“Sure, Microsoft has its own table comparing the various Windows Server 2003 editions, but that version is incomplete, hard to read, and poorly organized, especially if you’re interested in the features that are specific to the 64-bit editions of this product family. So here is my own comparative table, which I think you’ll find to be much more readable.” Check it out over at WinSuperSite.
Windows Server 2003 Editions Compared
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Notice how, little by little, MS is gradually implementing Unix-like features into Windows servers. Remote administration, for instance. Before you you know it, Unix systems would have no advantages over their windows counterpart. There would be nothing important in Unix that you wouldn’t find in a windows server.
The contrary will not be true, of course, especially with all these elitist people BSD people thinking that the purist, macho unix that served the eighties and nineties is still the way for the future.
If you think the change ain’t gonna happen, look around you. My company acquired a hosting company the other day, and we were shocked to find they were running DNS and even mail on Win2k servers. And no, the admins were not stupid –they had radius and other services running on unix machines, so it wasn’t like they didn’t know what they were doing.
Microsoft is trying to compete so it is not un-precendented for Microsoft to incorporate the most successful parts of Unix into Windows.
Windows is good for the average desktop user who isn’t competent enough to (or is too lazy to) make all the decisions himself.
Windows is also good for servers run by admins who (one or more of the following apply) don’t have a clue, are too lazy to learn how to use a decent OS, don’t care about stability, don’t care about security, don’t have ethics, don’t care about wasting their companies money, don’t care about wasting their own time (in the long term), are too shy to speak up against the computer-ignorant marketing division,…
Indeed, learning how to work with a UNIX-like OS costs time, just like it took time to learn Windows. But once you’ve learned how to think and solve problems the UNIX way, you’ll find that you get results far faster than doing it the Windows way. Ask anyone running a datacenter with both windows- and UNIX servers. One admin can handle about 10x as many UNIX-servers as windows servers, because windows servers require far more maintenance than their UNIX counterparts.
Agreed, maintaining a Windows box is easy, there’s hardly anything to learn. But no matter how good you are at it, it still takes loads and loads of your time. Administering a UNIX-box requires you to hit the books first, but once you get through that, you can do stuff lots faster.
And also the OS you get is better quality; better security, better stability, better speed. Software upgrades are really upgrades, not just “hey, we’ve found yet another way to waste your resources, but it has this really cool new theme on it”-thingies.
And to your example of running mail&dns on win2k: Any admin with only just a little clue should know that MS Exchange is a _disaster_ security-wise. No sane admin would ever have an Exchange box without a UNIX-box sanitizing the e-mails in front of it. The same applies to DNS. DNS is a very important service; You can’t afford to have your DNS servers go down, or worse, be compromised. If your DNS server is compromised, an attacker can easily take your company’s image down by redirecting your website to a porn site for example. So you have to be pretty much out of your mind to run such an important service on such an insecure, unreliable platform as windows.
If windows was as bad as you say, why so many companies, small or large are using it, for exchange, SQL server etc. You’re blowing it completely out of proportions. Just yesterday I got 3 mail notifications from Redhat about security patches. They came every day. Now you go figure what it means to patch a production server every day.
Sure linux and BSD issue lots of patches too. But take a look at the severity of the issues.
No matter how small, obscure, and hard to exploit a bug is (some aren’t even exploitable at all), open source OS’s immediately issue a patch.
If there’s a major hole, it only takes a few hours before the patch is online and everyone is informed. The patches circulate much faster than the exploits.
Microsoft OTOH tries to hide it when a hole is discovered. It takes them far longer to issue a patch (and they have a much larger programming staff…). And for most problems, they don’t even issue a patch. Microsoft only releases a patch when the problem is very serious.
So comparing the number of patches is ridiculous. Compare the number of critical patches. But then again, what Microsoft would call an unimportant problem, might well be called critical by an Opensource OS. So comparing the severity of bugs isn’t easy.
Windows is good for the average desktop user who isn’t competent enough to (or is too lazy to) make all the decisions himself.
Why is it that people go on believing that every person should be a techie? Did you ever think there are very intelligent people in the world (like doctors) who simply have better things to do than chase down RPM dependencies and don’t feel like learning how to use modprobe and gcc flags etc. I also like how people freely compare the strong points of every UNIX like OS combined and compare it Windows as if you could just download “All_Star_LUNIX.iso”.
All users shouldn’t be techies, that’s why Windows is great for the average desktop user.
But you’d expect a server admin to know what he/she is doing, that’s what they’re paid for.
You’d want the doctor that performs surgery on you to know what he’s doing too, right?
What you’re telling me is just politics. 40% of the server room or maybe more is taken by windows servers. Yes, they are easier to manage, and that’s a big advantage, no matter how you look at it. For medium sized companies, it makes a lot of sense to run exchange or sql server for example on win32 rather than oracle or sybase on unix. Compare Unix + Oracle + 5 DBAs to windows + sql server + 1dba ? And the performance is the same if not better for the windows solution, trust me. And for security, it all depends on the administrators.
It may be politics indeed, but politics are important.
You’re forgetting one thing:
Windows servers are easier to manage [for people who are used to a windows environment]. An admin with UNIX-experience will be far more comfortable in a UNIX-environment. You do have a point that most people are used to a Windows-environment though.
But it is a fact that it costs less time for a UNIX-admin to administer a UNIX-box than for a Windows-admin to administer a windows box. So, provided your admins recieve the proper training, UNIX will be easier to administer
And about performance, my experience says the opposite. But then again, performance is also affected by how good a server is set up, so a finetuned windows-server might be faster than a badly configured UNIX-box indeed.
Scenario.. IE6 needs “A patch”.. win98/ME/2K/XP can Run IE6.. MS has to develop a patch for ALL those OS’s (given the bug resides in IE6 for all OS versions). So they have to test against different OS’s ..that takes time. NOW add on to that they have to test the patch with different service packs of NT and perhaps other patches for their OS’s to make sure no build breaks. It’s a trade off bubba. Make sure the patches aren’t going to explode your box or release a crap patch that toasts something critical. Your choice. I’d rather they made sure the builds don’t break personally.
I once tried to setup a dns server using linux (redhat 7.something at the time).
I started by reading the dns how-to (RTFM) http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html.
After a couple of hours of mental torture, i decided i would rather shoot myself in head or drink rat poison and went back to NT.
Uh Have you heard of Webmin?
I just setup PostFix, SquirrelMail, Apache and a MySQL database for contacts etc. last night all setup using WebMin. I could have done it by using bash but I didn’t want to have to chase down typos with only little time to spare.
Now I’m supporting 50 users no problem at no licensing costs. I wonder what that would cost with W2K and Exchange using the Webmail interface?
Windows is good for the average desktop user who isn’t competent enough to (or is too lazy to) make all the decisions himself.
Or for those that need (on the PC platform) an app that does this:
http://www.propellerheads.se/de/products/reason/frame.html
Unix can’t do everything, ya know.
Also,it’s funny how Windows is becoming more like Unix on the server, while Unix is becomming more like Windows on the desktop, instead of each OS just sticking to what they’re good at.
Why didn’t the article include Win 2000 pro and Win XP pro. I only ask because the WEB server looks an awful lot like Vanilla XP Pro.
Why use exchange and SQL? They may be SwissCheese compared to the Unix/Linux counterparts, but they integrate very will with windows and office. Many features of Outlook and Excel depend on Exchange MSSQL combo.
The difference between Unix and Windows servers is like the difference between car collectors and car restorers. Collectors want all the features, the rarest, and best condition for cruisin’ around town gettin chicks. Restorers like the journey of rebuilding the car to exacting specs–once the car is done, they quite often sell it to start another. Unfortuantely MS wants to play both sides–they want turn-key OS and promise the world for cheap, then want to blame setup and maintenance on “inept” admins [you didn’t need that expensive Unix admin anymore:)]
The more I use Unix/Linux the more I like the way it just works. Yes, it’s a b!#ch to setup, but it forces you to learn about a thing before you can use it. Unlike MS with things turned on by default that you have to “learn” how to turn off!
Unlike MS with things turned on by default that you have to “learn” how to turn off!
Many distros also turn stuff on you don’t need on, both Linux and Windows are guilty here.
“Uh Have you heard of Webmin?”
It’s funny that earlier in the thread, how easy things are to administer in Windows is criticized.
Then somebody brings up Webmin for Linux.
I love double standards.
why? becaue the average CEO is a moron, simple as that. They get to be a CEO because they network and their board chums vote them into the “elite group”. Just look at the former CEO of Compaq as the prime example of an idiot that bought two companies with huge intellectual property war chests. He then proceeds to then turn around and sell it to Intel, what a bloody moron. These are the type of people making decisions? Maybe it is about time that these BSA wizz-kids stood aside and bought a clue.
Yeah all that needs to be said is when when windows manages to run windows only servers instead of *bsd for running hotmail thats when windows has matured as a server os. Btw with current windows backbone thats near impossible.
Next thing why do so many idiots compare redhat patches to windows patches.
Check what redhat is patching is it patching the kernel ? or are they bug fixes in a specific program ?
Check your redhat bug fixes and youll find most if not all are programs. When u install linux redhat eg u install shitloads of GNU programs can vary on how much u install or have installed in debian dselect currently i have 9000 odd listed including libraries etc.. so when there is a bug fix its usually a bug fix to one of these programs. But when windows adds another patch its usually something major thats probably been caught on and HAS to be fixed.
Now compare with base install of windows what is actually installed how many programs do u get with windows so of course there will be more bug fixes for linux. When u take all of the applications into consideration but saying that there has been far more critical patches required for windows than linux wonder why that is. Check how many times critical bug patches to sun has been made in the past year and compare to windows. You wanna go into high end servers youll more than likely be dealing with suns on unix end.
Wonderful things are easy to administer in windows.
Yeah they are just point and click. After that u have your box sertup what do u do when u get to next box u come across repeat process. in unix u make the config file and bam there u have it. now move it to next server if u need to rebuild server on a new machine just copy over your configs. And whats problem with using webmin. You all criticize how hard it is to setup serivces and here is a tool that makes it much easier lets not also forget webmin u can set up a service from any browser as long as u have permissions from any where in the system.
Now whats easier sshing into a server or having to use some shit like rdesktop ?
sorry ssh wins hands down or using webmin and doing it over your browser is an even more sane choice.
Please windows and unix desktop arguement is one thing dont even go into servers because windows has lost will lose and will never be able to compete cos their os even for desktop choice is shit end of story.
I dare any windows server admin to go head to head with a good configured linux server. wont say sun cos different hardware.
say quad xeon 2.2 with 4 gigs of ram (hyper threading gives u 4 more virtual cpus.) make that server run linux running apache and bind and run an ftp server along with anything else u care to put in add in a postgress sql server.
Now same identical hardware setup a windows box running same services but microsoft only ie iis, mssql, msftp and ms dns shit.
give them each 10, 000 sites to manage.
See which one is up after 2 months.
Windows just cant do it. after 2 months no matter how well its done it just cant take the heat. Its been shown time and again. and thats if the windows doesnt get attacked in some way or another,
Next test call up your isp what is their promonent os for web site hosting ? what do their dns server run ?
Thats it end of question. Windows users dont talk shit about admining till u actually have done so in a real environment.
End of rant–
feel free to flame my comments so i can laugh.
And dont point out grammatical or spelling mistakes, because that shows you have outright lost the arguement its 6:07 am uk time here and i aint slept yet so there will be shit loads but i really dgaf.