Interesting wrt switching from IIS to Solaris as web server

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 12:33:14PM +0200, Peter wrote:
> 
> While researching something I happened upon this interesting Netcraft 
> output page. It represents the uptime of the website of nec.com which 
> seems to have switched from IIS to Solaris sometime in 2003:
> 
> http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.nec.com
> 
> Their uptime went up almost tenfold. for reference, here is the same 
> record for microsoft:
> 
> http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.microsoft.com
> 
> which shows that the times resulting from the nec site may not be an 
> accident. None of these run Apache so I found a site that does and it 
> compares favorably with the solaris uptime:
> 
> http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.canon.com
> 
> SCO, who is suing everyone for running Linux, uses it copiously for its 
> own needs all the time (in fact, they never said it was bad, they said 
> it was *too* good):
> 
> http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.sco.com
> 
> Akamai (whom m$ uses to serve ads and many content pages), Yahoo, 
> Hotmail, NYT, you name it, most run Apache. Even IBM runs Apache on AIX.
> 
> In general, with the exception of a few borg affiliates (dell, compaq - 
> whose laptops are notorious for driver problems when running linux), and 
> a few (non-us! - because most us government sites seem to run Apache!) 
> government websites, there is no IIS on the web. Excepting for the 
> unexpected:
> 
> http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.af.mil
> 
> IIS on Linux ?! <grin> Probing further, army.mil is a Mac shop (on Mac 
> OS X) and the us navy runs IIS on Linux. The usmc runs IBM lotus domino 
> on something secret.

If you see IIS on Linux, it usually means IIS on a windows server behind
a Linux based load balancer/proxy/caching accelarator.

> Now, knowing this, how come there are so many websites that require an 
> Explorer compatible browser for viewing ?!

Becasue the web server doesn't create the content, it just servers it.

> Otherwise: How about a comparison of coo based on price/day uptime and
> price/page served (including OS and hardware costs). Each of these 
> factors could be assigned a figure of merit and a general score 
> attained. IIS vs Apache looks about like so:
> 
> 			them	us
> 
> OS+Software:
> 
> 	Win 2003 Server	$1500				1
> 
> 	Linux/Freebsd,
> 	boxed w. CDs		$70~$100		1
> 
> Hardware (1CPU 2x120G HDD, rack case, dual psu, good network card, dual 
> fans etc:
> 
> 			$1200				0
> 				$1200
> 
> Product lifetime (how long until you need a major upgrade):
> 
> 			<2 years
> 				4-5 years (ex: running Apache 1.3 server
> 				on 2.2 kernel is still a valid option)
> 
> Uptime (acc netcraft figures), also represents cost of labor in soft 
> repairs and downtime, probably valid for a small server with medium 
> traffic:
> 
> 			~100days			200 * 365/N (*)
> 				~300days
> 
> Over 4 years:
> 
> 			1200+2*1500+4*2*365=7120$
> 				1200+70+4*200/300*365=2243$
> 
> (*) = represents the cost of each downtime in hours of labor ~= 2 hours 
> per downtime = 2*100$. Other costs are neglected.
> 
> This means:
> 
> Initial investment (w/o labor):
> 			2700$
> 				1270$
> 
> Running cost per year, labor only:
> 			730$ year 1,2
> 			2230$ year 3 (upgrade OS)
> 			730$ year 4
> 
> 				133$
> 
> Network and bandwidth costs are assumed to be the same. How come these 
> things can be compared at all ?! Or am I way off the mark ? Here is a 
> comment on Sun prices (April 2004):
> 
> http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=ACCFFD14-E4A3-46A6-B32C-B118A73667CF

Some managers for some reason believe that having products from a big
vendor means there is someone to hold responsible when things don't work
or to call for help.  Now when they last managed to hold MS accountable
for anything or got any real help out of them I don't know, but they
still believe it works that way.  Apparently you just can't help
certain people understand technology enough for them to actually make
intelligent decisions.  This doesn't stop them from making decisions
anyhow.

Lennart Sorensen
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