[Fwd: Microsoft document comparing Windows 2000 to UNIX (FreeBSD).]
От | Justin Clift |
---|---|
Тема | [Fwd: Microsoft document comparing Windows 2000 to UNIX (FreeBSD).] |
Дата | |
Msg-id | 3DDD21CC.1D5BF92A@postgresql.org обсуждение исходный текст |
Список | pgsql-advocacy |
Hi guys, Thought people would be interested in this. :) Regards and best wishes, Justin Clift -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Microsoft document comparing Windows 2000 to UNIX (FreeBSD). Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 17:58:47 +0000 From: jra@dp.samba.org To: <snipped> Amazing article... written by Microsoft on the Hotmail conversion. http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html (It may be slashdotted right now though). The most interesting section is titled "Problems with Windows", and is an honest look at the differences between Windows 2000 and FreeBSD. It is worth reproducing in full : --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "PROBLEMS WITH WINDOWS Consider the above list of UNIX strengths to be also a list of Windows weaknesses. However, there are some specific issues that need to be called out. 1) A GUI bias. Windows 2000 server products continue to be designed with the desktop in mind. There are too many functions that are either too difficult or impossible to perform using a text-based interface. Why is this important? There are several reasons: * GUI operations are essentially impossible to script. With large numbers of servers, it is impractical to use the GUI to carry out installation tasks or regular maintenance tasks. * Text-based operations are more versatile; an administrator can usually do more to a system (good and bad) than is provided by the restricted, planned methods using the GUI. * There is in place at Hotmail an established secure channel into the production system, using a text-based secure shell interface. * Using a GUI amounts to hiding the true system modifications from the system administrators and operators. UNIX operators like the sense of control that comes from their ability to modify system tables and configuration files more directly. * Operating a GUI through a slow network connection can be too slow to be useful. Although this is less important, it can still be a consideration when there is a need to administer or diagnose a system through a dialup connection. There are, indeed, many non-GUI administrative programs provided in the core Windows 2000 product and in the Resource Kit. The problem is that the collection is somewhat arbitrary, incoherent and inconsistent. Programs seem to have been written to fill an immediate need and there is stylistic inconsistency and poor feature coverage. 2) Complexity. A Windows server out of the box is an elaborate system. Although it performs specific tasks well (such as being a web server) there are many services that have a complex set of dependencies, and it is never clear which ones are necessary and which can be removed to improve the system's efficiency. 3) Obscurity. Some parameters that control the system's operation are hidden and difficult to fully assess. The metabase is an obvious example. The problem here is that is makes the administrator nervous; in a single-function system he wants to be able to understand all of the configuration-related choices that the system is making on his behalf. 4) Resource utilization. It's true that Windows requires a more powerful computer than Linux or FreeBSD. In practice, this is a less important constraint. When you are building a large operation, you will use smaller numbers of relatively powerful systems. The PC systems in use at Hotmail are perfectly capable of running Windows, and the machine's basic power is the same whether it is run with UNIX or Windows. For most of the time, it is only executing application code and most of the extra elaboration is not apparent. 5) Image size. The team was unable to reduce the size of the image below 900MB; Windows contains many complex relationships between pieces, and the team was not able to determine with safety how much could be left out of the image. Although disk space on each server was not an issue, the time taken to image thousands of servers across the internal network was significant. By comparison, the equivalent FreeBSD image size is a few tens of MB. 6) Reboot as an expectation. Windows operations still involves too many reboots. Sometimes they are unnecessary, but operators reboot a system rather than take the time to debug it. For example, a service may be hung, and rather than take the time to find and fix the problem, it is often more convenient to reboot. By contrast, UNIX administrators are conditioned to quickly identify the failing service and simply restart it; they are helped in this by the greater transparency of UNIX and the small number of interdependencies. Some reboots are demanded by an application installation, and are not strictly necessary. 7) License costs. As we will see when discussing load balancing, the license cost of Windows software is a major consideration when converting from the unencumbered UNIX implementations. Although there were no costs to the Hotmail project, as a Microsoft department, the team did consider the software costs in order to make the conversion a useful model for future customers. * They used Server in preference to Advanced Server (no features of Advanced Server were necessary). * They reluctantly used Services for UNIX and Interix, to get access to features that were not adequately provided in Windows. Future releases of Windows will have the features that would make it unnecessary to add those subsystems and avoid their notional cost. * No business analysis was undertaken to determine whether the benefit of the conversion would outweigh the notional cost of the Windows licenses. " --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remember, the above was written by a *Microsoft* business unit :-). My favourite other parts : *) "Windows is too complex to understand at first, particularly during a conversion from UNIX." *) "The rdist mechanism can be used for configuration changes; if the change is simple then rsh can be used. The key fact about UNIX that makes this work is, again, that all system administration tasks can be done from the command line. Windows should provide the same functionality" *) "An application like Hotmail often uses the application access to write statistical data of business interest (such as creation of a new account or sending of an email message). Administrators can use other tools to analyze the logs, archive them, or simply count occurrences and throw the logs away. Typical usage is at the order of one event per second; the high performance associated with the kernel log is not required. There are no features in Windows 2000 that provide the same combination of convenience and configurability" Talking about cron : *) "Although the Windows Task Scheduler service is fundamentally able to look after such jobs, the interfaces provided in Windows does not measure up to the task." This is an internal paper that *leaked* from Microsoft due to poor security, hence its candour and honesty. A sanitized version of the same paper is aparently available from Microsoft TechNet, with all "incorrect" conclusions removed. On IIS vs Apache : *) "Apache running under UNIX supports both kinds of updates very simply. A CGI application can be replaced, even while the old file is being executed, and the next execution will use the new file. The same is true of content. If Apache's own configuration files must be updated, there is a procedure to signal the server to reset itself and reread its configuration, and that takes around a second. Unfortunately, IIS 5.0 does not support either kind of update well." I guess what makes me so angry about this is that I always believed that Microsoft, for all its faults, believed in its own products and services. But when the chips are down and you have to make something *work*, the blinders must come off. Please distribute as widely as possible ! Jeremy Allison, Samba Team.
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