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

Same as last year.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Lets look at last years survey being debunked in a business week analysis. ('cause I'm sure not a damn thing's changed since last year's study).

The biggest criticism of the study is this:

Only people running w2k3 AND linux were allowed to respond. Hmmmmmn, so how many MS shops with an evaluation linux server (installed by their clueless MSCE) were included in this "survey"

Yankee group can claim no bias all they like - but I am sick of Laura DiDio fud being posted here (Oh she of 'SCO's claims are justified after looking at the source' fame).

Call this ad-hominem if you like, but if someone pushes a POV year in, year out, you tend to dismiss them.

Re:Same as last year.

[grub]

It was by Laura DiDio. They may as well have had Steve Ballmer make the judgement.

Re:Same as last year.

[semifamous]

Another tech site has an editorial article on this report.

From the editorial:
I administrate both Windows and Linux servers and was interested to see this report. However, reading into the article a bit more makes me question the validity of their assessment.

The Yankee Group states that Windows 2003 Server led Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20% more annual up time.

I had to do a double take when I saw that. 20% more!? Assume for a moment that you have two servers, one running Windows Server 2003 and one running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Assume that your Windows box ran non-stop, without rebooting (which means you probably are not loading any Microsoft security updates) for 365 days. For your Linux box to have 20% more downtime it'd have to only be up for 292 days. If that is the case, your machine is no longer a server and is nothing more than a space heater.

Re:Same as last year.

[mrchaotica]

Call this ad-hominem if you like, but if someone pushes a POV year in, year out, you tend to dismiss them.

You shouldn't dismiss them just because they're consistent; they could in fact be consistently right (e.g. RMS).

Did you perhaps mean that if someone continues to push a POV after their reasoning has already shown to be flawed once you tend to dismiss them because the situation (and their flawed reasoning) is not likely to have changed?

Re:Same as last year.

[Crashmarik]

Documentation for linux is bad. Theres no arguing the point

I just switched a box from fedora core 4 to core 5 and was real pleased nobody had bothered to document the changes to the default install of Apache. I also can't count the times I have looked for things on the LDP or the HOWTO's and found yes this is a very good howto but the distribution is entirely freaking different.

Now I'm not saying microsfts documentation is any better, but they make up for it with consistency in the setup. Pretty much once things are set with M$ they are there. By example, You may not like the registry but its pretty consistent in how it works from win95 to win 2003.

That said once a server is setup and in production why the heck will a lack of documentation bring it down ? I have had Novell servers up for 4+ years at customer sites and they don't even get the docs.

Re:Same as last year.

[peragrin]

Go back and carefully read the study. Windows doesn't have 20% more uptime, Windows has increased their uptime by 20% while Linux was increased by (insert some random number here)

So if windows servers were available 90% of the time htey have now hit 95% but the linux servers were already at 97-99% uptime so they could only increase by a small margin.

Whenever didio writes you have to learn to read in between the sentences. She throws fud around(finding Linux documentation online, when you could simply call Red Hat and ask???? especially for RHEL 4.)

What she wrote was while techincally true, was so twisted as to be a lie. Notice how she refuses to post hard numbers,or other hard data so you can judge for yourself.

Re:Same as last year.

[Cl1mh4224rd]

That said once a server is setup and in production why the heck will a lack of documentation bring it down ?

It won't bring it down, but it might keep it down.

Re:Same as last year.

[Illbay]

Isn't comparing Fedora to Red Hat Enterprise inappropriate here?

Fedora is "bleeding edge." Major changes are incoporated from one release to the other, with the time between releases only six or nine months.

RHEL is extremely stable and well-tested, and the time between major releases is long. Therefore, documentation for RHEL will be "true" for a long time.

Not the case with Fedora (I use Fedora, btw).

Re:Same as last year.

[sharkey]

Windows doesn't have 20% more uptime, Windows has increased their uptime by 20% while Linux was increased by (insert some random number here)

Well, the article states "Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual uptime."

That certainly sounds like a claim that Windows has 20 percent more annual uptime than RHEL, expecially since the article doesn't state anywhere that the 20 percent figure was an increase over last year. The only improvement statement made was that "...the major server operating systems all have a 'high degree of reliability,' and have showed marked improvement in the last 3 to 5 years."

Re:Same as last year.

[FireFury03]

That certainly sounds like a claim that Windows has 20 percent more annual uptime than RHEL, expecially since the article doesn't state anywhere that the 20 percent figure was an increase over last year.

The article is rather contradictory because after they say Windows has 20% more uptime than Linux they then say:

On average, individual enterprise Windows, Linux, and Unix servers experienced 3 to 5 failures per server per year in 2005, generating 10 to 19.5 hours of annual downtime for each server.

So, lets assume (for the sake of argument), worst case figures for Linux - 19.5 hours of downtime a year - lets make it 20 hours for ease of calculation. And best case figures for Windows of no downtime.

1 year = 365 days = 8760 hours
So for Linux that's 8760-20 = 8740 hours of uptime per year.

Windows is alledgedly 20% better than this, so we get 8740*1.2 = 10488 Hours of uptime. Which is 437 days.

So to summarise, they've said that Linux gets just over 364 days of uptime per 365 days whilest Windows gets 437 days of uptime per 365 days. I want one of those windows servers that can accumulate well over a year's worth of uptime in a year.

Re:Same as last year.

[jackspenn]

It is 20% better then the Linux downtime. So that would be that Windows is down about 16 hours a year using the 20 for Linux in your example.

Couple of points as an RHCE that does both Windows and Linux, I can say that the more I am called to fix Linux machines as an outside consultant the more it pisses me off that each system is configured to the personality of the admin who built it and left, rather then a proven and tested standard. That adds to the amount of time it takes to get a system fixed because there are various smtp, pop and imap servers and various ways to do things that could be the issue with e-mail on a Linux machine, that adds to longer discovery time and in turn longer time to final resolution. Counter that with Exchange 2003 that has published best practices and in most cases one or two ways do do something. This should be common sense to most /.ers. Exchange will not send mail. OK, check the mail queues and the services, look in the event logs. Linux system will not send mail, OK, first figure out what smtp deamon they are using, is it sendmail or not, if not, what. Is it running? Oh, I have two sendmail services, one was installed by RPM, the other was compiled from source, but they previous root user remove those configuration files. And on and on sometimes.

Personal experience has taught me two things:

1). Just because I like Linux, doesn't mean it is perfect. Support issues like undocumented server settings, admins who delete or move the source configs they used in building a package and admins who do things "just to be different" hurt Linux uptime. Also when a company has a Linux server and Windows techs, they will let the Windows techs beat on it like monkeys before calling an outside consultant who costs money; that leads to a large part of that 20%.

2). Your post about 437 days was retarded. No doubt retards everywhere will mod you up as insightful and informative, but that makes your comment no less annoying to people with brains.

- Eric

Another 'study' by the Yankee Group...

[TripMaster Monkey]

Why does Slashdot continue to even acknowledge 'studies' performed by the Yankee Group? You think we would have learned our lesson by now...

Hard evidence of collusion may be lacking, but it's still patently obvious that Laura DiDio is a Microsoft shill.

Past experience should be enough to show this, but just in case it's not clear enough yet, here's a snippet of TFA:

But standard 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.

Translation: "We don't know how to support Linux, so it's Linux's fault."

Also from TFA:

The Yankee Group made a point of stressing that the survey was not sponsored or supported by any server OS maker.

I'll bet they did...when you turn out such a ridiculously skewed 'study', you pretty much have to make certain everyone knows how 'unbiased' it is.

Re:Same as last year = more BS

[moeinvt]

What the hell kind of shops/businesses/people are they surveying? People that have their servers running for a couple of days a year??

"According to the Yankee Group's annual server reliability survey . . . Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual uptime."

I would think that most businesses want to have their servers up 24/7/365 minus a few hours of scheduled reboots and upgrades, and unless something breaks or crashes. So, assume a Windows 2003 server had PERFECT uptime record for the year.

365/1.2 = 304.17. So, in order for Windows to beat Linux with 20% more uptime, they're trying to say that a server running RHEL is down more than SIXTY DAYS a year? My BS meter just crashed.

Re:WxP Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

If your windows box has been up for 1 and almost 2 years, respectively, it means that they haven't had security updates applied (which require a reboot). And if your 911 center doesn't keep it's servers patched, you should all be fired.