Windows Servers Beat Linux Servers

RobbeR49 writes "Windows Server 2003 was recently compared against Linux and Unix variants in a survey by the Yankee Group, with Windows having a higher annual uptime than Linux. Unix was the big winner, however, beating both Windows and Linux in annual uptime. From the article: 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Linux distributions from "niche" open source vendors, are offline more and longer than either Windows or Unix competitors, the survey said. The reason: the scarcity of Linux and open source documentation.' Yankee Group is claiming no bias in the survey as they were not sponsored by any particular OS vendor."

Comments

Yup, agreed.

[Bazman]

Our Windows 2003 TS servers have a much longer uptime than our Linux servers that are accessed from our lab. Simply because fewer people choose to use the Windows service....

Only Bad windows admins responded ?

[brufar]

Because GOOD Windows admins PATCH their Windows boxes every month, and therefore would not have an continuous uptime of more than about 30 days at a stretch.. meanwhile most Linux patches can be done with minimal disruption and usually without a reboot.

Nope I'm not buying this report.. and I run both Win and Linux servers.

Re:my Math more reliable than Yankee survey

[DragonWriter]

Implied in the article then, a Windows 2003 server would have to be "up" approximately 20% more to satisfy the "claim". Now, I am not a calendar "expert", but I'm having a difficult time believing that Windows 2003 server is up an average of 364 * 1.2, or 436.8 days a year. If it is, I'm buying.

Maybe they are measuring "subjective uptime": it only seems like 436.8 days a year when you are supporting a Windows server?

Re:Defensiveness

[gEvil (beta)]

Why not accept it and fix the documentation issue?

Because it's hard to have purty pictures showing you where to click while using a CLI.

Re:Documentation for running a server?

[gowen]

How does documentation affect the uptime of a server?

I keep trying to plug my USB key into the power switch.

Clear proof!

[Anonymous Coward]

See for yourself:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.micro soft.com
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.linux .com

My own study

[onebuttonmouse]

Debian Sarge x86: 63 days, 19:43
Debian Sarge PPC: 61 days, 12 min
OS X 10.4 PPC: 51 days, 1:02
NetBSD m68k: 107 days, 37 mins

So, if you want the highest uptime, use NetBSD on a 25MHz 68040. Further, I contend that my study is at least as believable as the article cited in the submission.

Re:Math Nitpick

[Coryoth]

More to the point -- is "uptime" the opposite of "downtime" or is it "uptime" as in the output of the "uptime" command? With the latter, the 20% difference is at least plausible;

Ah, now we get to the heart of the matter. Obviously Microsoft has managed to pull ahead by padding the output of the uptime command: 20% more characters means 20% more uptime!

Re:Yankee

[catdevnull]

Uh...yeah...no bias there. Not a bit. Nope.

Looks like she's been getting quite a few free lunches from Microsoft.

Re:Same as last year.

[seek31337]

OBVIOUSLY you know nothing about virtualization. When you run 4 copies of windows on VirtualPC, you can get >100% uptime, per instance, up to, like, 110%.

Re:Another 'study' by the Yankee Group...

[cyclopropene]

articles that were not fragrantly biased against prevailing Slashdot opinion

What exactly does bias smell like? ;)

What I REALLY meant to say was...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why is our server down?"

"Well, I was sitting in front of it TESTING OUR INTERNET CONNECTIVITY..."

Re:Same as last year.

[Herkum01]

The longer uptime is due to time that Windows spends booting up and shutting down. Where as Linux will shutdown quickly and cleanly Windows is still chugging along with prompts say "Are you sure you want to close this program?". This is where it gets its longer up time from.

Re:Another 'study' by the Yankee Group...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

What exactly does bias smell like? ;)

Bullshit.

Re:Math Nitpick

[Ucklak]

So basically you're saying it's crappy Microsoft programming again.

If you have a Win2K3 server and a Linux server side by side and they've been running for 120 hours as measured by an independent timepiece,
Linux uptime would report

14:28:27 up 5 days, 0:0, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.17, 0.66

Windows uptime would report

Current System Uptime: 6 day(s), 0 hour(s), 0 minute(s), 0 second(s)

Re:Same as last year.

[alienn]

Believe or not, by linux can do this also. Just get a multi socket server and run debian woody on it. You'll get uptime*sockets...
I ran this and wonderes how I could have 28days uptime in one week... *g*

Cheers
Alienn

Re:Same as last year.

[timrichardson]

This is easy to explain. The Windows server is installed on Mars. This allows 437 days of uptime and still plenty of time for patch installations.

Re:Same as last year.

[Master of Transhuman]

What if you put a Linux server on Venus?

Then Windows is from Mars and Linux is from Venus?

I smell a book franchise here.