Why windows is not for large scale

[sam]

This is a continuation of a message in the development forum about the EQ servers running on NT or Unix, that started getting turned into a windows vs nix OS argument. So let the games begin... or continue... or whatever.

I challenge anyone to prove that windows is secure and stable enough to be used in a large scale production environment. I can see how windows can be used in a small company because they dont know how to use a better OS, but if you know how to admin a nix OS or you are going to host something that will get a lot of traffic, be very intensive, or require rock solid stability, then I cant see anyone choosing windows.

[bonkersbobcat]

Prove that it can not.

I actually don't take sides in this issue. I do however oppose blanket statements about this being better then that without putting some boundry conditions that describe exactly what "better" means.

In dealing with large systems (any system actually) there are a lot of issues that all have to be weighed together. Without dealing with all the issues it is simplistic to say that one thing is better then another.

[high_jeeves]

I worked a company that used Windows (2K server, specifically)as the application server OS (in a multi-thousand user system). With a good admin, windows can be as stable as unix. We brought servers down to release new code every 6-12 weeks, and rarely, if ever, had crashes between those down periods.

Blanket statements in technology = zealotism.. they just dont make sense.

--Jeeves

[board Lizard]

yeah thats why the whole world uses windows huh

[sauron]

I worked for United Video Satellite Group / TV Guide, and worked on the code for the scrolling guide you may still see on your local cable system today (originally on Amiga). The current version uses NT4 SP5. It will stay stable out in the field (thousands and thousands of units running) for six months easily (probably much more). The only thing that will bring it down is bugs in OUR code (or if we needed to reboot for some upgrade). Which is probably what is bringing down the EQ servers from time to time -- bugs in their code.

NT4 SP5 is as stable as you can get really. I hear Linux is very stable as well, which is great. I have no experience running Linux in this manner, so I can't give my opinion.

Saying that you can't use Microsoft OS for "large scale" systems is simply not true using NT4 SP5 or greater. Personally, I like WinXP pro better overall than Linux as far as myself getting the best use for my time from the OS / apps. I can do a lot more in windows and do it easier -- granted because of the better applications written for the OS. And for completeness, I agree that before NT4 SP5 things were not so stable and may not have been a good idea for a large system in the field.

[Hedge]

Call me silly but I think one of the only reasons you see "Major" sized Linux systems vs. Windows systems is cost. It is much more cost effective for a company to put together say 100 servers for an application using Linux than it is using Windows. Lets face it Windows gets expensive So in large scale situations it makes more fiscal sense for a corporation to use Linux if it will work for their application. If Windows was free (or close to it) do you think Linux would still exist in the manner that id does today?

[bonkersbobcat]

When calculating the costs for a business to run a computing system the cost of the operating system software is not the whole cost.

You have to consider the cost of the hardware, the cost of support for the hardware, the cost of the operating system, the cost of the software that runs on top of the operating system, and the cost of support for both operating and application systems software.

There are administrative costs as well. You have to pay someone to install and maintain and upgrade your servers. Depending on what systems you have these maintence and administrative costs can vary greatly.

If you have rolled a custom solution you have to have someone on staff or on standby that understands all the customization that you have done.

I have seen credible published reports that argue each side of the Microsoft vs Linux TCO (total cost of ownership) debate. The reports that I have found the most insightful point out out the cost of the operating system software itself is commonly not a significant factor in the total cost of a system.

[bonkersbobcat]

Originally posted by Hedge
If Windows was free (or close to it) do you think Linux would still exist in the manner that it does today?

Yes it would. The cost is only one factor in choosing Linux. The more important factor for most is the flexibility that comes from being open source.

There are applications where open source is more appropriate and there are applications where proprietary solutions are appropriate.

[don'tdoit]

All I have to say is use the right tool for the job. I work in a enterprise enviro where I admin ~500 NT4/W2K systems (clusters, etc, the whole gambit) and we also have ~500 Solaris/other unix systems in our main datacenter alone. Add in the Mainframe, plus the DR site and other small DC's and we have tons of systems running W2K, NT4, Solaris, other unix, and some linux.

The best part about it? We don't have any idiots working with us who are snobs to any server OS. It's all about the right tool for the job.

[sam]

First off... let me get something straight... if you see any mispelled words, give yourself a cookie and keep reading... please dont think any less of me for cheating on my spelling tests when I was a kid.

There are only two pro's to using windows that I can think of at this moment. (Consider me biased or whatever, but I have used both for a long time)
1) easy to configure/admin
2) supports a lot of commercial software which a lot of companies would normally buy

Now 2 only applies when the software doesnt come on any better platform. As far as the *nix world is concerned, the number 1 Pro for the windows OS, is the Con for *nix. The pro's for *nix OSes are:
1) stability
2) scalability
3) flexibility
4) efficiency
5) cost
6) security


I will admit that if you take a winnt/2k box and brick it up in a closet with a power cord running to it, it will run rock solid till the end of time probably. When I say stability, I mean you can do pretty much anything, and have almost any part of the hardware fail for a *nix OS and keep running. If my video card pukes... screw it... I dont need it to be a web server. So I wait until its a great time for an outage and then shut things down to fix the video. In windows, pretty much anything that doesn't work perfect will cause the rest of the system to stop and require a reboot.

With scalability, you do some serious system structures of thousands of machines and they will scale better than any windows platform will. The only exception to this would be if a commercial company has a product for only the windows platform that works better than the products available for nix. This is unlikely but could happen.

Nix OSes are flexible because they can work with pretty much anything... any data from windows can be handled on a nix OS. There are so many times I have wanted to use something from the linux/unix world on my home windows box but nothing is available to do it... I could always write my own but thats not a viable solution.

Nix is MUCH more efficient than windows... why... because you only run what you want to run. I dont run internet explorer in the background on my linux FTP server... I dont cache my ram to hard drive even when I'm no where near low on ram in linux... but windows will cache to the drive no matter if you have 2 gig of ram and just running notepad. When I need to use a nice gui tool on my linux, I can run it remotely to keep the graphical cpu load off the server box... or just start up X on the server locally, run the app, and shut down X when I'm done. In windows, you're stuck with a large chunk of your ram and some cpu going to your useless gui.

Cost.. the majority of the linux world is completely free... and you are frowned upon if you charge for your linux based software. Unix is not free but it will run the free software. Lots of people argue that windows is cheaper overall because it requires fewer man hours to manage it compared to linux. That is true... if you are a windows monkey trying to admin linux. If you know your shit in linux and you know your shit in windows, you will take LESS time setting up your linux servers than you ever would your windows. Nix OSes are modular... so you can build the server using pre-configured pieces that you just slap together for the need of the server. Windows isn't like that.. you got two options in windows... you either do every step, or you take one step. So you can duplicate a windows server by ghosting the drive, but its only gonna do what the other did... in the nix world you build what you want.

The last pro of Nix is that it is secure. Security is always relative because nothing is truely secure. Windows has hole after hole and there is nothing you can do about it... you have to rely on one company to decide if they want to patch your hole... you have no say in the matter. In the nix world you see a hole, you fix it. This means as soon as you hear from your underground hacker friend that there is a way to gain root access to your box, you go and fix it. Microsoft will try to silence the press and things to try and keep the security hole a secret until they can get their slow gears turning and try to patch it. During this period, the hackers of the world are out there ripping windows servers apart while microsoft is just trying to keep its good image. All platforms can have security issues, but with nix, you have the source so YOU can fix it. And if you're thinking something like, "well if you got a good firewall setup then...", well then you are an idiot cause firewalls only keep out script kiddies.

At home I have a windows box setup for two reasons:
To run my limited software that requires windows (emule).
To act as my honeypot... people spend all their time beating and hacking at that box which I have blocked away from my linux machines for the day it gets hacked.

[sam]

Originally posted by high_jeeves
With a good admin, windows can be as stable as unix.

You are limiting your view to running in a perfect world under perfect situations.. unix handles the imperfect and works as best it can around it... windows just stops with any error. Windows rolls everything up into one huge house of cards... and when that one card is pulled out, it all comes down... nix builds up a hundred little houses.

[sam]

One thing I forgot to mention in my above post..
We just had a birthday yesterday for an HP-UX server that has hosted the entire comapny's email services. What was its age you ask... it was 1000 days of uptime. The box is still serving mail just fine. Lets see a windows box do that. We bought cake and threw a little party yesterday

Load averages: 11.73, 7.67, 8.77
124 processes: 120 sleeping, 4 running
Cpu states:
LOAD USER NICE SYS IDLE BLOCK SWAIT INTR SSYS
11.73 57.1% 0.0% 30.9% 12.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Look at that load the box has been running for basically the past 3 years.

[high_jeeves]

Unfortunately, attitutes like this cost companies lots of money, and time.. most companies have that one guy that swears that unix/linux is the only alternative.. I've worked for those companies, I have seen the problems one sided views can cause... as was stated by don'tdoit above:

All I have to say is use the right tool for the job.

Its really just that simple.. there are jobs where Windows is the right tool.. there are environments, with thousands of users, where windows is perfectly stable..

A prime example: Vegas.. ever been to Vegas? Ever played a video poker/video slot machine.. most of those (all the ones I am aware of), and the server that run them, keep statistics, etc.. are windows based, some even DOS based.. do you see those crash? Could you think of a higer user load, or a more mission critical application?

At a previous job I had, we developed Java code. We had one developer that insisted that Linux was the way to go, and he did all of his development in Linux (even tho our production environment was Windows based)... So, what happened? Well, bugs in his JRE (which were bugs in the interpreter, NOT the code we were writing) caused him to report false bugs, modify code to work around JRE bugs that werent issues in production, and generally cost him time and energy. In addition, when we were looking for a more robust source control environment (we were using CVS, but wanted a more flexible tool), he was screwed.. why? Because the tool we evaluated as the best one out there had no linux client.. so, should the entire company go away from the best tool, because the one guy couldnt use it? No, we switched, and said to him: "Checking in your code is YOUR problem, if you want to run linux, fine, but you have to figure out some way to get it into source control".

So, the moral of the story here: Saying that OS A is always better than OS B is silly.. OS A has its uses, as does OS B.. hell, there are even people that still run OS/2, VMS, and others, because they are the best tool for the job.

Support is a huge issue.. An excellent windows admin is much cheaper than an excellent unix admin... When there are problems with the OS, you have a huge company, and installed user base to get support from.. on linux, you have groups.google.com... Application support is the same way.. free software support sucks.... these are things that companies must be concerned about..

Sales is another issue.. when selling expensive software solutions that are backended on a free operating system, clients can become nervous, because they understand (or atleast think they understand) the underlying support issues inherent with community supported software..

I use both OSs at home, for different things.. for basic office tasks, and web browsing, I use windows.. why? Its better at it.
I use Linux for my home theatre PC, my firewall, and one of my coding boxes.. why?

For the HTPC, I prefer the video configurations available with X, to make is easier for me to output various video modes to my HDTV..

For my firewall: Duh.. better software..

For one of my coding boxes: Cant very well code linux apps in Windows...

If I were to switch all of my machines to either operating system, SOMETHING I was doing would get MUCH more inefficiant, and NOTHING that I do would be more efficiant.. So, in closing, I use the best tool for the job, simple as that..

--Jeeves

[sam]

You have some very good points about real world situations when it comes to using the best OS for the job. I am not fighting this... if you have a boss that says he'll fire you if you install linux on a server but will give you a raise for installing Win2k, then you install windows... it was the right OS for the "job".

Now... back to my arguement... which is the better OS? Lets say we drop the application part of the argument and stick to pure OS. Which OS is more stable, flexible, and efficient? If you say windows, I wanna hear why cause as far as an OS goes, windows is not that great. You are limited in so many ways by going with a windows OS its sad.

Your point about the unix admin and win admin are good real world example... the unix admin is more expensive at this time. The reason its more expensive is because unix is better solution for pretty much anything sort of server, and companies know this.

The CVS argument is one I overlooked because I'm sure it would be difficult to handle microsoft source safe with linux. But more than likely someone has made an MS SS client for linux so that this can be done. If it absolutely comes down to it, run a copy of MS SS using Wine.

As far as the application side is concerned, I dont think we'll ever come to an agreement, so lets just discuss the OS itself.

[TDES]

A prime example: Vegas.. ever been to Vegas? Ever played a video poker/video slot machine.. most of those (all the ones I am aware of), and the server that run them, keep statistics, etc.. are windows based, some even DOS based.. do you see those crash? Could you think of a higer user load, or a more mission critical application?

I'd like to throw another one out there along those lines ... ever use an an ATM ?(other than at a bank) for USA and Canada, all transactions handled between the off premesis ATM and the financial network ... Win based.