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.

[MarkLewis]

Your math is wrong. 20% more downtime means 1.2 times as much downtime as the Windows box, not 20% of the year.

So if the Windows box is down for 10 hours per year, the Linux box is down for 12 according to the study.

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.

[PFI_Optix]

(troll) Silence. Your sensibilities offend the Slashdot drones. (/troll)

I'm a Windows admin. It's what I know, and the only OS I have significant experience with. At my last job, the server with the most uptime was a RHEL3 box that only got rebooted when the ERP database performed its semi-annual crash ritual. Compare that to the four W2k3 boxes that were down about five or six days a year on average for various OS maintenance issues (in Microsoft's defense, we were *doing* a lot more with the Win servers, the Linux server only had one function)

Linux is a hard OS to administer without training. It's not something you can just dive into, and a lot of admins get it shoved on them because upper management decides on a software package that requires it. The result? Downtime because the admin is unfamiliar with Linux and doesn't know where to find the answers. So in that sense, this report is spot-on.

I do question the validity of the data, though. It seems like they picked a sample set that would yeild the results they wanted. A better survey would be to review servers with similar functions, regardless of whether users have both installed. It's no secret that Windows admins have a harder time with Linux and I agree something needs to be done to help them (us) take the plunge with confidence...but this study isn't going to have any impact on anything and was just a waste of someone's money. If they're looking to throw cash away, they should be throwing it at me, not studies.

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.

[Ryan Amos]

I administer both Linux and Windows servers as well. Windows servers (2003 here, specifically, but the same applies to other versions as well) actually work ok and are probably as stable as Linux as long as you don't change anything meaningful on them. Adding users, changing settings, etc is all ok, but don't you dare install anything on a working Windows server without a full, bootable drive copy or a SAN snapshot. That's where Windows servers lose their reliability in my book.

Blanketly saying "Windows is more/less reliable than Linux!" is flat out wrong (or at the very least, misguided) anyway. What were these machines doing? Were they sitting there just passing packets and not reconfigured once, or are they being constantly tweaked and redeployed? How many people were using them?

Uptime is also usually measured in percentages in the business world. I'm willing to bet the author of this FUD saw "99% uptime for Linux, 99.2% uptime for Windows... That's 20% more!"

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

I'm just not seeing it

[waif69]

I have run both windows servers and linux servers over the last 10 years and my experience is higher uptime with linux servers. Windows machines deal poorly with memory leaking apps and need rebooting for every service pack or required update. I only need to restart specific processes with linux when there is a justified upgrade.

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....

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.

my Math more reliable than Yankee survey

[yagu]

Another article claiming my OS is better than yours, another article with virtually no information, and the information therein is off-the-scale incomprehensible and inconsistent.

Here's a casual observation: the article says, "

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

" Later in the article, this:

"..., 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.

" Let's just say a Linux server has 24 hours of downtime a year (higher than the "survey" says). That leaves 364 days of uptime in a year, 365 days in a leap year.

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.

Also from the article: "..., 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...."

First, this is a survey, it hardly points to data that support this survey, in my book a no-no when trying to prove a point. Secondly, assuming there's truthiness in this, my inference from the previous paragraph is, "Red Hat would be a little easier to set up and use if it had better documentation..."

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?

Uptime vs. downtime

[Martin Blank]

Is it 20% more uptime? Or is it 20% less downtime? There's a very, very big difference there -- two months of downtime is pretty severe, and if you have that, you have some serious problems. From the reverse perspective, three nines of uptime allows for nearly nine hours of downtime per year. If that downtime is reduced by 20%, that's nice, but not really noticeable for most users.

Yankee

[Elektroschock]

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/ar chives/2005/04/the_truth_about_1.html
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/lin ux/story/0,10801,82070,00.html
Laura DiDio, an analyst at The Yankee Group in Boston, said she was shown two or three samples of the allegedly copied Linux code, and it appeared to her that the sections were a "copy and paste" match of the SCO Unix code that she was shown in comparison.
DiDio and the other analysts were able to view the code only under a nondisclosure agreement, ... "The courts are going to ultimately have to prove this, but based on what I'm seeing ... I think there is a basis that SCO has a credible case," DiDio said. "This is not a nuisance case."

Watch the "expert" Laura Didio on video from a credible source:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts /videos/didio_video.wvx

Enjoy her!

*lol*

Doesn't jibe with reality

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

How come I never get any of these "impartial surveys"? I have racks and racks of RHEL Linux servers that I only reboot when:

a. a machine suffers a hardware failure (fairly rare) or
b. there's a kernel update that impacts security

In the case of (b), I apply the updated rpms and reboot which normally results in a downtime of approximately 60 seconds for that server. This might happen a few times a year (single digits).

For our small number of Windows 2003 server boxes, it seems that each "windows update" cycle recommends a restart. We'll call that a once a month reboot when Microsoft gets around to releasing their monthly cleanup. Total server downtime is maybe 2-3 minutes (windows takes a bit longer to reboot on the identical hardware used with our Linux machines).

So while I *could* say that our windows servers are down XYZ percent more than our Linux servers, in terms of actual downtime, both platforms are about the same, with Linux seemingly holding a small edge in my experience.

Cheers,

Re:Defensiveness

[morgan_greywolf]

What documentation issue?

There are boatloads of documentation available. Ever hear of The Linux Documentation Project? Plus, most distributions offer lots of very good documentation. Why there was a Slashdot story just two days ago about the excellent Ubuntu documentation. There are no fewer than 600 books available about Red Hat distros available for sale on Amazon. Not to mention that Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself includes lots of lots of documentation and most of it is available on the Web gratis. Plus the hundreds of open source apps that include very good documentation with their package. Have you actually read the documentation and free books available on the Samba website? It's darned good!

Any perceived documentation issue is Laura DiDiot's head.

Yankee group website uses win 2000

[olddoc]

According to Netcraft, they have a whopping 4 days since last reboot: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.yanke egroup.com/ They also go with the bulletproof reliability of MS IIs

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.

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:They cannot beat my uptime.

[segfaultcoredump]

This is the postfix gateway, external web server, dns server, etc for our little (1000 employee) company:

root[loki:/]# w
  10:57am up 1030 day(s), 21:27, 1 user, load average: 0.05, 0.02, 0.04

This happens to be a Solaris 9 system. It has never crashed. Actually, over the past 5 years we have had 1 software related bug take down one of our solaris systems (multipathing bug in the FC drivers when used with active/passive disk arrays). This is based on an environment with 40+ solaris based servers (running a wide variety of services, this is not a '40 identical servers shop')

The best our windows boxes can manage is 6 months (and that is if we skip a few of the security patches).

I can guarantee that during the past 3 years, every single one of our windows systems (60+ servers) has had an issue that is core OS software related (not counting the security related ones). Kernel memory leaks are the most popular (file server reboot every 115 days or it will freeze up). Security worms are another fun one, but kinda rare today compared to the good old days.

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)

Press Release and Interpretation

[makemineagrande]

Here is the note I sent to Laura DiDio - and their PR manager:

You probably should not read the DiDio-bashing going on over at Slashdot today, but I do see what I believe is an error in the presentation of the data in the press release http://www.yankeegroup.com/public/news_releases/ne ws_release_detail.jsp?ID=PressReleases/news.server reliabilitysurvey.DiDio.htm.

The specific statement, "with nearly 20% more annual uptime" is I believe factually not supported by your numbers. Do you mean that Windows has 20% LESS DOWNTIME than RHEL?

"on average, individual corporate Linux, Windows and Unix servers experience three to five failures per server per year, resulting in 10.0 to 19.5 hours of annual downtime for each server."

If RHEL had 19.5 hours of downtime, and WIndows had 15 hours of downtime, this would be 20% less downtime. 5 hours less downtime per year is actually real data and would be useful to the press release.

On the other hand, 20% more annual uptime would actually result in RHEL being down nearly 61 DAYS per year assuming Windows is up 100.000%.Note: 60.8333 days = 365 - (365/1.2)

----------- The report may be correct. The press release is most certainly in error.