Windows 2003 Server is a more reliable server operating system than Linux, a research firm said Monday. According to the Yankee Group's annual server reliability survey, only Unix operating systems such as HP-UX and Sun Solaris 10 beat Windows on uptime. Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual uptime. The Yankee Group made a point of stressing that the survey was not sponsored or supported by any server OS maker.
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Member since:2005-07-10
Thanks, this should clear up some of the confusions here, especially about uptime:
"Windows Server 2003 and Red Hat Linux with customizations and Novell SuSE Linux all reported roughly equivalent per server, per year outage times of just under 800 minutes. Surprisingly, Red Hat Enterprise Linux standard distribution users reported said they experienced 900 minutes of outage per server, per year."
"Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 recorded the greatest number of Tier 1 reliability related incidents"
"Custom SuSE Linux delivers the highest reliability and fewest minutes -- about 430 minutes of outage per server, per year."
How these results can be spun into claiming "Windows is more reliable then Linux and has a 20% higher anual uptime" is amazing though, to say the least.
Member since:2005-07-08
I wish I could mod you up further, for instance, all the way up into the teaser. This means that Windows has 99.85% uptime, versus Red Hat's "severely lacking" 99.83%. But SUSE "trounced" them all with a dominant 99.92% uptime.
Further, the arithmetic mean often misrepresents the situation. I wouldn't be suprised, for example, if the uptimes reported for Windows had a higher standard deviation, or were skewed left. Windows might have had the most severe outliers, especially given the higher number of "Tier 1" incidents (whatever that means). And what about planned downtime versus the dreaded unplanned type? Maybe sysadmins were taking their RH boxes down for kernel patches at 4:30AM on certain Saturdays.
All I can say is that the 0.02% difference in uptime (versus Red Hat only, of course) is clearly due to a scarcity of documentation. There can be no other explanation, particularly given how the code is completely open for anyone to read. Couldn't be due to second-class ISV support, for example.
Member since:
2005-12-16
http://www.iaps.com/2006-Server-Reliability-Survey.html