Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Janus
nadador
writes "Apparently, Microsoft is readying an enterprise
class clustering and failover version of Windows 2000.
Techweb, and Microsoft, I'm sure, seem to think this is
going to be a "Unix Killer". It also mentions Linux as a
driving force in making Windows truly enterprise class
software" It actually sounds quite impressive. I can't wait
to see what some of the upcoming HA (high-availability) enhancements for Linux
will look like.
Whether NT is stable in a single server non-HA configuration or not does not matter; as long as the system as viewed from outside the cluster is up all the time with acceptable performance, there is no loss. Linux can do HA too, but the apps just aren't there. We can't beat this because we don't have control over it. Stability is really the only thing Linux has over NT at the moment in the data center, but this turns the tables. NT with failover clusters is more reliable than any single Linux machine.
Have Oracle port OPS. Oh, wait, that won't be done until raw devices are in the kernel, and Linus doesn't like them. Same for other cluster-enabled RDBMSs. Linux also has a severe filesystem deficiency right now, but as I understand it, this is being worked on, but I don't see much real progress. Other scalability concerns are being addressed in 2.3 right now, which should be out before 2000 as 2.4, if I am to understand Linus's release schedule correctly.
Another real problem with Linux is the lack of availablity of midrange and high-end hardware to key developers. My company (Denarius: http://www.denarius.com) would be more than happy to supply and set up access to high-end hardware for kernel developers as a service to the community. Hardware manufacturers would have an incentive to offer evaluations of their hardware to "sponsor" the project, as well, gaining bonus points with developers and users.
I will never use NT again
... geekboy"
I hoped on a NT machine once to port some C shell scripts into NT compatiable perl. (Was not my idea). Grabed Active perl, it installed easy, sweet I though, NT isn't so bad, I take a quick look at the code of the shell scripts, pop open edit and start to port away. 5-10-15 minutes go by, hey this isn't so bad, "NT is kinda nice" I though to myself.
BANG!! "WTF?" I think, shake shake, "Hrm."
Edit locked the system up tight. ctrl-alt-del, no good. I walk down the half and jump into the break room, 7 MSCE standing around, "Ok, no problem"
"Hey can one of you guys help me out, one of the NT machines in there isn't working right"
"Ohhh does the little unix geek have problem working with the Big Scary NT machines"
"Ha ha guys, come on help me getting this back to a normal state"
"Maybe if you didn't use a OS from before you where born you would have a couple minutes to learn a real OS like NT
"Will you help me or not"
They piled into look at how stupid I was, "look he doesn't know how to use a mouse" things like that. After 2 minutes of clicking on the keyboard and messing with the mouse one of em turns to me and 'speaking down" to me said "Look this is a power button, you push it in the machine goes off, you push it in again and the machine come on, ok do you think you can handle that?" and he fliped the power switch.
"Why didn't you just kill the process" I said
"Maybe if you didn't keep crashing it we wouldn't be in this mess"
After 3 hours of edit.com crashing 12 differant NT machine multiply times and 7 MSCE that couldn't firgure it out with help from Mirosoft Techo Support. If they can't get a small text editor to work on standard machine with $4000 tech support agreement with Microsoft, I have to take a stand and say "I will NEVER use NT again!"
Something tells me, that when you're talking about running it on > $100,000 Unisys systems, cost isn't a factor anyway.
guess you're not familiar with all the problems ebay has had recently keeping their servers up....
My laptop, on the other hand, has never crashed, wedged, or otherwise malfunctioned. It's running Windows 2000 beta 3. My desktop back in the states has never crashed, wedged, etc. since I first put Windows NT 4.0 on it several years ago.
Isn't it funny that all of our pro-MS trolls have a Windows 2000 beta? I wonder what the odds of that are?
Oh, and if I ever saw two Linux boxes and a BSD box crash within a 24 hour period, I'd figure a) they're doing kernel development or b) Hell froze over.
But you're right, NT isn't that unstable. I could replace my Linux workstations with NT, and probably never see a crash. However, I'm running Linux because NT is such a limiting environment. I can't do things the way I want with NT. And then trying to work on NT remotely is just pointless.
BUT the most important thing that zealots (myself included) don't seem to realize is that the competition is more important than either OS alone. A lot of the time, I just want Windows to disappear, but we'd probably be better off in a competitve OS market (with Windows still around, but not a monopoly).
Win00 is going to be a better OS because of Linux. But Linux is competing openly and fairly, and I wonder if MS will do the same? They never have before...
And along those lines of thought, I have one reason why using Linux, even if NT was superior in some ways, might be a good idea:
How many applications do you have on your NT box?
How many of them are NOT made by Microsoft?
I'll bet it's a pretty low percentage, and it's even lower for a more mainstream user.
Do you really feel comfortable with the idea of one company providing nearly every tool you need to use a computer and access the Internet? These things are quickly becoming vital to commerce, research, communication, and entertainment. Do you really want to visit the MS Bank, MS Store, MS Library, and MS Postoffice, and watch MS TV and MS Movies over your MS Cable Modem on your MS OS with MS Internet 2005 (integrated into the OS, of course)? I bet Bill would like it.
> Why can't you people even wait until the product comes out to bash it!?!?
It's frikkin' predecessor isn't even out yet, and Microsoft is already bragging about it. Why can't be start bashing it too?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Janus also has preciesly 0 "back orifice"s. Perhaps MS means Janus to be a reasonably secure system?
I just mentioned to someone today how much better VMS' system of logicals was than UNIX' filesystems. (Not to mention Win/DOS' lack of either).
Now, we're talking about clusters and a lock manager.
Amazing that a masterwork like the Distributed Lock Manager languishes in relative disuse. Open up the source to that, Compaq!
Actually, by the time I saw the "Truth about Stability" post, it was scored at "1: Flamebait"
As someone inside Oracle, I can assure you that we do not need raw devices. We just dont see the demand for that kind of service on Linux.
Call us up and tell us if you really are going to buy it. (But why? Why not Tru64 for this level of a solution?)
I don't know what version of Windows you're using,
but I've never seen a Windows installation crash
like you describe. I run Win98 on my laptop and it
hasn't crashed a single time since I got it six
months ago. Netscape crashes now and then, maybe
once per week or once per two weeks, but Win98 -
never.
At work, I can't recall NT ever crashing on me. I
wouldn't bet a million dollars on that, but it's
at least so rare that I can't remember if it has
ever happened.
And while on the topic, the same goes for Java,
which lots of people here seem to think is unstable. I have not seen a Java app crash since
JDK / JRE 1.1.6 on the Win32 platforms. I have
several servlets running on Linux servers and I
have never had a problem with the Java VM crashing, even on extremely high loads.
If your Windows installation crashes when you just
leave it sitting there, everything is pointing at
some major driver problem... I'm sure lots of people will say that a driver problem shouldn't be able to crash the operating system, but my point is that with a normal, properly set up system, Windows does not crash twice per day like you are describing.
Like I said, on my laptop.. six months.. no crashes. No general protection faults.
VMS could be clustered very long ago. NT, to a degree, is a VMS knockoff. Therefore, you'd think it is possible to conclude that they should be able to borrow from that VMS part too. But they don't--anyone know why? I really don't understand this, VMS was a very good OS, and its clustering capabilities were good at the time--why is this stuff constantly reinvented? Beats me...
One of Microsoft's most common marketing strategies:
...) by other companies, Y (and Z and ...) seems to fit their needs much better ...) ...) and wait for X+ to save investments already made for X
1. MS releases X
2. MS pushes X by massive hype
3. due to MS hype customers buy X
4. customers are not happy with X
5. customers lern about products Y (and Z and
6a MS starts FUD attacks against Y (and Z and
6b MS announces vaporware X+ that will solve every problems customers may have with X and that will be much better than Y (and Z and...)
7. customers stop thinking about switching to Y (or Z or
8 sometimes MS really release an X* (the X+-should-be) with massive hype
9 customers buy X* immediatly
10 s/X*/X/ and go back to 4.
Then why do NT preinstalls like to crash? And why's it so hard to setup a decent NT install? Gee, Linux is a lot like Unix, but it's not that hard to get a working install. Besides, so many NT drivers don't work as advertised (drivers can and do contribute to the instability of their OSes).
White papers. Oh yes, WHITE PAPERS. Yea, I really trust their white papers. Come on, be serious. After the crashprone piles that Microsoft calls software and they've chosen to release, I wouldn't trust their white papers. And from what I've heard, both the predecessor product (Wolfpack) and the product on which Janus is supposed to be largely based are pretty damn lousy. (I don't run NT at work. Thankfully.)
I believe in the best tool for the job also. I just happen to not believe that NT is a decent tool for 99% of the jobs I'd want/need to do.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Windows 9X supports 1 processor because of its DOS heritage.
Windows NT has theoretical support for up to 256 processors. The limits in the various flavors (Workstation, Server, Adv. Server, etc) are put in there for licensing reasons (I think). Workstation licences you to 2 procs, Server gives you 8 (I think) and Adv. Server lets you have more than 8. However, if you want to use more than 8 procs you have to write your own HAL.
In short, I'll believe their promises about Janus when they can switch Hotmail over to NT, IIS, MS SQL Server and Exchange.
I wouldn't be suprised to see them switch to an architecture based on Win2000/IIS5/SQL7/Exchange6 next year sometime. (Even if it takes twice as much hardware!) Don't think they've dropped the idea.
It'll be one less flamethrower for the Unix advocacy arsenel, which is fine because this one is getting a little boring.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Tried? Yea, they've tried on at least 2 separate occasions, and failed in both cases. The NT boxes were just plain unstable. They could only run them for a few hours before they just flat out crashed, from what I heard. So HotMail continues to run on FreeBSD and Solaris. What a shame. (not)
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I agree wholeheartedly. Frankly, I didn't see what was so amusing about his 2 bits, at all. The language was incredibly stilted, and the humor, wasn't funny. It was your basic "MS Sucks" piece, with delusions of grandeur.
I appreciate that most of the readers of this site, are rabid about Linux. But c'mon people. This "humor" site, was just juvenille.
If the users of Linux can't keep the dialogue at a vaguely sophisticated level, they WILL continue to be ridiculed, and ignored. If you want to be taken seriously, you guys should at least occasionally feign maturity.
Ok, I'm back off my soapbox now.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I'm a systems administrator for a Large enterprise with lots of time running AIX, Linux and NT systems.
NT average (of 15 boxes) uptime is 11 days.
Max uptime 45 days, min 2 days
AIX average (10 boxes) uptime is 321 days
Max uptime 437 days, min 97 days
Linux average ( just 6 boxes) uptime 63 days
Max uptime 85 days, min 14 days
Note: I'm not the administrator of the NT systems, maybe they are crap administrators. I'm just reporting their statistics. The 1st (official) Linux box was installed 93 days ago.
Deleted
"but it can't grow unless more companies support it, "
Since when?
Actually, this quote isn't by the author of the article but is attributed to "One VAR". It's the Anonymous Coward of journalism, in this case probably someone who has an interest in Linux being seen as a toy OS. This article wasn't so much written as pieced together out of quotes from Microsoft and mostly unidentified industry sources.
And this is all really going to ship 60-120 days after the release of Win2k? Most customers will still be waiting for the first Win2k Service Pack at that point, as explained at the end of the article. Janus sounds like the same old vaporware to me.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I think some of the *major* HA vendors do stuff like that. You'd need some pretty expensive hardware, but I think it would work. If you're building an enterprise app, you can do stuff like this using databases, complex transactions and sessions so that the user doesn't see that the server has gone down and he's been switched over to an alternate.
Yeah, Linux is still in the basic stages of HA, but you *can* actually do it at this point in time, and I'm pretty sure it's reliable. There's some cool stuff going on in HA and virtual servers right now...
æeee!
since Linux doesn't depend on sales to stay afloat, vapourware and fudslinging won't work
Don't be so quick to assume this is true. Linux doesn't depend on sales, but it can't grow unless more companies support it, port software, and more users use it. FUD can work. MS can't just hope that Linux will lose money and go out of business.
Man, what I really love is when some blow smoke like this one:
"This is supposed to have the power of Unix," said one source who asked to remain unidentified, adding "Janus" will exploit Intel's forthcoming dual-network boards to double throughput.
talkes about unix as if it's the sh*t, and when you meet him over lunch; he's all over how unix sucks. I wish I had a gigantic vacuum cleaner so I could and suck the fud out through his nose. pana
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
"Microsoft also used different Web server and database server software than other vendors, so results for Microsoft are not comparable to the other results."
I think that says it all.
Why can't you people even wait until the product comes out to bash it!?!?
You would expect the slashdot netizens to be at least a little intelligent and open minded... but alas, you all are a discredit to your OS.
I looked at the white papers, and it sounds DAMN cool. Yet most of you imediatly start bashing NT... which is completely besides the point.
Stop bashing and start looking for the best solution to your IT problems... don't use a product simply because of who does, or does not make it.
I don't know about you, but I use something because it's the best... not because MS does or doesn't make it.
Get a life...
Does Microsoft still own the right to SCO Unix?
If so why the hell don't they just put some develpment into that?
If not, why the hell don't they just make there
own version of unix?
Seriously, when your OS is in a mission critical postion or carring a huge load the first thing you want is a plush GUI with a full fearture web browser. Second you want low over head, and if it can be worked out in a timely fashion: stablity, if not they don't need to worry about it, stablity is over rated when you have a FREE web browser and web server.
Ok, I know that SGI was helping MS out with adding multiple processor support onto Windows, so that later version wouldn't be limited like NT with 4 or other Windows with 1. But the idea of NT connecting onto 64-128 processors seems, well, a bit far fetched, not even Solaris can seamlessly deal with that many processors. Anyway, what is it going to run on? The price tag on a machine with 64 IA processors would be almost as much as the MS software licenses! Also it isn't like the Xeon or the PPro can handle being placed in such an array. And although it is very possible to cluster Alphas to that scale would it be worth it? Are they going to try and run it on SGI machines?? Even if they were going to try, Irix isn't dead yet and would kick the living ?hi? out of it.
This is some serious FUD here. Quick throw in more dry ice, there isn't enough fog to obscure the truth!
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
It'll ship exactly on time, like all Microsoft products. They are never late and the first versions kick ass. (Not a troll, sarcasm)
/. cynicism maybe (like my own...)
I'm expecting it REALLY about 2002 based on the article. BTW, funny how the above comment got moderated (+1, insightful) A little
+&x
UNIX killer. Bhahahahaha. I remember the last time they said "NT will be a better UNIX than UNIX."
What ever happened to (ahem) "Wolfpack?" ;>
Guess you didn't catch the sarcasm at the end of the message.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
> that Solaris is better than Netware and
> that Ted Koppel is really a robot.
Hey, what's wrong with the last one? Everyone knows that's true. This and that Al Gore is made of cardboard...
And how would you write the "portable" calls to
MTS using the ISAPI emulation layer?
> I'm very seriously considering switching to Linux with Star Office as soon as Adobe ports Photoshop to Linux.
I personally abanded Photoshop and started using GIMP a long time ago. Photoshop just crashed too often, taking the OS with it many many times. Though GIMP is still buggy too, you might like it also.
So I'm sitting here in the laptop terminal room at the current IETF meeting in Oslo, Norway.
This place is educated geek central if there ever was one. Just a few minutes ago, a guy at the table behind me said "damn, my machine just crashed again. I hate it when it does that!" Curious, I went to take a look, and saw Linux rebooting on his box.
Last night in here, the guy next to me had his Linux laptop freeze up completely. Total wedge. From his reaction, I got the impression this wasn't the first time. He had to power cycle it and wait an eternity while it checked the disk partitions. Less than a half-hour later, a guy on the other side of the table had his NetBSD box crash on him.
My laptop, on the other hand, has never crashed, wedged, or otherwise malfunctioned. It's running Windows 2000 beta 3. My desktop back in the states has never crashed, wedged, etc. since I first put Windows NT 4.0 on it several years ago.
Don't get me wrong, I like Unix. I used to be a Unix guy -- was one for over ten years, I know Unix inside and out. But the Unix's I ran (a wide variety of BSD and its varients) weren't perfect. I usually suffered about one crash or wedge a year. Windows NT has been at least as stable as Unix was. This mocking of NT as being less stable than Unix is complete FUD.
Not to mention that I can run all those thousands of Windows apps as well as all my old favorite Unix apps on my NT box. So why would I want to run Linux again? To have it crash or wedge on me like it keeps doing for these gurus here in the IETF terminal room?
Yeah this is the new "Lemmings" release of Windows...
When one system crashes, the others follow one-by-one!
On the other hand it could be a "feature" - an instant replay...you get to watch the "blue screen of death" again..and again..and again..
You're confusing "success" with "usefulness." Windows is incredibly successful. It's the single most dominant operating system on the market today -- even in areas where it's not trying to compete!
Yes, it's a lousy operating system. Yes, it's a VERY lousy operating system. Yes, it's a PAINFULLY lousy operating system. But it is very successful.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
like yours, *snicker*, Mr. IT-Student ...
Right. Like there's nothing to learn with NT/Back Office/ SQl Server....I picked everything *I* know from 2 newspaper articles, and my network is running sweet.
.. a funny incident I had when working with NT.
There I was, working away, when suddenly, the console just froze. No blue screen, nothing. "OK", I thought, "It may have just locked up the GDI bit."
Sure enough, I was able to ping the machine etc. So I went to one of the domain admins, sitting behind me, and asked him to do a remote reboot of my machine (as the responsible computer user does.)
Up pops his admin tool, he enters my machine name, and presses the button to tell it to shut down.
"Haha, I bet Word will pop up a dialog saying 'Are you sure you want to exit?', to which I won't be able respond."
Sure enough, the machine doesn't shutdown, that is exactly what happened.
We laughed, and tried again. Up comes the admin tool, and this time he presses the 'shutdown with prejudice key' ie. processes are killed unconditionally.
Except he forgot to change the machine name, and HIS machine goes crashing down, losing all his unsaved work.
It get's worse.
When his machine finally came back up, he opened the admin tool, changed the target machine to mine, and pressed the 'shutdown with prejudice' button.
Nowt, nothing!
We summised that the monitor on my machine, which listens for shutdown requests, had itself SHUTDOWN first time round, and hence my machine ignored subsequent shutdown requests!
Big red switch time.....
Huh? Actually, I have codenames for the stuff I'm doing because no-one in product management knows what to call it and won't even deal with it until I can give them pretty screen snapshots.
You've got to call it something in progress reports.
Janus appears to be able to handle quite an amount of processing power, but who needs that much power in a single spot these days?
There really is a need for massive computing along the lines of what Janus promises to deliver, but it must still be considered a highly specialised niche, where customers are few but powerful. I think that the primary purpose of "advertising" like this is to divert the audience's eyes from an important fact: while Janus might be able to run the most powerful clusters in the world, and that stably, it does not mean that it has any benefits at all to other operating systems when it leaves the domain in which it was tested as the best. The Mindcraft test and the events that followed clearly debunked the hitherto reigning sentiment of "better at this, better at everything", which is, by the way, a formal fallacy.
Maybe Linux will some day be able to whip Janus' hide in it's field, but what if it doesn't? The nature of Linux, as I see it, is to naturally fulfill the needs of the many, and those who need a highly specialised OS for a highly specialised task may tailor Linux to fit their needs. Janus is a giant that either fits or doesn't, and when it fits, it does its task well.
Take a university campus, for instance. Would I like to rely on the NT user interface there? No, because I would be severely restricted in my remote operation possibilities. I don't want to rely on a GUI, and especially not when I might be at a slow machine. Where does Janus have a benefit to traditional Unix in such an institution? Here reliability is more important on the individual machine. And what about the availability of user applications?
There's more to an OS than high-end clustering... and 128 nodes?!?
Let's put things in perspective, shall we? For every job there's a perfect tool, and if that tool doesn't exist, then we can make it. Universal tools are only so good.
Well after Win 3.1 Win95 Win98 Win CE Win NT Embedded NT: all louzy products who going to believe M$ anyway?
when I see it.
It won't ship on time, we know that much for sure.
Any guesses on how much of this is just vaporware in an attempt to keep people from switching to Linux?
This space intentionally left blank.
Why was the comment below moderated down to -1 ? This isn't 'flamebait' it's a perfectly valid point. Before the mindcraft tests all the mouthy linux 'advocates' would bang on about speed. Now that's been shown to be a moot point they bang on about stability - many of them I suspect running Linux on a PC in their bedroom where neither is really that important.
-----
Before any benchmarks were done, linux people wouldn't shut up about how well it performed.
Now of stability means everything and speed all of a sudden means nothing.
Yes, I realize stability is a key asset of a web server.
Yes, I realize that all systems could saturate most leased-lines anyway...
BUT, for once I'd like to see linux advocates just take on the chin like men. Even Microsoft would be hard pressed to generate this much FUD. Yes, that's right - the linux community is the _overwhelming_ source of FUD online these days.
-- I'm drinking myself to sleep again...
Wasn't Microsoft saying that Open Source was the one that didn't innovate? It looks to me like NT is the one playing catch-up right now. We've had Linux High Availability stuff accessible for a long time right now. As well, Linux boxes have been consistantly showing higher uptimes on average than NT boxes.
I think the statement about OSS not innovating was just another piece of MS FUD. Linux didn't have the userbase to support the rapid development of applications that are growing right now a few years ago, but now that it does, it has the ability to maintain it's technological leadership.
Interesting how this battle is waging. I'm sure there will be textbooks written on the OSS vs. the capitalist monopoly stories decades from now. It's quite a classic -- heroes, villans and crusades!
:)
æeee!
What, like UNIX vendors (and Linux developers) are sitting still while MS trys to eat their lunches? Vaporware - like everything MS does the *NEXT* version will cure all ills.
Call us up and tell us if you really are going to buy it.
This is the real problem for Linux. No company is going to port their stuff to Linux unless they think Linux users are willing to pay for it. But since most Linux users seem to want everything to be free (in both meanings of the word), this time appears to be a long way away.
Here I prooves that Micorsoft is really really very very good: http://www.freeyellow.com/members7 /geraldholmes/index.html
What it says.
Right now, Bill is gunning for the enterprise. It
is no longer about money for him, I guess, but
'the Microsoft way'. Well, although the 'Microsoft Way' has some good ideas, it doesn't implement a
lot of them terribly well.
Let's learn from their successes and their mistakes. I believe component-based development for free POSIX compliant platforms is the way forward.
And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.
The open source OSes are capable of so much more than Windows. Linux has been hyped up to the nines
somewhat lately - I'd really like to see the Linux dev groups borrowing more from BSD as they have been.
Bruce M. Simpson Unix/Network Bod & Win32 Developer
my my... nice assumptions, totally unfounded and incorrect however.
Hmmm, a "bigger" version of NT Server (which runs what, $995?), and you use eight of them...
Plus per user connection licenses...
I can't wait to see the price lists!
IBM and Sun are more than ready to fight off NT on the high end. Leave the big iron to them. Linux is poised to threaten Microsoft on the desktop and small servers - that's where we should focus our attention. Big servers might be sexy, but the low end is strategic.
Microsoft needs the desktop and ISP market 1/for revenue, 2/to leverage other products. If Linux can continue to nip away at the low end Microsoft will start to feel it in the pocketbook, and worse, they won't be able to use their dominance to take over the server market.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
I seem to recall that in a recent interview Linus said HA software wasn't being pushed hard in linux development because the whole point of linux development was to not have the software crash all the time in the first place. Now, admittedly occaisonally you get hardware failure, but c'mon, this doesn't justify buying 8 boxes just cuz you need one running.
If MS wants High Availability, fix the durned bugs. I'm sure as hell not paying for 8 1000$+ licenses and 8 quad-whatever comps to do the work of a decent linux box or two with far less hardware.
If you had actually read the article you would have seen that PC Week described the Microsoft approach as fast food to the competitions gourmet dinners.
Um, so yeah. Also note that none of the servers were running on Linux anyway. Why did you bring this up?
The NT solution was:
a) No Failover
b) No load balancing
c) Was NOT portable! C++ isn't considered very portable, nor is ISAPI
The UNIX solutions were all:
a) Java based solutions
b) Robust and much more portable
c) Most/All had failover/loadbalancing
The UNIX solution is the only way to go in a true Distributed Enterprise environment.
Plus, if you read the article, Netscape App Server (NAS) was constantly waiting on the Database server, which means it still has room to grow.
Finally, NT is not a true app server at all. Think of the inclusion of NT as a baseline for the app servers to compare themselves against. If you implemented the same application using Netscape Enterprise and used C++ and NSAPI, I'm sure you would get similar, if not better performance.
It's also a mutual fund.. check out CNNfn sometime.
The point of that line isn't referring to how powerful Linux is, but how it gets used right now. Linux still requires a significant amount of technical know-how of the Linux system in order to install it. Linux is a "toy" for techies because non-techies can't really use it effectively. The real problem is the lack of good technical administrators.
Some of my co-workers (I work at CSC) may use computers for the entirety of their job, but they couldn't format a disk without help. Some of them even have trouble understanding how to use the graphical file systems in Windows. They'd never understand how to sort a text based directory tree, much less remember any number of commands for use in the system. Point, Click and Type (normal documents) is about all they can handle effectively. Don't get me wrong, CSC is good at what it does. There are some amazing techies here who can handle mainframes and other very large systems very well. Most of them prefer one of the older UNIX systems over Linux.
The point being that until Linux is as easy to operate as Windows, it will remain a techie's OS, and stay out of the main-stream of office environments. Before calling the article uniformed, think about what they're trying to say. Linux is a very good OS with lots of up-time... if you know how to tweak it properly and are using a small computer. But, if we're talking about pure up-time, I've yet to see a Win95 machine here crash while running nomral programs (like MS Word, MS Excel or Lotus Notes), and the mainframes they use for back-ground networking have up-times measured in years (well, as a whole. Sections get turned off for vacuuming and internal checks now and again, but they have to, being room-sized machines). I think a few of the core machines have been on and running perfectly since before Linux existed. And I have no clue what they run, except that it was written in-house before getting bought out by the current owners. Until Linux can mach the usability of Windows, it will have a hard time capturing anything more than servers (run by a good techie who isn't using a different UNIX) and techie's personal computers. But that's just my perspective. Maybe I'm missing something since last time I helped a friend install Linux (I personally use Win98 system, since most of what I do is game related. Thanks mostly to Loki, I may soon switch.)
Just remember, even if you don't like it, it isn't necessarily either bad or false. I've seen Win2000 beta, and I personally liked it as PC OS. I can't vouch for its ability as a server OS, however. And, like Linux, it needs more drivers, but I know those will appear. The Linux ones are more in doubt.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
"Veni; Vidi; Vi C++"
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
Well actually in Linus's Finnish home land "Linus" does rhyme with "Penis".
If you really need raw devices (someone from Oracle said in this thread that they don't) then they are on their way. Stephen Tweedie is doing them (paid by Red Hat).
What masterwork? VMS's DLM wasn't truly distributed, it was "static master with a capability for recovery". As a result, four-node DB scalability using plain old Ethernet never exceeded 0.6. With a truly distributed lock manager and dynamic resource migration, we got up to 0.8. We also never forgave Oracle for retaining all sorts of VMS-specific semantics (the classic six lock modes, blocking ASTs) in the lock-manager specification even when running on non-VMS platforms.
DEC was pretty much the first to develop HA clustering as we know it today, and to this day leads the pack in terms of functionality. However, they tend to use a big proprietary-hardware crutch quite a bit. It used to be the HSC, now it's MC. If you take away the proprietary hardware DEC's offerings lose a little bit of functionality (though still remaining quite excellent) and a lot of performance.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
If Linux borrowed features from the Unices and MS is trying to catch up with those Unices, then MS is also trying to catch up with Linux Q.E.D.
M$ tried to force Hotmail to switch its systems, and from what I hear the entire project was a miserable failure.
Same at M$NBC, which started with NT and switched to Unix.
-- A.C.
Janus... the two-faced god. How appropriate.
-- brandon s. allbery, sysadmin @ cmu electrical & computer engineering "Think, youth, THINK!"
think about the home users. who might not have their computer networked.
... and which might convince the average Windows convert that the machine has Microsofted
a couple of times I've had to reach for the big power switch while running Linux because the machine wasn't networked. I was pretty sure I could telnet to the machine and kill the process *if only the darn thing was networked* (it had a modem but that's hardly useful for killing processes now)
to sell Linux's stability to the home crowd, there needs to be something done about keyboard/mouse lockups that programs can still do
First off, a well designed NT box is faster and more stable than Linux. Period. You can argue personal experience all you want, but all that means is that you don't know how to build an NT box.
Yeah, that's about the classic answer one hears when complaining about NT's reliability. Funny thing is: MS claims that a) "NT is easy to administer" and b) "NT is reliable". Now, your statement proves that at least one of those statements must be wrong...
Argathin
I figured they would have got farther with the Ethernet clustering by now. They've been working on it for quite some time. 6 or 7 years, at least?
To show how really out of touch I am now with the Digital world, what's MC?
NT is NOT an easy OS to administrate. Take a look at Microsoft's list of "how to secure Windows NT" sometime. Take a look at the fat stack of books you're supposed to read for an MCSE (as if they teach you anything). Look at all the posts to Slashdot of people saying "NT runs GREAT if you administrate it correctly" (implied 'you bozos' at the end of that one). The fact is, using NT as a server requires every bit as much expertise as using any Unix system, so I don't understand the argument that says "NT is better because it's easy to use." Easy to use? Maybe. Easy to administrate? Absolutely not. Has anyone ever compared, for example, the amount of work that goes into maintaining an NT proxy server with the amount of work that goes into using IP masquerading? How many mouse clicks it takes to copy a configuration from one NT web server to another compared to the ease of moving a "httpd.conf" file over? Sheesh, people...
But don't you see, that's the POINT. If you can't push NT to do anything without making it unstable, why on earth would you use it?
I have an NT box sitting on my desk doing little more than running Outlook. It manages to stay up for months as well, but I'm not pushing it. At the same time, it has hung doing absolutely NOTHING for no reason at all.
These are not the hallmarks of a stable system. This is NOT the kind of operating system I want running a vital service like email or running web servers. NT DESERVES the bad rap it is getting.
And then some.
Where's Cairo, eh pal? Still waiting for Cairo to come along and 'revolutionize' the world, I see.
What about Blackbird? Still waiting for that to revolutionize the web?
How about 'Cool' (Microsoft's Java wannabe)? Are you keeping all your software development on hold until Cool comes out?
So you see? Why hold your breath waiting for something that will PROBABLY NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY, JUST LIKE ALL OF MICROSOFT'S VAPORWARE?
It's all bullshit. We have a god-given RIGHT to flag bullshit for what it is. We don't NEED to 'see' it because it's nothing but pure VAPOUR. Too bad you let the fumes get in your eyes, eh?
I think MS is convinced that W*ndows is so much nicer to use than Un*x that everyone will fall over themselves to run away from Un*x to W*ndows as soon as W*ndows starts to even begin to appear as if it might address some Un*x capabilities.
So, for damn near 6 years MS has been saying "Un*x killer, Un*x killer." as NT becomes marginally better and thus more Un*x like.
Some people even believed them, and believed them again, and again, even though it was so much obvious bunk. Now it seems the refrain is growing weak as the Un*x killer gets ever more big fat and ugly.
Meanwhile they didn't notice the NT killer that came out of the Un*x camp. This killer isn't crying "Wolf!" either.
It's gonna be interesting.
WHITEPAPERS? You make system-critical decisions based upon thinly-glossed MARKETING SPEAK? Unbelievable. If Microsoft handed you a whitepaper promising flying automobiles and vacation property on the moon would you believe that too? Hell I can provide you with whitepapers that show Netware is better than NT, that Solaris is better than Netware and that Ted Koppel is really a robot.
Don't even bother to cite Mindcraft. Linux runs circles around NT in every case I have experimented with.
We gladly formatted our NT server that were formerly serving Web, FTP and SMTP to the world. WHy? THey were slow, unmanagable, UNSTABLE AS FUCK, didn't follow the standards, and couldn't handle loading at all. These were high-priced NT ALPHA servers. We put Linux on all of them and all the problems we had with loading went away. Experience tells a different story from what you microsoft white-paper-quoting LEMMINGS keep spouting.
It's interesting you talk propaganda while defending your arguments with white papers from a product that doesn't even exist (and probably never will).
"Fumble!"
-an anonymous Frobozz, sick of MicroToadies
I don't care WHAT microsoft calles "Windows NT 3.1". It was a 1.0 release. The only thing '3.1'-ish about it was the butt-ugly interface they ripped from the WinDOS TSR (aka Win 3.1). Everything else was pure 1.0.
Techie: The server just went down! Manager: Well, just fail over to the other server! Techie: That IS the other server!
I tend to agree because often times the choice of OS is not even there. We standardize our corporate boxes on W9* and NT because it's nearly impossible to retrain everyone to use new software. Windows is here for the long run in spite of it's technical "problems", because that's what they train B-school types to use. Might as well make it as solid as possible (though I've little enough hope for that).
*nix is great for those of us that need power and reliability (and don't mind the learning curve).
"I believe the children are our future: nasty, brutish and short."
I just noticed a discussion post by Henri J. Schlereth at the ZDNet web site in which he points out that homepages.msn.com is possibly running Apache 1.3.6. Since Apache on WinNT is not as mature as for the unices and considering MSN high hit rates, could it be possible that MSN is actually using a unix variant? I tried checking using Netcraft but was not successful.
I did read the article, and it looks like MS hand-coded a lot of the app in C++, rather than using IIS or any "application server environment" being benchmarked. Great idea. Too bad they didn't let Microsoft develop specialized ASICs to run the app as well...damned editors.
Let's see... next week we'll benchmark java against Microsoft Visual Assembler... yeah, that's the ticket.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
I've used Sybase, NetDynamics, & WebObjects.
First of all, WebObjects provides failover and does preserve state, if you install the failover module!
It makes some parts of development slower, so the main install doesn't install it, but for a deployment install, its simple -- you just have to remember doh!
Second, there is no way that Sybase was faster than NetDyamics.
Ack! I hate to see crappy benchmarks. And the way that the chart is printed, I hope that none of my clients see it, because they are going to want me to use ASP --- and they're already big fans of MS (please shoot me).
- the Original AC
Name one thing that Microsoft does better, quality wise and power wise - that's better than anything out there... Not the OS. Not SQL server. The only thing MICROS~1 does good is office software. And hell, that's not mission critical. Far as I'm concerned, it's even irrelevant.
I've been hearing this "NT is a UNIX-killer" line since NT 1.0 hit the streets. Hell, I heard it about OS/2!
NT is crap. I see no reason to believe that Microsoft has either the talent or the inclination to make it into anything else.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I was one of the principal designers and implementors of both the cluster manager and lock manager for HACMP/6000 version 3.1 (which, BTW, supported 8-way symmetric failover) back in '94, so maybe I'm qualified to comment on some of this.
;-) MS has so far exhibited nothing but the most startling ignorance and incompetence in these areas so far, and the idea that they'll suddenly leapfrog the established experts like this is just bunk. It's far easier to believe that they're deliberately making false claims to scare off the competition...again.
First, about MS. The consensus opinion among people who really know HA is that Wolfpack was and is the most pathetic piece of junk ever. The prevailing theory is that they quite deliberately announced it knowing that it was junk, to scare off anyone (such as my employer at the time) who might try to produce their own NT HA solutions.
This Janus project is just another step in that direction. 64 or 256 nodes? Yeah right. There are several reasons other HA solutions typically only go up to eight. The main one is that nobody really wants a single cluster that big. It's a total management nightmare. What customers actually want to do is set up multiple independent clusters of a reasonable size, and perhaps manage them all from within a common framework, but that's not the same as a single cluster. There's just no benefit to offset the cost of setting up failover relationships that deep and complex.
Another reason you don't see HA clusters beyond eight is that it's all but impossible to devise protocols (membership, hearbeat, consensus, and so on) that scale that high and yet still handle the simple cases efficiently. Just avoiding all the race conditions in eight nodes booting and trying to join the cluster at once is incredibly difficult. If you don't think it's that hard, try it. Have fun. Come back after you've failed, and we'll talk.
Now that I've bashed MS HA, a few words about Linux HA. It's as pathetic as MS. We have some very basic heartbeat code, and a few other scattered bits and pieces, but that's it. There's practically no fault identification to distinguish different types of failures so that one can respond differently to an adapter or network failure as distinct from a node failure. There's no lock manager. Many of the people working on the designs are only beginning to grasp the basic problems, and they're months if not years from actually implementing industrial-strength solutions. I'm on the mailing list (or I was, before I moved and had to give up my cable-modem account), I see the traffic, and it's Just Not There. I'm sorry, and I wish I could spare more time to contribute more of my own hard-won experience to the project, but that's just the way things are.
jdarcy@emc.com, until I get a new home account
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
No no- flailover. :)
That's when one machine breaks, and then flails about until the other ones go down with it
Although it is not currently a 'Fault Tolerant' solution, TurboLinux Inc. just released an updated beta of the TurboCluster Server product. Users can download the beta, and learn more about the product, from the following url:
http://community.turbolinux.com/cluster/
This product is designed to provide scalability and higher availability for standard IP services. Applications such as Apache are natural fits for this model, but many other IP services will also see improvements when deployed with the TurboCluster product.
As this is a beta, we are very receptive to all user feedback. One of my own tasks is to facilitate the evaluation (and deployment) of our beta product within production environments (ISPs, businesses, corporations, educational institutions, "real world" networks, etc.) I would urge all users who are interested in the software to join our mailing list, listed at the above URL. I will personally try to answer as many questions as I can.
Best Regards,
Aaron McKee
Aaron McKee
Sr. Technical Marketing Engineer
TurboLinux, Inc.
2000 Sierra Point Parkway, Suite 702
Brisbane, CA 94005
650.244.7777
Aaron McKee
Sr. Technical Marketing Engineer
TurboLinux, Inc.
2000 Sierra Point Parkway, Suite 702
B
That's probably also why they started using years, as in "Windows95" and "Windows98" - they don't want people to see that the version numbers actually go backwards... ;>
Name ONE 'feature' that Win-NOT has in the so-called high-end that Linux does not.
As for 'journalling' features (are we going to claim again that NT is a -chortle- microkernel too?), it certainly isn't all that advanced since I've seen NT eat it's hard disks on many occasions, while the non-journalling ext2fs seems to recover from disk failures quite nicely.
Hey, don't look at me: I'm running MacOS 8 too. Apparently it is a great deal more reliable over extended uptimes (such as two days) than Win98 according to some of the Windows advocates' own postings.
I dualboot LinuxPPC, not on a network. That seems to be very much in line with people's experience- I've sometimes had X crash. I knew I could telnet in- if only I was on a network. X stopped being so delicate when I started using a different version of Netscape.
I am emphatically on the geeky slashdot weasels' side in this discussion. It's always _next_ year's Microsoft product that is supposed to be wonderful. I contest even the suggestion that MS office applications are so wonderful. That's nonsense. We are talking about a word processor that has consistently had a habit of embedding invisible control characters _in_band_ so that you could delete across a font or style change and have following characters change their style... hell, _Simpletext_ gets that one right.
The situation is this: MS is not worthy of trust. At all. So are we to be complete blind, brainless idiots who cannot learn from experience, or do we start paying attention to outside information coming in? All of that tends to add up to one fact: nobody can overpromise or underdeliver like Microsoft. Under such conditions, can you seriously advocate taking any of their claims at face value?
If (Janus) is not free it's totally irrelevant. Why pay $1295+ support + required apps when the OS their trying to emulate FreeBSD/Linux is free?
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
I believe homepages.msn.com is contracted out to someone else and is not hosted by MS. They only branded it. I'm not completely sure though. If this was the case of course the company could choose whatever they wanted to use as long as it got the job done.
I've used NT for the last 15 months without ever restarting my machine. Granted, I probably don't push it too hard.
That's the point! You can't push NT too hard or it breaks. If you want to spend thousands of dollars on an OS, client licenses, etc.. that you can't push too hard, then go NT. Otherwise, invest wisely and go the Unix/Linux route in the first place.
In an article containing an interview with RedHat CEO Bob Young in last months HPWORLD magazine the following was published:
"With each passing month, it becomes increasingly clear that more customers and vendors are taking Linux seriously, few more so than HP. Just before press time, sources told HP World that Linux support would soon be extended to the flagship software products WebQoS, VirtualVault, MC/ServiceGuard, and Praesidium VirtualVault. One of the vendors whose Linux implementation will be supported is Red Hat Software."
You want really good clustering!! This is good clusting. I have built several clusters using this software in my professional career and the have their act together. It can handle upto 16 cluster nodes, has built in automatic failover to a second / standby network interface in the box, and can be managed/monitored using SMNP MIB and Traps which are well documented and published.
Combine that with the Journaling File Systems support that might come from SGI... and BOOOM! You have just about every "enterprise" feature that all of the other Unixen have except maybe that system partitioning stuff that SUN can do, although that is more hardware trickery than software and could never be done on an Intel platform system.
Ok, I'll bite. I've managed to build or purchase *nix boxes that have obtained very good performance and very good uptimes. I've managed to build and purchase NT boxes that have some decent uptimes ( couple of months ), but I've yet to have an NT box retain its performance for any length of time. All my NT boxes become so slow after a couple of weeks of uptime, that if I let them run w/o reboot, then users will start complaining.
So, how exactly do I go about building an NT box that will outlast and outperform my Linux boxes?
I'm serious. Do you have some URL's, or whitepapers, that will help.
I just don't think any kind of hardware I put together will manage to keep NT from leaking memory. It's an OS problem, not a hardware one.
Maybe I'm not applying the right patches. What do you recommend?
I believe his point what that these projects, though useful, aren't truly innovative. We have a microkernel (been done before (Mach, QNX, BeOS)), desktop environment (been done before (cde, Windows(!))), window manager (been done before (*wm, WindowMaker)), windowing environment + 3D (been done before (X + GLX, OpenInventor(?)).
All of these are evolutionary; they embraced and extended existing technology, if you will. Doesn't mean they aren't useful, but they just don't have quite the impact of the FIRST window manager, the FIRST microkernel, the FIRST desktop had.
Dammned EULA.
:-(
Because of clause 2 I can't read this webpage.
I need my pants.
> Have some pity for the NT lusers. They just don't know any better.
That's really the heart of the problem. They don't know any better, but they think they do - all because the big corporation told them so.
Yeah I've worked with a couple of them. Pity? It's hard to feel pity for someone who arrogantly tells you again and again that you are "old school" and prefer a system designed by "geeky frat boys." Tells you to "get with the program" and "join the winning team." What twaddle!
I think Unix/Linux fans get so snippy with these poor brainwashed plebes because we've had to put up with so much sanctimonious BS attitude from them.
We have a hard time pitying them when the problem gets more complicated than point-and-click can handle and they ask the geekboys for help. And the bosses make sure we do. Never happens the other way around. Never.
How many times has your smaller Unix team come up with a sleek, fast, stable multivendor, *Open(ish)* design only to be overridden by a bunch of unthinking MS Salarymen chanting MS-SQL Server (and they propnounce it Ess-Cue-Ell!!), MS-Exchange, MS-this and MS-that? Then, when the whole thing falls over, (inevitable) your team is asked to help clean the mess up?
It's no wonder we sneer at anything they throw at us. We've been through this crap before and we know that we'll probably get overridden by these driods once again when an HA or PDB system is in the works.
Cynicism is not just cynicism when it is backed by experience.
-MWR-
All they know how to do, is hit the fucking Big Red Switch, and they get all snotty with you?
You know, I was working with an NT fanboy some years ago, on a project that was being written on NeXTSTEP. He managed to fuck up his window server with a broken postscript routine, and he was about to hit the swtitch, and I stopped him.
I telnet'd to his machine, su'd to root, and restarted his window server. Blew him away. His jaw dropped, and a glimmer of understanding came to his eyes.
I told him, "it's not dead if you can ping it!"
Have some pity for the NT lusers. They just don't know any better.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Let's see Word crashed Win95 which then overwrote the FAT. Two weeks later after rebuilding the hard drive sector by sector, necessary as there was an old piece of SW, keyed to that particular drive, still in use and whose manufacturer was out of business. At the cost of.
Personally, Windows has cost me thousands of dollars in downtime since it came out. I've had to rebuild both Win95 and Win98 systems as the OS has destroyed the FAT, even with Norton or other safeguarding utilities. Average time to rebuild 24 working hours, even with tape backup.
Having just taught a class on Unix TCP/IP networking we used Redhat's 5.1 and 6.0 install CD's in the class. Average time to install and configure so we could build a minimal network, 25 minutes. Average time for NT install (needed for an Intro to Web Site Administration) 1 hour.
I'm very seriously considering switching to Linux with Star Office as soon as Adobe ports Photoshop to Linux.
Wasn't Wolfpack supposed to ship with WIN2000 at first but was dropped because of reliability?
It this a replacement or enhancecment for Wolfpack?
I will believe it when I see it.
I'm curious how many times something touted as an "XXX killer" actually managed to kill XXX, and how many times it didn't. (NOTE: this applies as much to, say, Linux as a Windows killer as it does to, say, NT as a *n*x killer; i.e., don't assume that your favorite technology is "doomed to success", no matter what your favorite technology is....)
The CPU's mentioned in the article, aren't gonna be all in one box/mobo. What this article is talking about, is the next iterationo of Wolfpack, basically. It's a cluster of servers. Not a massive multi-processor machine. That is how they will have 64 processors. So you have 16 machines, each a Quad Xeon, that's your 64 processors.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
/. has entirely too many comments on the order of "NT is nothing but an unstable, buggy piece of crap". I've used NT for the last 15 months without ever restarting my machine. Granted, I probably don't push it too hard. NT may not be unix, but it's enormously more stable than Win3.1, 95, or 98. Windows 98 has a horrible memory leak problem - if I leave my home PC on for a few days, it gets to the point where every mouse click leads to a minute or so of swapping to the hard drive (at least I think this is a memory leak).
I'm getting off-topic, but my point is that the more fair and level-headed we come across, the better chance we'll have on selling people on Linux.
I agree. I'm getting annoyed with the whole "To hell with you because you dont use unix!" attitude. Yes, I use linux exclusively at home and at work. True, Windows is a crappy OS (with the last pseudo-useable version being WinNT 3.51) with crappy development efforts behind it -- but if Windows ever became a better OS in functionality and reliability than Linux, I'd use it, closed source or not.
--
Dave Brooks (db@amorphous.org)
http://www.amorphous.org
Microsoft is gunning for Digital UNIX, IBM's AIX, and SOLARIS with this annoucement, not Linux. Why would you guys automatically assume that Microsoft is borrowing features from Linux?
Microsoft was right, Open Source DOES NOT innovate. All the greatest features of Linux are long since borrowed from the big three of the UNIX world. Microsoft is trying to catch up to them, not Linux.
Do you guys really think the huge corporations that are spending 100's of thousands of dollars on server hardware are really going to be too worried about Microsoft's prices? These companies are going to look at which vendor offers the best support, and which vendor has the most applications written for their software. Also, Microsoft knows that they are late to the party, and are going to have to offer features and value to diferentiate themselves from their competitors.
So Janus is the god of beginnings, ("January" : beginning of the year). I guess this is the begining of the end for Microsoft!
You are seriously high.
First off, a well designed NT box is faster and more stable than Linux. Period. You can argue personal experience all you want, but all that means is that you don't know how to build an NT box.
...
Forgive me, if I'm ROTFL - No, I'm NOT using Linux, but THAT'S complete and utterless bullshit. Even my 7 year old daughter would conter by telling you that YOU don't know how to built a Linux box, if it's slower than an
NT box - and you know that. Next time you look at a Linux and an NT box, try to remember how many ressources your machines waste on GUI
Thus demonstrating engineers and computer scientists tend not to have any respect for "IT" types....
A "well designed NT box" is certainly not "more stable than" a well-designed Linux system. Furthermore, for many client applications, NT is not "faster", either.
In summary: You can argue personal experience all you want, but all that means is that you have never built (or used, apparently) a Linux box.
I remember the days when M$ stole all their ideas from Apple.
Then Apple got sick and stop innovating. So, for a few years, M$ had no real innovations in their products. The joke was:
Q: Why do M$ products lack innovation?
A: Apple hasn't been innovating lately!
Well, it now looks as if GNU/Linux is driving the innovation. As long as GNU/Linux continues to develop, M$ will *have* to do something -- and they will. However, my bets are on GNU/Linux.
-- They can have my GNU/Linux when they pry my cold dead fingers off it!
(A parody of a redneck bumper sticker that read:
They can have my GUN when
Microsoft bought out Convoy Cluster Software for Windows NT in late 1998.
The clustering software allows for a set of machines with two network cards (one unique IP, one set cluster IP) to split network queries via a random IP address assignment method.
There is minimal priority configuration, and overall the clustering software is a joke. It does not split/share processing. The SMP support is poor to nonexistant for the Convoy cluster software.
The network configuration requires the use of a HUB (UGGH!! half duplex!!) to sync/split the cluster queries (and answer them). Switches just won't allow multiple machines to have the same IP. If you've ever tried to push 40 megabits steady out of 4 machines through a 100mbit hub and then out, you surely know the true meaning of the term 'packet loss'. I get nauseous every time i think about how bad it is.
Microsoft bought out the company and within a week released a press release stating that their new NT 5 (at the time) Enterprise Edition server would come with clustering capabilities built in.
I use this Convoy clustering software every day, in combination with Apache for NT. If anyone really thinks that this sad software really has the ability to actually threaten many of the SMP/clustering solutions for linux, BSD, or Solaris, they've got at least one ready to laugh in their face.
I've managed to get my Single PII-350 (128mb RAM) under linux with Apache to push as many queries as THREE Dual-450 (384mb RAM) NT machines using the Convoy Cluster solution with Apache/win32. Of course, I won't claim that my PII-350 is anywhere near standard in setup, but my point is that their big bad great "Linux Killer" is a real POS.
That's why I'm still converting machine after machine from NT to Linux at work. It's just ridiculous to waste so much money on NT when Linux can do the job I need done better, faster, and with better security.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
Anyone who follows NT/W2K has known about Data Center Server and what it is proported to offer for some time now. Better late than never I suppose.
> The sad thing is, there's probably a million others like it that *AREN'T* intentionally humorous.
Some people will never get it. Just read down *here*.
For me this is fun and worth a bookmark. Even if these webpages are not intented to be fun, they just *are* funny!
Yeap, so easy to say the above without doing any research, isn't it?
I've got a cluster up and running a beta of TurboCluster (from our buddies at TurboLinux) with Apache atop it. This is a product that takes multiple machines (they've tested up to 12 nodes, I think) and makes them look like one big one. One node serves as a "router" (or "cluster controller" as some might call it) as well as being a node, and if that one goes down, another takes over. We've got the heartbeats and all that stuff.
It's - dare I say it? - EASY to set up, and it works. And that's the BETA code. They're getting ready for the official release of it later this month, I believe, and by then, I plan on having some "name brand" websites running on it for them to point to.
The only stuff it doesn't handle on its own yet is the synchronization of data and logfiles between the servers - but hey, that's a pain on ANY cluster, and there are a "metric shitload" of ways to deal with that under Linux. Everything from rsync and rdist to NFS and FibreChannel-based GFS. And VirtualFS, and Coda, and... did I miss any? :)
Imagine, if you will, a server cabinet containing a few Penguin Computing rackmounts running TurboCluster, a switch, and some sundry other stuff - maybe an NFS server, maybe an SQL server - and you've got one kickass server setup.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Has anyone forwared a copy of this article to Caldera's lawyers yet? Here is a perfect example of Mircosoft attempting to Unix/Linux with the use of vaporware announcements what they did to DRDOS not that many years ago...
hotmail.com uses it...
/asdfasdf was not found on this server.
- --------------------------------
homepages.msn.com uses it
Try an invalid link at homepages.msn.com and you'll see...Not Found
The requested URL
-----------------------------------------------
Apache/1.3.6 Server at homepages.msn.com Port 4890
The sad thing is, there's probably a million others like it that *AREN'T* intentionally humorous.
Just from looking at the main page he looks pretty serious to me.. call the paddywagon!
Linux lacks many of the same features Win NT does for high-end enterprise use. For that matter, NT has been *ahead* of Linux in SMP, clustering, and journaling so far. It's the commercial UNIX offerings that are motivating MS in this area.
Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha
It's only another shitty benchmark
Tomorrow they'll show us that Windoze is even stable now that they've proven it to be fast.
(Not on my workstation)
Please tell me those benchmark aren't from
userfriendly or segfault !!!
First off, a well designed NT box is faster and more stable than Linux. Period. You can argue personal experience all you want, but all that means is that you don't know how to build an NT box.
Second, I wasn't even talking about NT... I was talking about the upcoming Janus (Datacenter... whatever.) If you bothered to look at the white papers, you may have seen some very promising features.
If you cared about anything other than Linux propoganda, you may actually see potential in this new product. I am currently an IT student, and I have always been taught pick the best tool for the job. So I will... no matter who makes it.
Your company, if large enough, will be able to afford such a setup. Any of your collegues use pirated or unregistered shareware and screensavers? Remember the Microsoft/SPA raids? After one of those, there might be a settlement to bring your company into compliance. They can make you an offer that can't be refused.
Holy balls I just about core dumped my pants I laughed so hard !
Windows NT is a Unix Killer, but not in a sense they mean in the article. Every lost soul of a never-installed unix server is a kill for Microsoft :-( I just hate it when the companies buy $9000 computers with IIS to function as small class web servers. And those service men with a certificate from Microsoft are full of shit! They get $100/hour and still they can't install Microsoft BackOffice system in two weeks ! First they billed for one day and then they said they need to consult some other experts. And there was nothing special about the install, just support the features Microsoft so proudly advertised..
a well designed NT box is faster and more stable than Linux
There is no such animal. Ask any sysadmin.
You can argue personal experience all you want, but all that means is that you don't know how to build an NT box.
Bah. That's all. Just 'Bah.'
If you bothered to look at the white papers, you may have seen some very promising features.
As for those whitepapers, I got some whitepapers in my bathroom too, and they are good for about the same thing as yours.
If you cared about anything other than Linux propoganda
Gee, never seen propaganda before. Any of the crap benchmarks (linux OR windows) mean a total of shit to me until I can see if it does that on my machine. Linux has lived up to (and exceeded) what I expected from it. Windows has been a disappointment from the beginning.
I am currently an IT student
I have heard around that an IT Student is nothing more than a buzzword for some person that goes to school to learn even more buzzwords.
Get a life. Windows has always sucked. It always will. I've used it since it's first incarnation and IN MY EXPERIENCE *snicker* it really sucks some royal ass.
Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!
First off, a well designed NT box is faster and more stable than Linux. Period. You can argue personal experience all you want, but all that means is that you don't know how to build an NT box.
OK, then, if NT is faster and more stable, why is it that Microsoft's premier high-volume mail service, Hotmail, is running on FreeBSD and (IIRC) Solaris boxes, using Apache, exim, Oracle and a home-brew network file system? Seems to me that if NT can be more stable and have higer performance then it'd be easy to switch Hotmail over, and that if anyone could build a stable, high-performance NT box Microsoft itself could. The fact that they have failed at this task twice (that I know of) seems to indicate that NT just isn't up to it.
Second, I wasn't even talking about NT... I was talking about the upcoming Janus (Datacenter... whatever.) If you bothered to look at the white papers, you may have seen some very promising features.
The important ones of which have been stumping the best in the industry for quite a few years now. I'm sorry, but I just don't believe anyone has that many geniuses that they could have solved that many intractable problems this quickly and not have applied some of that to their existing software.
In short, I'll believe their promises about Janus when they can switch Hotmail over to NT, IIS, MS SQL Server and Exchange.
Wow, my imagination has been getting the best of me. Apparently the HURD, gnome, enlightenment, and the Berlin project all don't really exist. Of course, if they did, they would be examples of open source innovations. Yeah, that must be it. I've just been deluding myself.
I concur with him completely. I do really enjoy coming in, and reading all the comments, that pop up after anyposting, that is even slightly favorable about MS tho. I suppose that slashdot, is not designed to be a necessarily balanced forum tho. For the most part, the audience here, seems to be Linux Jihad members.
Personally, I've adopted the view, that all of the junk, that we run on our computers, all the little bits of code, be it OS, or app, are TOOLS. Nothing more. And whatever tool fits the need at hand, is what I generally choose to use. So at home, I have a NetWare server, an NT workstation, and Linux Router, and a 98 game machine. And I will continue to use all of them, as appropriate. I just can't get worked up about Bill being the antichrist, or anything else like that.
Y'all can go preach the word, and jump up and down, screaming for attention for your OS of choice. I'm too busy implementing solutions, to have time to preach.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I've been told (by a friend of mine who works on Tandem machines, for compaq.tandem.twinsof) that they rely on checkpointing.
So that you call a checkpoint routine every now and again and when a node fails the machine just resumes the process on another node.
Each node is essentially a computer with its own OS, but these nodes are all placed in the same box under very tight control of the overall OS.
The checkpointing thing in Tandem reminds me of condor and mosix, both of wich are working projects, but not highly integrated into the OS.
The building blocks for a really good HA solution is there, it's just up to someone to pick it up.
Hmm, serializability of objects in Java is almost universal, so building a HA cluster that runs Java is probably simpler than building one that runs lowlevel binaries, someone should look into this.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
I initially read this as '...and fallover version of Windows' and thought that already exists.
So all the bullshit M$ have been touting in the past about Windows being enterprise-ready, are they going to now retract that, say `sorry, oops, we were wrong, it wasn't enterprise ready at all. Actually, the enterprise has changed, yeah that's the ticket'.
Somehow I doubt it. Just like I doubt this new nonsense will be a Unix-killer.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
Hasn't Microsoft been promising people a "Unix-killer" for several years now? Clearly NT wasn't a Unix-killer in 1997, Unix is doing just fine. So NT improves over the past two years. What makes MS think that Unix hasn't improved over the past two years as well, to raise the bar? Forever playing catch-up...
Or do you think they will borrow the hotkey virtual console feature of linux so you can switch between the bluescreens to jot down the hex codes before you go off into MSDN? -Justin
As long as the big red button is your friend, NT is tolerable. You're right, if you push a Microsoft product, it gags. Microsoft is fine for someone who knows to backup and can re-install their OS and can stand to lose whatever they're working on. Most people who've grown up on Microsoft know about it and deal with it.
For real computing, there is no substitute for Unix.
Well, the results do look pretty good for NT as far as it goes, but WHOA!
Check the hardware. In the app server layer The Sun systems had 2x2 + 4x1 cpu's, for 8 total, the Compaq's had 4x4 for 16, and I'll bet they were faster individual cpu's, too. Granted, they were combined web/app boxes, but the web load is likely a very small part of the load. That, plus the code shortcomings pointed out elsewhere completely invalidate any direct comparison of the results.
I love the page :) The sad thing is, there's probably a million others like it that *AREN'T* intentionally humorous.
So with 2 of 'em, MS can "bleep" you over coming and going.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I think next time I need a new car I will build it all myself - up to and including coming up with new metal alloys, just so I can say it was all mine...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
'Linux today is a toy techies play with'
I really wish technical news sites would actually do a little research, and, god forbid, understand the subject, before they make such stupid and uninformed comments.
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
Cost is a good point. Even though somebody disagreed about this, it is relevant.
But what else is MS's advantage in the super-mondo enterprise market? You'll still need a guru to keep everything going. You'll still need this and that. Ease of use becomes an irrelevant issue.
In other words, MS has no advantage in this market. Performance will lag over IBM and Compaq type solutions that will also prove to be more stable.
The only thing this would give to MS is bragging rights that "this 'consumer' software is as stable as (ahem) this enterprise software". That's gotta be what's on Bills mind.
Hmm... rumor has it that w2k is making core development team members quit Micros~1. And they're promising failover?
How much of a Unix killer can it be without remote administration?
I guess there's that PC Anywhere thing, but that sounds like a royal bandwidth hog.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Oh please. MS will _never_ pull this off - unless they did something smart for a change and dropped their old codebase. But that'll never happen, because they need their current monopoly to propogate themselves. If they did this, I bet they could write a sweet OS. But they won't. Janus will suck ass, if they don't give up on it entirely after they miss their shipping date for a year.
Anyway, wasn't Janus a supercomputer built of 2000 PPros back a few years ago for Lawrence Livermore?
I'd laugh at this entire idea, if it weren't for the thought of how many cpus will be wasted.. think about it. It's enough to make you cry.
Touche.
I don't blame him for writing a cool app, but I do blame PC Week for defining the benchmark too broadly. I'm not too clear on what an "application server" is. If it's a machine running C++, that's fine with me. For instance our "application servers" serve up 10M hits a day on apache and fcgi's written in C++, and we have a full staff of people to profile apps, run benchmarks, find perfect hashes, watch cpu, etc.
The main point is that anyone with enough time can tune an app down to the microcode; it's just kind of unrealistic to publish the result against other products that were used off-the-shelf. A lot of smaller vendors don't have even a few hours to spare on building a benchmark like this.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
I found the site hilarious!
Some pholks might not get it instinctively, but this is NOT yet another
M$ SUX site. It pokes fun at the windoze 'droids that ya typically see
posting on ZDNET's "Talkback" thingy when slashdotters take over the
discussion. Thanks for the great belly-laugh. I'd like to see a similar
page portraying the more immature "Linux Advocate"(tm).
-kaha
Heh. I'll be entertained when or if this ever comes out. Remember, if telephone company switches can have cascading failures, I'm sure Microsoft can have even more impressive ones. :)
And yes, it should also be incredibly bloated and overpriced. I'm sure they wouldn't have it any other way...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
non-textual
you said: "First off, a well designed NT box is faster and more stable than Linux. Period. You can argue personal experience all you want, but all that means is that you don't know how to build an NT box."
To which I reply: Then there must be an AWFUL lot of dumba**es using NT out there, including you.
As for "promising features" well, Microsoft is indeed good at *promising* them. Delivering them is another story.
However, I totally agree - use the best tool for the job. If that means NT, hey, whatever.
But the world can afford fast food, even though it is not always good for you.
Gourmet food is slow, expensive and too fickle.
What makes money and gets acceptance from the market? Fast food. Why are there so many food franchises? Money makes the world go round and not ideals!!!!
If we Linux people can start to understand that this then maybe we can put the stupid GPL and licensing debate behind us.
MS will tromp us, if we do not start developing solutions. I already see it with the web server tests. It does not matter if they are fair or not. They are getting mindshare for building fast servers that are less expensive than UNIX boxes.
But um, yeah - same shit, different year. ;>
Give it a rest. I know the person who wrote the C++ app. HE DID NOT HANDCODE IT. He just knows the Microsoft application server environment very well.
AND HE DID NOT CHEAT. It is not in his nature. He just loves competition and pulling out all stops when it comes to writing cool code....
Sound familiar folks???? And yet he is a MicroSoftie...
First of all, Janus was an ancient Roman God. His name is, where we got "January" from. And not only does Janus have two heads, he also has ... now sit down and savor this ... two dicks!
Besides, if you need things like that - use Solaris. Or use IRIX. Linux is still premature in those areas, and NT is just, well, a joke.
When I see articles such as this, it makes me wish that that trade press wasn't so eager to pass along claims and speculations from unnamed sources as real news.
Let's look at these point-by-point.
Claim number 1:
This comes to us from "sources familiar with the effort as well as company information." There is no attempt to substantiate the claim. Hearsay and press releases are taken as a given.
Claim number 2
Again, more info from unnamed sources. No actual words from any actual OEMs out there. It might be IBM or Compaq, but who can say?
Now the time horizon...
This is attributed to an unnamed Microsoft spokesperson. You would think if this was for real, you might have someone like Steve Ballmer or Ed Muth crowing about it.
Enter the value-added reseller
Is this an informed opinion or just a wishful thought. Naturally the VAR may want something like this because it might enhance his or her revenue stream. This isn't really all that revealing. It's like going to a Chevrolet dealership and asking a salesman to comment on whether next year's Corvette will sell well.
More from our VAR...
The "toy" reference reminds me of a technical support call I handled three years ago from a reseller who just couldn't believe that we would port Mathematica to a "toy" OS like Linux but wouldn't support SCO's UNIX (R).
Now the analysts, also without name.
What isn't clear is whether the analysts believe that the edging is happening now or is supposed to happen when Microsoft ships this new data center variant of NT. It's all built upon an expectation of things that have no concrete existence yet.
You may also find it interesting to note that the only quotations for which there are attributions are negative things about Windows NT now and Windows 2000 later.
Quoth Don Roy of IBM:
And one from Rob Enderle of GIGA Information Group.
Translation: Businesses aren't putting too much faith in Microsoft's promises of Windows 2000. They'll wait for the service packs to come out.
-- P.J.
Am I way off base, or does it seem logical, that if conditions are such that it causes one of the NT boxen to crash, the standby system is going to be jumping into a situation where it stands a pretty good chance of crashing too? Or maybe this is just to take care of those random fatal crashes while the systems are idleing?
- The Mysterious Voice
I think that that article is 100% true. Linux is "a toy", just believe anything you read!! go for it, it's fun!! you should try it some time!!
dang, i hate idiots who write reviews about somthing they've never used! It's just like me telling you about a movie even though I've never actually seen it, but i have seen the preview
Here's a discussion of the Greek Mythology of Janus. Basically he's the god of beginnings, doorways, etc.. Interestingly, he's represented with two faces.... imagine that, M$ being two-faced...
So you're saying that now we can replace that ;)
one Unix box that never crashes with 8 NT boxes
that never crash at the same time. Sounds like
a deal to me!
That's what M$ was saying when they introduced WinNT 3.1 a few years ago. Now with Linux blowing fire under their pants, they have to react quickly, and what better for them than throwing some vapourware and FUD to keep the populace confused until they actually come up with something saleable? Well, since Linux doesn't depend on sales to stay afloat, vapourware and fudslinging won't work, so what-me-worry?
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
My guess is, with this new "Janus" product, Windows will finally be stable enough to have uptimes that rival those of Unix systems. Of course, you have to have several machines to accomplish this, and the average company isn't going to have the money to buy the hardware, and from Microsoft's way of pricing, they won't have the money to buy the software.
Its a shame, really, that Unix and Linux have to be so good, since so many admin's need NT to "do it all for them with a wizard".
> Linux today is a toy techies play with
Taking this out of context, I'd say Linux Today is a Linux news site...
But in context, I'd say that if Linux is a toy, why are companies like IBM and Oracle investing time and money in it?
> Microsoft officials could not be reached for further comment.
Are we suprised?
You know the answer.
Gee, I thought Janus was the Amiga "bridgeboard" software. It is now clear how Microsoft intends to take over the world: They are going to deploy Amigas with bridgeboards (a x86 computer on a Zorro card).
Now it's all making sense... digital convergence....
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Anything that makes any OS better is a good thing. I know ill probably get "moderated" down for saying this, but I don't think Windows/NT is bad because its closed source, its bad because they haven't had much competition, and because of the way they use their software as a tool to make the victim^H^H^H^H^H^Huser buy more MICROS~1 products.
Anything (such as linux enterprise servers) that puts pressure on them to improve their product is good.
Read these test results from today's PC Week.
Guess this blows away the myth that NT is only faster on static pages....
Sorry kids, I love linux, but you can't deny that NT totally destroyed the unix-based competition in this test of web apps.
Hrm...and did anyone else notice that "Linus" rhymes with "Penis"? heheh...how appropriate.
- Rev. Handy
So: unless you replied to my post simply in order to get up on your soapbox and complain, what exactly is your point in criticizing Linux in reply to my post which had nothing whatsoever to do with Linux?
For the record, I would tend to agree with you, but next time try replying to what the other guy actually says.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Yeah! Hotmail should switch to a stable system like the one Ebay is usin...uhh..ooops.
Depends on your metrics. If you mean glitzy do-nothing features, yeah sure - IE wins. But if you're talking about running on nearly every platform out there, sorry - no cigar. To me, seeing a page the same way on every computer is more important that all the crap that's stuffed into IE... And only runs on Mac and Windows.
I got the number of Bill Gates, I call him money for short,
I phone him up at home and make him do my tech support
http://cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Music/9907/12/weird.al/lon
I can see it now...
MS Tech Support:
Excel crashes alot? Hmm.. Have you considered upgrading to four machines for greater reliability?
They tried, a good while back -- had to go back to Solaris though, NT "wasn't scalable enough."
Did anyone notice the following gem in the article:
... so they can't do 64 bit and now try to pass it off as some 'Advanced API')
> Aside from advanced load balancing and clustering
> support, the Microsoft Data Center Server kernel will
> expand memory support from 4 Gbytes up to 64
> Gbytes by supporting Intel's Physical Address
> Extensions (PAEs). In addition, Microsoft's new
> Advanced Windowing Extensions APIs will let
> software developers take advantage of Intel's PAE and
> create applications that can access up to 64 Gbytes of
> memory.
Now were does that remind me off? Oh yes, extended memory. Let's hope that they make alternative API, so that we can also have expanded memory! And let's make compilers that can do multiple memory models, depending on whether your code or your data is larger than 4GB! Let's throw in a segmented architecture to make this nostalgia fest complete.
But no worries, I'm sure there's still a nice 64K limit in there somewhere...
(Yes, I suffered under MS-DOS
I have a 386 with 4Mb of RAM linux that acts as a router for my 15 computers lan; it works jusy perfectly, it has been up for 40 days without a
single reboot.
They can write what they want, but I'm shure that
NT could never do such a great job with so little
cpu-ram use.
>Hrm...and did anyone else notice that "Linus" rhymes with "Penis"? heheh...how appropriate. errr... no it doesn't... he heee hee hee... you're stupid...
I quite agree, however:
/. are not working so there is really no harm done...
1) The BEST way to spend your energy is to study the tech details and find a way to identify the ideas they have used and come up with comparable ones or implementations of them.
2) It doesn't hurt to bash M$, it might even be good for your mental health after suffering an M$ product.
3) There is no statistical evidence that M$ is capable of producing anything stable or efficient, so it is a safe bet that jAnus will be disaster as well.
I don't think bashing hurts as long as it doesn't divert attention away from work and people who trawl
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
You've made a universal assertion (that a "well-designed" NT box is "more stable" than any Linux box). So all I need to do is find one counterexample.
There exists at least one Linux box that only ever runs the xpilot server. This box has never crashed, so it is 100% stable. Find me an NT box that is more than 100% stable, and I'll be impressed.
I remember seeing something about a product called "Janus" at LLNL back in 1987. It was some sort of combat simulation program for use by the Army, I believe.
Janus has probably been used as a name for many, many different projects.
They keep saying, "This will give NT the stability of UNIX." So, they admit UNIX is superior. Instead of buying a UNIX wannabe...why not just get the Real Thing(tm)?
Hrm...and did anyone else notice that Janus is just Anus with a J? heheh...how appropriate.
- Rev. Randy
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
For feature rich, high-end systems, there are excellent commercial UNIX systems out there, priced at a fraction of the cost of the hardware needed to run them. Even if NT could compete feature-by-feature with those, it doesn't run on the high-end hardware (yet?).
The neat thing about Linux is that it is part of the UNIX/POSIX family of operating systems, a family that spans everything from small embedded systems to the largest scientific supercomputers and mainframes. While those systems aren't 100% compatible, it's pretty easy to port source code among them.
Microsoft seems to be trying to duplicate this with Windows APIs from WinCE to NT. But I think their range of platforms is much smaller than POSIX, and the interoperability of their own APIs among different platforms is much worse. If they want to play in this market, they have to document their APIs much more carefully and live with third party implementations.
This really isn't news at all. They (MS) have been talking about this "Datacenter Edition" that is supposed to appear 60-120 days after W2K for a looong time.
But they probably felt that plain W2K wasn't generating enough excitement and decided to come up with a fancy code-name and leak some "exciting" information.
If anything, I think this shows that they are losing faith in W2K, and feel that they need to come up with a new "unix killer".