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Gartner Group Suggests Dumping IIS For Now
sachmet is one of the many readers who contributed news that "Gartner Group is now recommending that
IIS be replaced in corporate environments. This is based on the fact that TCO for IIS is rising due to the almost-weekly patches sent out by MS, and even then, it's nearly impossible to get patched quickly enough. Best part: 'Gartner remains concerned that viruses and worms will continue to attack IIS until Microsoft has released a completely rewritten, thoroughly and publicly tested, new release of IIS,' which they say has an 80% chance of happening by the end of next year." Gartner hasn't always said favorable things about Linux systems in the workplace, but the businesses that rely on this type of analysis to justify purchasing decisions may find this one interesting. Update: 09/24 22:04 GMT by T :As several people have pointed out, the 80% figure appears to be Gartner's odds that IIS won't be rewritten that soon, rather than the other way around (.673334 probability).
Take a look at the data at:0 8/ index.html
.mil, and .br graphs!
http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/2001
Since July IIS market share has been falling.
Check the
The share is flowing to Apache and Netscape servers.
Joao
Well yes Apache.org did get compromised but NOT due to an Apache server problem. It was a complicated hack and took advantage of a configuration problem (mainly Apache had their incoming FTP tree viewable in their web space among others) Or perhaps you're referring to another event.
Yes, Apache is not all nice point and click, but there ARE tools out there (Webmin's Apache module is NICE) to make administration easier. Yes Apache has had vulnerabilities in teh past, but considering its widespread use and installed base, I'm extremely impressed with how secure its been - upgrades to Apache are rare which reduces TCO.
Yes, all systems and software have problems. But overall, I'll stick with OSS where appropriate and regarding your issues with MySQL and Apache, a few simple posts to mailing lists or news groups related to the software will often get your problem fixed faster than most 3rd party setups.
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The problem is that you can't trust MS's patches.
One of the early NT service packs was called the SP-of-Death. Even recently... Remeber SP6? Nope. It was pulled rather quickly and replaced with 6a (which is often referred to as 6) because it caused a ton of problem for Notes users.
Direct-X 7.0 was buggy and toasted a few systems, but couldn't be uninstalled.
MS has a long history of playing games with patches. Often they don't release patches, forcing an "upgrade" to a later version, other times they release a "patch" that (intentionally?) breaks other companies software.
Decent admins don't install MS patches until they've seen them in action and could evaluate them. The proper action with CRed and Nimda isn't to rush to patch the server, but to change the firewall to prevent malicious requests. To do otherwise is to risk having to reinstall the OS (without the patch) to get your servers working again.
In recent dealings with the latest worms, I found a tool from Microsoft called Hfnetchk that will, with a valid connection to the internet, tell you exactly what patches you do or do not have installed. They cross list them by article (eg Q123455) and also by another form (eg MS01-077).
We're running Windows 2000 Adv Server (yeah yeah, I know, but we don't have the Cold Fusion package for Linux) with IIS 5, and were having an average of 30-45 minutes uptime before getting blasted by the worm(s).
After using the hfnetchk and downloading quite a few patches (burn them to a CD, having to reload the system isn't out of the question, even if it is working now), we have had about 5 days uptime, and *knocks on wood* no infections, although the log says there have been attempts.
Even though I'm spoiled to the ease at which I can find Linux updates, I found that the tool was very useful, especially since Microsoft's site is so unorganized when it comes to downloading patches and updates (I want a list, not having to search for something, especially when it never works right) that this tool was a big time saver for me.
And they said zombies weren't real!
Rewriting is always an option. It's not a pretty one, but it CAN be done if you're dedicated enough.
Case in point - last year I saw the dead-end coming for my company's Enterprise solution, which was written in ASP/COM. The argument (er... *ahem*, discussion) I had with the higher-ups concluded that we HAD to continue moving forward. We couldn't wait 6 months for a rewrite (ambitious at best).
Fine, I said. Then let me do everything concurrently. Here's how it works:
Install Tomcat onto your Windows NT Server running IIS, along with JRE 1.3 and the HotSpot Server.
Link Tomcat in with IIS using the mod_isapi.dll you can get from the Tomcat site. Also install Tomcat as a service using jk_nt_service.exe.
Keep your Java session abstracted. The main session remains as-is within your ASP application. Write a bit of java.net code to hook in through a custom ASP page (note: security - ordinary clients can't access this page) to retrieve and update any session variables. This can be done by reading the ASPSESSION cookie, and spoofing it in your requests to IIS.
Any NEW components, write in Java. Remember - session variables get retrieved and saved from the ASP side still.
As you're working on new components, when you can arrange it, convert old components to Java one by one. Session still remains on ASP.
Wash, rinse, repeat until all components have been written in Java. Once this is done, convert your login into Java, and change your abstracted Session to be a Java session instead of hooking into IIS for the ASP one.
Voila. You are now 100% Java. Now get rid of IIS and switch to something else. This is the approach that my team took to rid ourselves of the VB horror that someone left me when I joined. It took about 8 months of solid effort, but it worked. We are now rid of all reliance on MS technologies from our site. We also managed to do it quickly because of good code layout, and the use of the most wonderful Velocity templates also available from the Jakarta site. This helped a lot.
The point is, you CAN do a rewrite. What you usually are NOT allowed to do is a code freeze. So... work around it! The beauty of this solution is that you are running two separate applications (technically) for a time. Keep a consistent look, and the users can't tell the difference between the ASP and the Java side. Change one function at a time, slowly, and eventually you'll reach the Utopia you're looking for.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
This is admittedly an old story; I don't know if M$ is still legally implementing this particular "innovative" license restriction nowadays. Does anybody know?
System 1: IIS on Windows NT:
System 2: standard Mandrake-Linux distro with manual install of current versions of Apache, PHP, mySQL, OpenSSL and mod_ssl.
Now which system do you want to administer today ?
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.