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Red Hat/Apache Slower Than Windows Server 2003?
phantomfive writes "In a recent test by a company called Veritest, Windows 2003 web server performs up to 300% higher throughput than Red Hat Linux running with Apache. Veritest used webbench to do there testing. Since the test was commisioned by Microsoft, is this just more FUD from a company with a long history? Or are the results valid this time? The study can be found here."
This is why really high traffic websites run simple httpds like thttpd which is very small and very efficent, unlike Apache.
I also run both at work. Lets run down the list:
1) Web serving.
Windows required 4 people to maintain one server. 1-5 reboots per day, several leaked gigs of RAM per day. 100% load with 4 browser connections, continuous and massive disk usage after running for less than an hour. Dead upon the 5th connection.
When we switch to Linux:
Red Hat maintained by 1 person (me). 1 reboot whenever a new kernel is released, never at any other time. Insignificant load (barely measurable) with 50 simultaneous connections. Most RAM still listed as unused. Hard drive largely inactive during even peak usage.
This is on the exact same machine.
2) DHCP+DNS
Windows routinely gives out conflicting addresses. A staff of 6 talented Windows admins couldn't get Dynamic DNS updates working in a pure Microsoft setup. Admin spent at least an hour a day forcing reissues and fixing conflicts. Time to issue addresses was 10-30 seconds each. DHCP server rebooted 2-3 times per week when it got hopelessly conflicted.
When we switched to Linux:
Linux DHCP server automatically detected IP conflicts and forced reissue of conficting addresses. Maintained by 1 person (me). Time to issue addresses is between 1-2 seconds each. Dynamic DNS updates configured in one hour (including time to research it since I'd never encountered it before). Rebooted only to physically relocate the machine (which required unplugging it). Never issues a conflicting dynamic address.
We experience similar patterns with most of our other Windows and Linux machines.
3) File+Print serving
This is where Windows is at its least worst, and actually performs somewhat respectably. While print issues are common when compared to Samba, they are managable.
In all cases, though, Samba does both much faster and more reliably. Unfortunately, Windows does this well enough that we haven't yet done any wholesale replacements.
Fortunately, we getting a couple more Linux machines to host additional services we're offering, and we have limited rack space. Management is going to want to consolidate servers, and the spare cycles on one of our Linux machines is likely going to be used to replace both the Windows print servers and the file servers.
It's completely laughable to suggest that Windows is faster than Linux. My experiences with fully patched and tweaked Windows installs versus mostly default installs of Linux (the main configuration being to disable unneeded services) is that Windows doesn't even come close. Linux usually outperforms Windows by a factor of 10.
Expert windows team? Where do you get those?