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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."
The person above asked if there's any compelling reason not to use apache.
I think the question to ask is if there's any compelling reason not to use IIS. I'm sure people will spew "because it's Microsoft and you dont want your website hacked", but that's not what I'm talking about. IIS has had some problems in the past, but these days it's pretty good.
The question is when an organization already has an investment in Windows, and local domains, management tools etc....is there any reason not to use IIS? Does apache provide anything above and beyond what IIS provides when it comes to general website hosting?
IIS already has a pretty dramatic marketshare lead when it comes to the Fortune 1000.
I personally think IIS is a superior webserver to Apache. I speak as someone who's had to administer both systems, and like anything each has thier own quirks + benefits etc, but crucially...
Apache is not as modular as IIS (v7 that is). IIS7 you can literally strip it so bare, all it can do is send empty HTTP 200 responses - an absolute shell of a webserver. Not even file html/file-system support. Want disk-access? Turn on disk-access module. Want asp.net? Turn on the asp.net module. Absolutely everything (and really, everything) is a module that can be ripped out.
IIS6+ deals with HTTP requests at a kernel level. That is core functionality such as responses, caching, etc are all dealt with at ring0. Performance is unbeatable.
Oh and security? IIS6 has never been rooted, ever. Add-ons have been (asp.net for instance), but IIS6 has never been.
Oh, and it's locked down by default. And easy to administer.
In my opinion Linux is probably the better OS to host a webserver on, but IIS does spank Apache all over I'm afraid - mainly for the stated reasons above.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Apache is neat. Very neat.
...
.Net. Look at the countless Linux people flocking to Mac OS X to see what I mean.
.Net and whatever from MS not sucking to much is a reaction to the pressure the feel from OSS. They may be reacting to this, thus the rise in IIS hits.
PHP is neat. Very neat.
Compared to any other SSI solution that is.
...etc.
There is but one problem. The world and especially the web and it's technologies is moving along at a breathtaking pace. Apache is neat, but it's style of configuration is nearly 10 years old from back when XML was considered the hottest thing since sliced bread.
Why isn't there a zero-fuss web interface backend built into Apache that enables me to configure anything I want with 3 clicks of a mouse (with a backend deactivation option of course). Why isn't there a version of PHP with a MySQL driven persistance layer and SQL-free serialisation built right into it?
How come a little bit of marketing, screencasts and a website which, for once, doesn't look like shit, and suddenly people think Rails is the holy grail of webdeving? Rails and the hip project hype they kicked off is a very good thing, but it shouldn't stop just there.
Don't get me wrong. I'm convinced that Microsoft, in terms of available software technology, is an incarnation of evil and should be avoided at all costs unless there is a solid reason not to. 'Client wants Exchange' could be one. But we have to be realistic about this. It takes only a handfull of people at MS with 2 or more braincells, freshly assigned decision power and half a billion out of Microsofts piggybank to build an entire webstack that blows any OSS solution (Zope, Rails, Django and whatnot included) out of the water and into next wednesday, technology wise. Even the most advanced OSS webstack today has superfluos installation fuss one has to go through that should disapear ASAP. There is a lure of a truely zero-fuss
IIS,
Then again, MS bought Godaddy just to raise their level of IIS installs by a few percent, and LAMP machines are extremely Multi-Domain friendly. This Necraft study might just be reflecting this. And I have no doubt that should Apache drop to a real 30%, they'd get their shit together and start building a full integrated OSS webstack that picks up where Zope ends. And not only halfway there. I hope so anyway.
My 2 Eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca