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It's not necessarily clear to me that the *nix OSes you mention are more reliable or faster. I won't argue about the speed since I haven't seen any head-to-head comparisons on that front, but on server-class hardware with server-class drivers the reliability should be pretty good. There's a large set of stress tests that must be passed for shipping components in Windows and all of the server-side stuff is heavily dogfooded at large scale by Microsoft itself. Windows Server is actually extremely solid when administered as carefully as you'd administer your *nix server.

If Windows is so easy to configure and maintain, and FreeBSD and Linux are so hard (which is one of the points vaguely made in these comments today), why is it that Windows only has one position in Netcraft's top-ten list?

You do have a point, to be sure, but it is highly irrelevant in regards to Netcraft's results, unless you're saying Windows CAN be as good as Linux and FreeBSD, but isn't because Windows admins choose to be lazy admins.

I disagree with your comment because there is quite a bit of data that suggests Unix-based operating systems are more reliable and faster than Microsoft's offerings. As someone else has already mentioned, Netcraft's results are quite telling.

Microsoft hardware certifications don't mean much, as is evident by their "Of course this dumpy laptop will run Vista" stickers.

Dogfooding your software, while good for finding bugs and increasing stability, does nothing in the way of ensuring your software runs as well as your competitors' software does.

Edited 2008-02-28 21:11 UTC

IÂ'm not sure about that. Ease of use can also be subjective to some degreee. Yes, Win servers are easier for 'anyone' to come in and install it, tinker with it and even get it running just by reading the friendly wizards.
But sooner or later some serious administration is going to be needed and then the 'friendly' wizards become incomplete or cryptic or vanish from screen... and if you have to end up messing with the registry and using obscure undocumented tools... well, you might as well be hand editing your *nix conf files, it will be easier and you will be confident that it wonÂ't kiss your install goodbye if you make some mistake.
I think there is a point were ease of use actually flips sides, at least for some people it does.

Edited 2008-02-28 00:55 UTC

I completely agree. I like OS X a lot, and I'm sure Windows has its uses too, but I really don't care for either one of them on the server. I find that GUIs and wizards get in my way. To me, Linux and FreeBSD are both much easier to configure for server tasks than either OS X or Windows.

That's ok, keep the fancy user interface and pointy clicky admins. I know too many Windows admins who don't know fully what they are doing - often just opting for 'what works' without an ounze of understanding and constantly battling the problems that arise because of this. On the other hand I know very few (if any) *nix admins who don't understand their tools because, well, they can't just click and hope, and their open source nature means the stuff is much more community orientated.

Of course there are plenty of capable Windows admins, but they are a minority. You could argue it comes with the territory of being the dominant industry force - more less-skilled people trying to get jobs whereas skilled people are more choosy - but I think it has something to do with the closed and opaque nature of the product.

Why would it have anything to do with the closed nature of the product? Admins don't typically read source code, so open or closed source is pretty irrelivent for them.

I think it has more to do with the user friendly gui tools all over the place. A trained monkey can admin a windows network, albeit poorly. It takes a basic level of skill to accomplish the same thing in the UNIX world.

IT is a really tough job that takes experience, skill, and knowledge to do properly, no matter what the platform.

You must be kidding. There are admins which have to resort to hacking binaries in order to fix bugs which the vendor has promised to fix, but failed to deliver.

Having access to source code is one of the most potent weapon an admin has against hard to troubleshoot problems, or for performance optimization. Sometimes, changing the code doesn't even factor in the equation, as it is also used to understand how the implementation differs to the documentation when it produces unexpected behaviour.

Most Admins work in shops with support agreements. Those support agreements become useless if you are hacking binaries and the like to work around around problems. I haven't known too many admins who go about their job hacking things like that. Hacking up scripts, sure. Hacking up executables, not so much

There is something seriously wrong if an admin has to be looking at source code, let alone changing it.

You are right in that it is not completely irrelivent, it is just mostly irrelivent. The only way an admin would be looking at source code is if the software failed horribly, there was no alternatives, and all other support channels failed.

I'm currently dealing with someone who thinks he can switch an outdated environment to AD and set up several 2k3 clusters simply because he's got the MS certification books.

Sometimes the click and play nature of MS servers gives a false impression of ease. Then when you try to do something fairly advanced, you enter a whole new territory and you can't click your way out of it anymore.

Even MS understood that, which is why they came up with that powershell thing and lets you mess with WMI from shell/script commands.

And frankly, I prefer to dig through a well commented .conf file on linux to change an advanced option I don't have a GUI for than to try to figure it out in the registry.

It really depends on where you are coming from. If you are talking about business, up front cost is only one of the things that go into the descision making process, and most of the time it is not even the most important.

If you are talking about home use, that is a completely different matter.

Personal use would refer to "home" in my case.

Microsoft already have a product for the personal server market and I doubt they expect huge take up.

If you think this has anything to do with the home server market in any shape or form shows your limited knowledge.

Telling us you wouldn't use a $999 product for your home server is about as useful as a snooze button on a smoke alarm. Well done though.

Edited 2008-02-29 09:35 UTC

If you manage to sign up for the 2k8 launch wave, you can get a free copy as part of the swag

I've had the chance to try it out and I must admit it is just as responsive if not more so than Windows XP on the same system. I was really surprised after my experience with Vista and how dog slow it ran. The only thing I did not like was the new Windows Explorer. Like Vista it does not like to remember settings, and refuses to remain in double click mode for some reason. I don't like how it underlines every folder you point at, and overall it just seems unfinished and sluggish. A third party file manager is one cure for that. There is also a problem with getting programs to install on it, many consumer apps and even some drivers will refuse to install on a server OS.

That being said, Vista SP1 is based on the exact same kernel, so it is probably possible to turn off a lot of junk in Vista and get it running just as lean as 2008, though I think I'll stick with XP instead.

Why not just leave Linux out of Windows-related topics, even just for once? >_<

"Why not just leave Linux out of Windows-related topics, even just for once? >_<"

Because this is a major upgrade to anyone who has not been using the lastest version or two from Microsoft (reasons of costs or just that the present setup was working ok).

If one is going to do a major upgrade of one's servers then it makes sense to compare it to what else is available, and why one should consider the non-MS options.

From what I was reading, Hyper-V is going to be released as an addon later this year. Hopefully they will be able to clear up some of the performance issues.

A question about the swag, what version of 2k8 do you take home? Usually it is a not-for resale pro edition. (our launch here is in april)

What we got was:
- Win 2k8 enterprise (both x86 and x64 DVDs with their license key) 1 year eval.
- Sql server 2008 CTP (x86 and x64 DVDs) with a coupon for a 1 year eval of the final one when released.
- Visual Studio 2k8 Standard full version ($250 on Amazon)

There was also an eval version of Expression and Vista with SP1 but I'm not sure of the duration.