for their networks (eg Mercedes Benz who are using Linux), because
they don't think they can afford NT. And we haven't even started
talking about the security of your data.

> Don't be caught out! I don't care how wonderful Linux is, stick with
> it and you will feel like the folks that bought Betamax...

David - have you ever actually *used* Linux or *seen* it? When I lived
in London, it struck me as odd to what lengths the British will go to
find the most braindead solution to simple problems. Maybe you should
have a look at how Linux is kicking off in, say, India, where the Govt
is running a campaign to encourage small and mid-range businesses to
run it. It's working.

>> Oxymoron of the decade: Microsoft Works.
> lol... I *do* like this, though :-))

I don't like it. I've wasted too much of my time administrating this
junk. I want to make serious money. Exit Mircosoft. EOT.

Robin

-- 
Robin S. Socha M.A. 
Control Risks Ltd. <http://www.crg.com/>

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