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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."
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.
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.
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/ar chives/2005/04/the_truth_about_1.htmln ux/story/0,10801,82070,00.html ... "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."
s /videos/didio_video.wvx
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/li
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,
Watch the "expert" Laura Didio on video from a credible source:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/fact
Enjoy her!
*lol*
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,
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
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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.
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.
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
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).
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(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.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
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."
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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.
http://blog.nexusuk.org