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Netcraft Says IIS Gaining on Apache
benjymouse quotes this month's netcraft survey "In the August 2007 survey we received responses from 127,961,479 sites, an increase of 2.3 million sites from last month. Microsoft continues to increase its web server market share, adding 2.6 million sites this month as Apache loses 991K hostnames. As a result, Windows improves its market share by 1.4% to 34.2%, while Apache slips by 1.7% to 48.4%. Microsoft's recent gains raise the prospect that Windows may soon challenge Apache's leadership position."
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/05/01/may_
Yes, I'd say the proper choice would be to match the talent you have on your development team with the tools required to build the desired product. It wouldn't make sense to force a bunch of LAMP developers to switch to IIS/Windows/MSSQL just to become a "pure windows shop". It also would make no sense to force a team of IIS/ASP/DNET developers onto LAMP just to change OSes. At my place of work we have both, and neither is going to take over the other.
Apache has a vast majority of sites with longest uptime.
Add Ruby on Rails, Python, and Tomcat to that list.
The biggest reason to use Apache over IIS is that Apache runs best on *nix systems... and so does most of the rest of the best web-oriented server and dev software.
Plus, there are so many great command-line tools (or GUI tools that have a command line mode with a simple switch) which can be (carefully) integrated into web apps that simply aren't available (or don't work as well) on Windows, and open up all kinds of interesting possibilities. Windows doesn't come close.
At present .NET seems to be gaining ground as a platform. I know that apache supports some version of it, but if companies are looking to take advantage of all of the benefits of .net and the new WCF (like IIS hosted WCF services, which are as easy to set up as a config file,) then they probably go with something they can phone up support and get covered on. Also, with using Microsoft for .net there is no waiting for the Mono to get feature X covered. I think between ASP.NET ajax, and .NET 3.0, a lot of folks are looking at IIS as a viable option. Not that there aren't better things offered by apache, but if I were guessing, and I am, I'd guess this is the reason you'll see an upsurge. Sharepoint 2007 hosting may also have some contribution to this set of numbers as well. I don't think people really know what's good for them most of the time, which is why you see everyone always taking the path that's of least resistance (today,) and at the moment, for asp.net apps, that's IIS.
Speak for yourself.
People were paid to develop Apache. Open source != everybody worked for free.
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There is also a serious discrepancy in that other stats seem to show IIS on the last moments of extinction in hi-tech zones like Germany. NetCraft report doesn't really have any explanation of the figures it presents.
What's really problematic is that over time NetCraft has become less informative. No mention has been made lately of what the changes in market share are attributed to. In years past, even a percent or two got a few lines of explanation or analysis. Did one of the service packs or 'security' upgrades install and turn on IIS for all Windows users? Or are more domain parkers and cybersquatters using IIS in the server identification string?
This downturn started last year when MS paid GoDaddy to swap out (or claim to swap out) its domain parking. GoDaddy did get the OSS community to lay off by throwing some chump change to OpenSSH and we can see the result of these last 12+ months. The money did some good, but if it's just a one-off donation, then it's questionable whether then benefit offsets the harm. Either way it's funny to see GoDaddy decision makers thinking they can buy indulgences. Maybe it ought to become an annual fee.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
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Easier to configure IIS than apache?
Hell no, i use webmin for that(unless tweaking is needed). Can't get much easier.
No one "masters" IIS in one week.
In many ways, IIS is way more complex and difficult than Apache.
Apache, on the other hand, has a certain "way" everything is done. If one bother to RTFM and learn that "way", one can actually "master" apache in a weekend. Or at least be securely productive.
IIS has one way for each thing and it is relatively common for different parts to conflict with each other.
Security on IIS is really hard. It is really easy to forget some obscure setting, because of all those damn tabs.
Troubleshooting an IIS server is also really hard. Its logging plain sucks(although it has gotten better) and almost the entire operating system is involved in answering a regular http-request. Also, i have on 2 or 3 occasions had its settings database go corrupt on me. Which is fantastically difficult to deduce since things just slowly deteriorates for no apparent/actual reason.
And, sometimes, when for example the permissioning subsystem crashes(aaaaaarrrrgghh..), only a reboot works. Great.
Baboons are cute.
Here are several GUI administration tools for Apache.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
1. You don't have to run Windows. You may pick and choose from a number of different OSs including Windows.
2. Lower cost. You may choose the lowest cost platform for deployment. If for you that is Windows you can use Windows.
3. Better security options. You may run Apache on secure Linux which does have a higher government security rating then is available for Windows. Or you could run on OpenBSD which does have a very good security history.
4. No vendor lock in. IIS is single source as is the OS it runs on. Apache is available from multiple vendors, runs on multiple operating systems, and on multiple CPU architectures. You can run Apache on everything from an iPhone to an IBM Z series mainframe.
5. Better integration with PHP, Perl, Python, and MySQL.
6. Larger software selection. Most CMSs and other Web frameworks seem to be Apache centric.
7. Tomcat and JBoss.
8. No licensing worries. No need to do accounting on your Apache Licenses. Just one less thing to worry about if you get audited.
9. ASP is available for Apache if you really want it.
So it comes down to what gives you the best flexibility and value. If you are just going to throw up an intranet for your office and you only know Microsoft products then yes IIS may be fine for you. If you ever plan on scaling it to a large user base or may want to use a CMS like Drupal or Moodle. Or plan on using industry standard tools like PHP, Perl, Python, MySQL, or Ruby on Rails, then you should probably invest the time in learning both Apache and Linux. Before anyone questions how big if a standard in the industry PHP, Python, Perl and MySQL are all I can say is that they are used by sites like Yahoo, Google, and Slashdot. I think MySpace is an all Microsoft site.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Webmin is easy enough to use.
Some Linux distros come with tools to make setting up Apache easy as well. I just set up a test LAMP stack on my Mandriva desktop and it was very simple, apart form one well known and documented problem (you need to install MySQL before mod_php). All point and click, of course.
Ubuntu can install a LAMP stack for you when you install the OS. I do not find configuration of Apache on Ubuntu so easy though.
Cisco, Foundry, and several other vendors make load balancing devices that allow you to have one public-facing IP distributed to dozens of back-end machines. If you connect to 1.2.3.4 on port 80, you can actually be connected to machine A, B, C, etc.. these machines not necessarily running the same web server software or operating system. In this case the actual public-facing IP is often called a VIP (Virtual IP) since it's not assigned anywhere except on the load balancer.
You're right, it depends what you're counting. If you're counting the number of boxes that run a particular web server, then IPs will probably be more accurate, although load balancing will skew this. If you're counting the number of customers those chose IIS vs. Apache, whether or not they are jammed onto a large hosting server with other customers? Counting by sites will be more accurate there, although skewed by domain parking.
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I'm guessing 121 of those sites are SSL? Name-based multihosting and load-balancers mean you normally only ever need one public-facing IP for non-SSL sites. Better yet, all your back-end boxes can be configured identically, with all of the sites on every box, so you can spread the load evenly. Even if your application needs to keep the user on a particular box during a session, the load balancer can be directed to do so.
I agree (see above about skewing).
Since when does Apache == Linux?
"It is extremely well suited to numerical and scientific computation."
Right. That's what they actually told us in a first-year University course that had us learning FORTRAN. While this statement was perfectly accurate a few decades ago, more appropriate now is to say "It is extremely ill suited for anything but numerical and scientific computation".
Don't get me wrong. I actually liked writing "numerical recipies"-style stuff in FORTRAN. However it is clear that it no longer holds any advantage (but many obvious disadvantages) over more "modern" languages.
While the language itself holds no advanages, just because of the fact that it USED to have the advantage there is now an enormous amount of scientific FORTRAN code out there. If you don't want to write something from scratch, you might find a FORTRAN library that works. Yes, if you did start from scratch you would not choose FORTRAN nowadays, but if it is there already why not? And this is the reason FORTRAN is still alive. It is no particularly good, it is just adequate. But because it was once the best in some areas, chances are that something you want to use is already written in FORTRAN.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Again, that's not really the case. If you look at what is dealt with in kernel mode, it's extremely low-level. Anything more complex than handling & queuing HTTP requests or returning cache is handed off to isolated user-mode processes.
o wsserver2003/technologies/webapp/iis/iis6perf.mspx
Have a look - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/wind
Thus, even basic file-handling is done by an isolated process running at the lowest level of security by default (Network Service in Win2k3).
throw new NoSignatureException();
Well, many small businesses do not have any IT managers. They often don't have any IT staff but the most IT savvy guy already on the payroll.
That said, there actually are really many crappy IT managers out there. They may or may not be worth their payment, but if their task is to set up an in-house webserver and they already have a DC running with enough capacy, I would not blame them for using IIS.
~/.sig
If you look at the current survey, Apache is gaining ground even in China.
/ cn/index.html
http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200707
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
While you're correct that XP's firewall can block IIS, it isn't even an issue on most machines. The default configuration, even for XP Pro, doesn't install IIS. As with Vista, you much go into the Windows Components section of the (Add/Remove) Programs window and select it. In XP you'll also need the install media; in Vista IIS is part of the installation image (this is part of why Vista's install footprint is so big; every feature, even those you aren't going to use, is copied to the hard drive at install time).
You can test this yourself: Go into Computer Management, then Services, and look for the IIS process (daemon). Generally, it's not even present, let alone enabled. Similarly, ping an XP machine - even one with its firewall off (or inside the firewall - try going to http://localhost - and you probably won't see anything at all (other than a server not found error). Netcraft would have a difficult time even detecting that the machine runs Windows.
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