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by pavs 5811 days ago
One of the comment refers to netcraft for example of long Linux uptimes. According to http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html Windows have better or just as good uptime as Linux servers. (maybe I am missing something)

The last time I used a MS web-server was ~10 years ago. I have almost exclusively used debian/ubuntu servers most of the time. Apart from the Linux fanboyism, what advantages does MSFT have as a server OS?
3 comments
whacker 5810 days ago
The reason Linux does not show up on those lists is because Linux uses Hi Res timers which make it impossible to guess to uptimes from tcp timestamps.

See http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/accuracy.html#hz1000

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Pengwin 5811 days ago
Exchange; that is quite a huge one for businesses where I am. Many people are just so used to outlook for email that when it comes for them to put in some kind of email management architecture they will always go exchange.
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pavs 5811 days ago
Actually I was thinking more in terms of web-server or any application server that is not tied to the OS. I am guessing you can't host Exchange server on Linux even if you wanted to. So that advantage would't really be an advantage. Its more like you don't have any option but to use Windows server.
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slantyyz 5811 days ago
There are some non-Windows Exchange alternatives that would be transparent to Outlook users, but it's probably an uphill battle selling them to management.
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nailer 5809 days ago
Yes. You'll have better chance selling a new paradigm (cloud based, no clients to deploy, no individual mail server mattering) than a opened version of the old paradigm (which is still controlled by the proprietary vendor).
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slantyyz 5811 days ago
what advantages does MSFT have as a server OS?

I would say support for enterprise apps. A lot of enterprise software vendors still target their development for Windows, and don't support Linux well or fail to test with Linux.

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nailer 5810 days ago
If they're Unix apps, they support Linux - RHEL is probably the most popular enterprise Unix for new projects.
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slantyyz 5810 days ago
The problem is really with testing. I know of some vendors who have versions of their SW for Linux, but don't test them --nearly-- as well as they do for their Windows versions, because most of their customers are running Windows.

And that's even before worrying about interoperability with database servers (i.e. testing on outdated *nix ODBC drivers, etc.)

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nailer 5810 days ago
Yeah, but there's vendors who do half assed Windows versions too - Oracle comes to mind. Ultimately the VB/.net shops like BMC do shitty Unix versions, the big iron companies do shitty Windows versions.
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slantyyz 5810 days ago
You got that right. In the end, the target platforms are the vendors prerogative.

Where you really run into problems is selling a weak Unix version into a Windows-hating shops. It ends up being more of a problem than if the vendor just told the customer "you're better off using Windows with our product".

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nailer 5809 days ago
Hate's a strong word, but yes, having a budget for such things in the past, a vendor coming in with an unpackaged app (or some horrible custom non RPM/deb packaging format), with no init scripts, no syslog support, and sales staff who don't understand the bog-standard RHEL or SLES platform to the point where you have to help them with their presentation, can and will guarantee no sale.
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