Netcraft Says IIS Gaining on Apache 666
benjymouse quotes this month's netcraft survey "In the August 2007 survey we received responses from 127,961,479 sites, an increase of 2.3 million sites from last month. Microsoft continues to increase its web server market share, adding 2.6 million sites this month as Apache loses 991K hostnames. As a result, Windows improves its market share by 1.4% to 34.2%, while Apache slips by 1.7% to 48.4%. Microsoft's recent gains raise the prospect that Windows may soon challenge Apache's leadership position."
GoDaddy and the like? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GoDaddy and the like? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think parked domains are considered "active servers." The Netcraft stats show that IIS is gaining ground against Apache even faster among active servers than nonactive servers (see this graph [netcraft.com]). Godaddy switching to IIS would not explain that.
Or am I misunderstanding what "active servers" are?
Re:GoDaddy and the like? (Score:5, Funny)
Close your eyes and plug your ears. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up people! IIS Lately is just as secure as Apache, Development with
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Installations doesn't require modifying text files....
Ok, you're not the first to write that, but I've got to reply to someone, so it's you.
Show me a shop that goes with IIS because of this and I'll show you a shop with crappy IT managers.
If you are an IT manager worth his payment, you realize that if your admins can't handle a machine on the machine level, then the first time something breaks in a way the GUI doesn't provide a flashy wizard for you will be calling in consultants that take ten times as much per hour as your in-house staff does. If you think o
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Normally this isn't the only factor. Most of the time it is just because they upgraded their servers to Windows 2003 and it came with it so use what came with it if it works good enough...
I'll accept that. I can also accept the reason that if you are a 100% MS shop, it makes sense to run your website on MS software as well.
But still if it is a case where the manager like the ability in case where a change needs to be done and no IT Guys is found a GUI front end will give them a fighting chance for what could be a simple fix then doing it threw a text file.
If your site is so important that you can't wait for an IT guy to come in, then your web site is too important for any non-admin to touch it. Instead of throwing a GUI at someone who might fix the site, but who might also break it much worse than it currently is, you either need to realize that it can wait, or you put your IT staff on call duty.
Yes, I have run sites wher
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I've got a question for you, and everyone, really.
Do you want operating systems and development software to be forever dominated by a single corporation that charges you what they want for each, even if their stuff is a bit better? I mean, fundamentally, that's what pisses me off. Are we really going to still have a vast number of electronic devices running, and having stuff developed for, Microso
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Re:Close your eyes and plug your ears. (Score:5, Funny)
More than that, all /. readers know full well, that PHP is actually very good at sucking
while .net is pathetic, even at sucking.
Re:Close your eyes and plug your ears. (Score:5, Interesting)
Two articles:
Experiences of using PHP in Large Websites [ukuug.org]: from 2002, but the basic PHP philosophy hasn't changed since then (although some specifics have). Oversimplification and pandering to less experienced developers hurts the language as a whole.
PHP in Contrast to Perl [tnx.nl]. From the table of contents:
It's not that PHP is that bad. VB, COBOL and PL/1 were all much worse. It's that there are better languages out there that people never learn because they learned PHP as "n00bs" (you can almost detect a PHP developer by his use of that word) and are complacent with it.
Incidentally, I think it's a lot more mind-expanding to learn two programming languages than to learn one. I see single-language people all the time confusing possibility with possibility in a particular language, or confusing overall algorithms and data structures with particular idioms from their pet language. It's sad.
Re:Close your eyes and plug your ears. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's establish some objective benchmarks for general-purpose programming languages. Can we agree that it's better for a language to be consistent than not? That it's better to be expressive (as opposed to requiring verbose constructs for simple ideas)? Can we agree that separating code into separate namespaces and modules is a fundamentally good idea? Can we say that "spooky action at a distance" is generally bad? Of course, we should include the each with which a language is learned there too.
A language can't optimize for all these at once, so there's always a tradeoff. Perl trades virtually everything else for expressiveness. Java focuses on consistency. Python, a balance of consistency and expressiveness that you could call aesthetic.
PHP's focus is on being as easy as possible to pick up for the inexperienced programmer who just wants to get his personal task done without having to learn too much about the language.
Consider two animals: animal A reproduces by spawning, and easily has 10,000 offspring. Let's say 0.01% of these offspring go on to reproduce, for an average of 10 offspring per animal A. Now consider an animal B that rears 3 offspring, 90% of which survive to have offspring of their own. In the same niche, animal A will have a huge reproductive advantage over animal B, and animal A will drive B out of its niche in a few generations, ignoring other considerations.
Despite each B being better (say, more intelligent, stronger, faster, etc.), the niche A and B are competing in doesn't require the animal to be better. A is better off, since it devotes its resources to reproducing faster instead of being better individually. If that niche were more demanding, B might be better off.
Now translate that idea into programming language terms. PHP is very easy to pick up for the "n00b", giving it a huge reproductive advantage over other languages. Since PHP is so easy to pick up for mediocre programmers, the typical programmer using PHP will be mediocre. It's not that good people don't use PHP, but that these good people are vastly outnumbered.
Yet PHP is astoundingly successful. What does that tell us?
Most web programming is not hard. The niche is not demanding. PHP, the meme, is better off sacrificing being a "good" language so it can spread, and even in its weakened form, it's more than up for the task. PHP is a more fit language for web programming in an overall sense, if not an individual one.
I'm not arguing that the language designers consciously designed it that way, by the way. I'm merely arguing that that's how it happened. When I say that PHP "wants" this or that, I'm just drawing a metaphor.
Other programming niches, by the way, are more demanding. You'd be hard-pressed to find a language like PHP in, say, compiler-writing. There, the task is harder, so the language, and thus the programmers, are hardier. "Better" languages are more fit for these more demanding niches.
We don't look down on PHP because we secretly desire to be esoteric code-wizards. Instead, we look down on PHP because it's like using a rock to pound in a nail: there are objectively better ways to do what it does, and people who use PHP almost universally use it only out of ignorance.
We try to combat ignorance, but when the people you attempt to educate do nothing but resist new notions, the only response that's left is pity.
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Many legitimate hosting sites use a handful of IPs for hundreds or thousands of sites. Counting by IP isn't valid.
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Personally, I've worked with IIS and Apache. I find IIS a real pain to administer, and often difficult to diagnose problems. Apache is a bit more difficult to get up and running, but having easily accessible configs makes it a lot easier to maintain.
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Re:GoDaddy and the like? (Score:5, Interesting)
Counting by IP address is by far, more accurate than comparing hostnames and sites. So counting by IP is MORE VALID than the method they used. Despite your ignorant little point.
If you want to count individual BOXES, then IP is as close as you are going to get without doing a survey or special fingerprinting of the data to find differences in machines. (It will still be too big, I run 122 IPs with about 350 sites on them. The ratio changes all the time due to customers coming/going and reconfigurations...)
I am going to guess, that the fact that millions of "parking" domains are run for the most part on Apache causes the popularity of that particular activity of lowlife scum to weigh heavily in the Netcraft numbers.
Re:GoDaddy and the like? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:GoDaddy and the like? (Score:5, Informative)
Cisco, Foundry, and several other vendors make load balancing [wikipedia.org] devices that allow you to have one public-facing IP distributed to dozens of back-end machines. If you connect to 1.2.3.4 on port 80, you can actually be connected to machine A, B, C, etc.. these machines not necessarily running the same web server software or operating system. In this case the actual public-facing IP is often called a VIP (Virtual IP) since it's not assigned anywhere except on the load balancer.
You're right, it depends what you're counting. If you're counting the number of boxes that run a particular web server, then IPs will probably be more accurate, although load balancing will skew this. If you're counting the number of customers those chose IIS vs. Apache, whether or not they are jammed onto a large hosting server with other customers? Counting by sites will be more accurate there, although skewed by domain parking.
I love you too man!
I'm guessing 121 of those sites are SSL? Name-based multihosting and load-balancers mean you normally only ever need one public-facing IP for non-SSL sites. Better yet, all your back-end boxes can be configured identically, with all of the sites on every box, so you can spread the load evenly. Even if your application needs to keep the user on a particular box during a session, the load balancer can be directed to do so.
I agree (see above about skewing).
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Many legitimate hosting sites use a handful of IPs for hundreds or thousands of sites. Counting by IP isn't valid.
When trying to find out how many servers that are running IIS or Apache or some other http-server, counting IP's are much more valid than counting sites for just that reason.
If one IIS server has one thousand sites, it is still just one IIS server installation.
If one Apache server has one thousand sites, it is still just one Apache server installation.
Any other way of counting is invalid.
The problem comes when one server has several IP's. But that would corrupt the data much less than counting sites on ser
Sites vs IP numbers (Score:4, Interesting)
One IP number can represent dozens of name virtual hosts. So if you count IP numbers you get stats favoring IIS, which has closer to a 1:1 ratio (or worse) of machine to web presence. If you count hostnames, you get stats favoring all other HTTP servers.
And if you limit your survey to HTTP compliance then you eliminate all IIS sites. Add in TCP/IP compliance and you eliminate anything hosted on MS Windows [neohapsis.com], accidentally, out of ignorance or otherwise not just IIS but also Lighttpd and Apache.
Re:GoDaddy and the like? (Score:4, Informative)
People were paid to develop Apache. Open source != everybody worked for free.
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Subsection A, Paragraph B.... (Score:5, Funny)
What?! (Score:2)
Re:What?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally use Apache on my servers. But I could also take my good old time configuring them because I'm not planning on making any money from them.
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Re:What?! (Score:4, Funny)
Be careful of using technology-related sarcasm on slashdot. Somebody's going to read that, mod it as 'Insightful', and mean it.
Re:What?! (Score:4, Insightful)
A "n00b admin" isn't going to be able to master anything in a weekend. They might figure out how to set something up & get it working but mastery is a long ways off.
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A "n00b admin" isn't going to be able to master anything in a weekend. They might figure out how to set something up & get it working but mastery is a long ways off.
Which sums up the whole windos universe problem very nicely.
Yes, I know current versions of IIS don't even compare to, say IIS 4. I also know that Active Directory and all the other nice features enable you to set up a really great corporate network with some tough security.
Problem is: 99% of the windos admins and/or MCSE people don't know shit. There are exceptions. I've met some. They are a minority. Most corporate networks are run by what in other industries would equate to apprentices.
Yes, there are kn
Apache can be easier to configure too (Score:3, Informative)
Some Linux distros come with tools to make setting up Apache easy as well. I just set up a test LAMP stack on my Mandriva desktop and it was very simple, apart form one well known and documented problem (you need to install MySQL before mod_php). All point and click, of course.
Ubuntu can install a LAMP stack for you when you install the OS. I do not find configuration of Apache on Ubuntu so easy though.
Re:What?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's akin to people thinking they are CEO material, just because they can make a power point presentation.
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Really?
This gi
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Michael
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Easy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Based on my experience with MS products, GUIs make really shitty configuration interfaces. You have to click all over the place to set things up, and there is no way to look at very many of the options at a time when they are spread across multiple tabs. Fine when you are following a "run sheet", but a total nightmare when you are trying to troubleshoot something.
Have you ever actually used the IIS or Exchange (or even Outlook) configuration GUI? <shudder>
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Not a very convincing argument.
First, text editors have this really nifty feature called "search". Takes you right to the string that you request.
Second, what if I want to see/verify all settings? What if I want to make sure that Server B is configured exactly the same as Server A? Much easier to scroll through (or diff) a config file than to click on every single frigging tab and subd
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The configuration/managment tools suck. In fact, they're mostly non-existent. To get the most out of Apache, you are going to be editing configuration files by hand.
Now, don't get me wrong, Apache is great, and dealing with the configuration issues is not THAT difficult, and the benefits are worth the effort. But MAN. IIS is *so* much easier to deal with when it comes to 99% of the configuration duties that you need to do on a web server. The defaults are sane,
Re:What?! (Score:5, Insightful)
5% are MUCH harder, and the remaining 5% you just can't do at all. Period. It's that 5% that makes IIS a non-option for me personally. For some of the sites we host, either server would work fine, but in those cases, there is no reason to pay a license fee for IIS.
One of the other benefits of having worked with both apache and IIS is that that 90% of what is normally easier in IIS really isn't if you develop internal tools to do that work for apache. In fact, a single web page with just a few fields on it runs a script that sets up DNS, apache, firewall, database, chroot jail, and optionally even an entire virtual machine, fully configured and running.
It's just "by default" those scripts are not included with Apache like they are with IIS.
Also, once you learn the Apache syntax and understand how things work, it turns out that using an editor isn't any harder than the IIS GUI. In fact, it's usually MUCH easier/faster for anything repetitive.
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I've successfully fixed and restarted a broken Apache configuration on a Palm III going online via mobile phone and IR link (I was on the train, no other option for at least half an hour).
Try that with IIS. And no, that wasn't a minor thing, the company was losing an estimated 500 for every minute the server was down.
There are many good reasons why plain-text configuration files are still a good idea in 2007. One of them is that if you want a flashy GUI go and write one. You can. It's an open, we
Re:What?! (Score:5, Informative)
Here [webtoolbag.com] are several GUI administration tools for Apache.
Re:What?! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are using Visual Studio dotNet as your development environment you are not going to find Apache works too well.
The netcraft survey is bunk because it measures a quantity that has always been irrelevant. In the past the market share of Apache was artificially inflated because most parked domains would sit on Apache boxes. Now Microsoft has identified that as an issue they are starting to get the advantage.
The quantity of interest is not who supplies the Web server but what the development platform is. As a practical matter any code of interest can run on ISS but rather less can run on Apache and less again on LAMP.
And there is no guarantee that the code engine will be visible in any case. You could easily have an IIS back end written in dotNET being served up through a squid front end.
And the rate of use says nothing as to whether the software is any damn good. There are still plenty of FORTRAN and COBOL coders even though the languages are abysmal.
Re:What?! (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a pretty ignorant statement. I know very little about COBOL, but Fortran is a very useful language. It is extremely well suited to numerical and scientific computation. That's a small market, to be sure, but an important one. There's a reason why the most recent standard came out in 2003 and another is in the works (tentively Fortran 2008). There's a reason why Intel sells high performance compilers for two languages: C/C++ and Fortran, which they actively update.
There is no such thing as a "best" programming language. They are tools and you should use the right tool for the job. You can accomplish a given job with essentially any tool (by necessity, any Turing complete language can do anything any other can, including implement the other language) but that doesn't mean they are all created equal. Just because you don't like Fortran doesn't mean it doesn't have uses.
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I wish it wasn't true. It's nasty, horrible, ugly to write and maintain. But it is still true, it's damn fast. I write high performance EM simulators in C++. They're quite fast. On a really good day they'll reach the speed of the equivalent Fortran code. At best. I prefer C++ because I spend at least as much time messing with code as running it. The astrophysics guys here almost all write in Fortran. The protein folders too. If you're
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Re:What?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Since we've converted our systems and middleware development to C#
The simple fact is, whether you like Microsoft or not,
For our purposes, the fact that we use
Apache certainly works, but the question for us is, why use Apache? What is so compelling about Apache that would make us want to give up IIS6? We've used Apache for years and continue to do so to this day, but it isn't doing anything special for us except hosting PHP scripts (the performance of which, even with an accelerator, could be better).
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Well, that is a surprise! Why not drop the apples to oranges comparison and compare c# to Java?
Sooo.... (Score:2, Funny)
From the person above (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the question to ask is if there's any compelling reason not to use IIS. I'm sure people will spew "because it's Microsoft and you dont want your website hacked", but that's not what I'm talking about. IIS has had some problems in the past, but these days it's pretty good.
The question is when an organization already has an investment in Windows, and local domains, management tools etc....is there any reason not to use IIS? Does apache provide anything above and beyond what IIS provides when it comes to general website hosting?
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The biggest reason to use Apache over IIS is that Apache runs best on *nix systems... and so does most of the rest of the best web-oriented server and dev software.
Plus, there are so many great command-line tools (or GUI tools that have a command line mode with a simple switch) which can be (carefully) integrated into web apps that simply aren't available (or don't work as well) on Windows, and open up all kinds of interesting possibilities. Windows doesn'
Re:From the person above (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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IIS has had less than half a dozen security flaws *IN 4 YEARS*, compared to Apache which has had tons.
The fact of the matter is, IIS and
Re:From the person above (Score:4, Interesting)
That's enough of a dealbreaker for me.
Re:From the person above (Score:4, Funny)
In short, I've come to regard it as the primary sign of the coming of the antichrist.
Re:From the person above (Score:5, Insightful)
Lastly, what I find almost funny is that most LAMP devs assume because a site is hosted on IIS that MSSQL is the backend. I've worked on a lot of IIS/.Net sites and about half are MSSQL and other half are MySQL. Each has its advantages and a smart development house will decide based on what it needs its RDBMS to do - not based on some software ethics.
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2. Lower cost. You may choose the lowest cost platform for deployment. If for you that is Windows you can use Windows.
3. Better security options. You may run Apache on secure Linux which does have a higher government security rating then is available for Windows. Or you could run on OpenBSD which does have a very good security history.
4. No vendor lock in. IIS is single source as is the OS it runs on.
It's the standards that matters (Score:2)
My take is that this is just more indication that MS's FUD campaign about patents is working.
That said, I have about a hundred servers, most running Linux, supporting a large complex web site. I see no reason to change to a MS based site, and due to the technology used, it would take a MASSIVE effort to port anyway.
Actually, I think it is something else entirely... (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus the fact that you can now run many more LAMP web sites per server than was previously possible. I mean, figure it out -- how many virtual sites can a person run on a modern fully configured Apache server than they could in say, 1999 before the dot com bubble burst. CPUs cores are something like 4-5x more powerful if not more, hard disk arrays bigger and faster, and the configuration setups probably ten times better. So it takes less Apache servers to run more sites, yes?
Re:Actually, I think it is something else entirely (Score:5, Insightful)
Uptime (Score:5, Informative)
IIS Already Leads Where Microsoft Cares (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IIS Already Leads Where Microsoft Cares (Score:4, Insightful)
By hobbies I mean how many new dot coms are being created? How many people are creating new and nifty content? Some sure, but the vast majority of folks are companies that see the web as a necessity and not a money maker.
The innovative companies need flexibility, power and tunability, which is given by Apache, and the LAMP stack. The corporations that see the web as a necessity just want to put information onto the Internet. They don't care about "social networks." They just care that their catalog can be viewed. And that is the domain of Microsoft, not Apache.
I personally see these statistics as a maturation of the web, not that Apache is loosing market share.
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The ASP Effect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The ASP Effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Does it matter anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lower Quality Admins (Score:3, Interesting)
At the risk of being flamed... (Score:5, Interesting)
Apache is not as modular as IIS (v7 that is). IIS7 you can literally strip it so bare, all it can do is send empty HTTP 200 responses - an absolute shell of a webserver. Not even file html/file-system support. Want disk-access? Turn on disk-access module. Want asp.net? Turn on the asp.net module. Absolutely everything (and really, everything) is a module that can be ripped out.
IIS6+ deals with HTTP requests at a kernel level. That is core functionality such as responses, caching, etc are all dealt with at ring0. Performance is unbeatable.
Oh and security? IIS6 has never been rooted, ever. Add-ons have been (asp.net for instance), but IIS6 has never been.
Oh, and it's locked down by default. And easy to administer.
In my opinion Linux is probably the better OS to host a webserver on, but IIS does spank Apache all over I'm afraid - mainly for the stated reasons above.
Re:At the risk of being flamed... (Score:4, Insightful)
MS is - and always has been - an engineering shop. They never invented anything, and they don't do good design, either. What they're good at is the same thing the chinese are good at: Copy stuff from elsewhere and manufacture more of it cheaper. They're also really good at marketing.
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Have a look - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/technologies/webapp/iis/iis6perf.mspx [microsoft.com]
Thus, even basic file-handling is done by an isolated process running at the lowest level of security by default (Network Service in Win2k3).
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Very useful if you really need to serve stuff out at speeds no network cards on the market can handle.
It still means every bug in it is a kernel-level bug.
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Okay, when you serve a request, you're either running a program (in some way) to generate the content, or you're serving something already on disk, using the webserver itself.
In the first case, dynamic content, the specifics of the server are going to be lost in the noise. We benchmarked my company's webserver overhead at 3ms on a 100ms request, and that's pretty typical of web applications. Getting that down to 2ms is not going to increase overall perfor
Apache on Windows (Score:3, Interesting)
People install IIS so they can use Microsoft's varied and highly efficient enterprise application development tools. The tools are superior for business needs, and so with them come the operating system and web server.
I continue to prefer Apache on FreeBSD (not Linux) as my primary platform if I want stuff to work right from the beginning, but on Windows 2003 or greater or Linux from the same vintage, practical performance (real-world factors that users and business cohorts will notice) is very, very close.
The operating system has grown up and so has the web server. The vast gulfs in performance are no longer so vast. I'm not sure how I feel about this either. Part of me will forever be nostalgic for the computer gang warfare days of the 1980s, when Apple II users snubbed PC owners, Commodore 64/128 users were lawbreaking maniacs, the weird kids used Ataris to make techno and the Amiga people were as annoying as the Macintosh people are today.
Interestingly, from the days of the 286 onward, finding home UNIXen was not as difficult as one might think. First AT&T, then Minix, then a number of ports of Berkeley and AT&T UNIXes came down the path. True, it required top-notch hardware, but that was an artifact of the time when most machines were 1-8 MHz boxes.
Ah, nostalgia!
Don't be complacent; MS have done this before (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody thought Office could replace WordStar, but MS beavered away at it, adding new features people liked and matching existing features, and now it's a distant memory. Same for Excel. The first versions of windows were jokes, but MS kept working on them and took the desktop over. Nobody used Windows as a server at first, but MS built NT and improved it and now they run the majority of small businesses and many larger ones. They had nothing in the database server market, but they bought SQL Server from Sybase and beavered away at it, and now they run a decent percentage of websites and many businesses. They were late to "the internet" but turned things round, built a browser that was the best for a while (IE5), and a web server that is now a serious contender.
Meanwhile Linux gains at the expense of Unix, and Linux geeks sit complacently back thinking they cannot be assailed. In reality the same forces that MS brough to bear on the desktop apply here: ignorance of alternatives, familiarity, PHBs, marketing, training, and, for the most part, the ability to do a decent job. Add to that the ability to easily integrate existing desktop/small business stuff, like connecting to COM objects, SQL server,
It makes me nervous to think that Microsoft could take the server off Unix/Linux as well. I don't think it's as far off as some might think. They are learning from Linux/Unix, in that their newer stuff is taking things like "xcopy deployment" and XML for ocnfig quite seriously.
taking a go-kart to Daytona? (Score:5, Interesting)
In a very large quasi-governmental organization, we have a major application that runs on a handful of Oracle systems and serves double-digit thousands of people with acceptable performance over the last half dozen years. There is an ill-thought-out project underway (a year into development) to replace this with a steaming pile of
How big? Follow me on this one: First they modeled the
Then they decided that WAN applications must mean that we wanted a web application (how silly of us), and they re-wrote it as a web app. Not understanding that a significant amount of those users are off-line and synchronize only once a day, the connection/session limits were quickly saturated even before many users complained that they simply could not connect.
The third solution proposed by Microsoft consultants and one of the largest Indian development houses? Install IIS on every remote user's laptop, and have SQL Server synchronize in the background so that the newly web-ified application can operate offline. Let me clarify that: For these thousands of remote roaming workers in the field, many with a public IP, there is one copy if IIS PER USER for a major MS application. And while every time this comes up the Indian developers mutter under their breath things so foul I didn't think you could say them in Hindi, the MS-employed wonks
So the discrepancy is not that IIS is "gaining" on Apache, but that IIS is being dumped out in the street in every cereal box and bubblegum wrapper as part of the
In the immortal words of Stan Lee: 'Nuff said.
The lure of a truely zero-fuss .Net (Score:5, Interesting)
PHP is neat. Very neat.
Compared to any other SSI solution that is.
...etc.
There is but one problem. The world and especially the web and it's technologies is moving along at a breathtaking pace. Apache is neat, but it's style of configuration is nearly 10 years old from back when XML was considered the hottest thing since sliced bread.
Why isn't there a zero-fuss web interface backend built into Apache that enables me to configure anything I want with 3 clicks of a mouse (with a backend deactivation option of course). Why isn't there a version of PHP with a MySQL driven persistance layer and SQL-free serialisation built right into it?
How come a little bit of marketing, screencasts and a website which, for once, doesn't look like shit, and suddenly people think Rails is the holy grail of webdeving? Rails and the hip project hype they kicked off is a very good thing, but it shouldn't stop just there.
Don't get me wrong. I'm convinced that Microsoft, in terms of available software technology, is an incarnation of evil and should be avoided at all costs unless there is a solid reason not to. 'Client wants Exchange' could be one. But we have to be realistic about this. It takes only a handfull of people at MS with 2 or more braincells, freshly assigned decision power and half a billion out of Microsofts piggybank to build an entire webstack that blows any OSS solution (Zope, Rails, Django and whatnot included) out of the water and into next wednesday, technology wise. Even the most advanced OSS webstack today has superfluos installation fuss one has to go through that should disapear ASAP. There is a lure of a truely zero-fuss
IIS,
Then again, MS bought Godaddy just to raise their level of IIS installs by a few percent, and LAMP machines are extremely Multi-Domain friendly. This Necraft study might just be reflecting this. And I have no doubt that should Apache drop to a real 30%, they'd get their shit together and start building a full integrated OSS webstack that picks up where Zope ends. And not only halfway there. I hope so anyway.
My 2 Eurocents.
Microsoft Gaming Netcraft (Score:3, Interesting)
This page is pretty strange. http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/requested.htm
Conjecture aside, what's happening is all kinds of GPL(ish) projects are growing and the stats are being positioned as a loss for Apache. This is very similar to how NPD intellect royally screws Apple in favor of Microsoft by aggregating all PC's with Microsoft's OS against Apple. Disaggregate the numbers by vendor and you find Apple does extremely well in consumer segments.
Well that explains a lot (Score:3, Interesting)
So as we see this increase in Windows servers on the net, I fear we'll see an increase in incidents of machines compromised for bot membership and on and on.
I'm *NOT* saying that Linux is more secure in this regard. As mentioned above, some compromised boxes are, in fact, LAMP boxes. I'm saying that Windows boxes are an easier target and are targeted more often and compromised successfully quite often with automated measures since they are all typically configured the same ways with the same directory structures, software patches and updates etc. (With the variety of Linux distros out there, there is far less incident of homogeny in system configuration which at the very least slows down automated procedures for compromises and take-overs.)
In any case, I think there's a distinction to be noted in that more frequently targeted doesn't mean less secure. (I hope G.W.Bush isn't reading this...) But given that Linux and Windows security is equal (indulge me), what does it mean when Windows is targeted more often?
HELP! My LAMP is now LLPR! (Score:5, Funny)
Help me! Seriously, I need a new technology.
I like LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) as much as the next want-to-be web developer out there.
Started with FAMP (FreeBSD), to LAMP, to LAPP (PostgreSQL)...
But now I'm ridiculously on LLPR! (Linux, Lighttpd, PostgreSQL, Ruby)
Can someone please develop something with a vowel?!?
I've never had any trouble configuring Apache (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never had any trouble configuring Apache. But then, I'm a geek. The problem isn't so much that Apache or PHP is losing out to IIS or .NET ... the problem (as we see it) is that geeks are losing out to suits.
Re:Google Web Server (Score:4, Informative)
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/05/01/may_
IIS dying out in Germany (Score:5, Informative)
There is also a serious discrepancy in that other stats seem to show IIS on the last moments of extinction [securityspace.com] in hi-tech zones like Germany. NetCraft report doesn't really have any explanation of the figures it presents.
What's really problematic is that over time NetCraft has become less informative. No mention has been made lately of what the changes in market share are attributed to. In years past, even a percent or two got a few lines of explanation or analysis. Did one of the service packs or 'security' upgrades install and turn on IIS for all Windows users? Or are more domain parkers and cybersquatters using IIS in the server identification string?
This downturn started last year when MS paid GoDaddy to swap out (or claim to swap out) its domain parking. GoDaddy did get the OSS community to lay off by throwing some chump change to OpenSSH and we can see the result of these last 12+ months. The money did some good, but if it's just a one-off donation, then it's questionable whether then benefit offsets the harm. Either way it's funny to see GoDaddy decision makers thinking they can buy indulgences [thehostingnews.com]. Maybe it ought to become an annual fee.
Re:IIS dying out in Germany (Score:5, Insightful)
Going to karma hell for this but, tell me, is paying someone (if they did) better or worse than Bruce Perens faking host headers [netcraft.com] in order to boast Apache ratings? Or is that even sillier than your assertion that MS sneaked IIS back on by default? (which of course wouldn't make a big dent anyway as more Windows boxes are behind firewalls than in front, and those ones already exposed on port 80 are probably doing it on purpose).
As the Perens stunt shows netcraft may not just be relying on host headers at all as you seem to think.
China, China, China! (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200706
now, if we go by countries we see immediately who is responsible for the boat of ISS, (see website above for source)
Germany: 5% ISS, 92% Apache
US: 21% ISS, 74% Apache
Canada: 25% ISS, 70% Apache
India: 33% ISS, 63% Apache
China: 67% ISS, 28% Apache
Now, since China is adding more net users on the web faster than any other country, we see the problem. China is skewing Netcraft.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200707
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do they actually compare the HTML and count anything above a 95% similarity as one site? That is what they would have to do in order to be analyzing it as you assume they are. Anyone going to that trouble would, as GP suggested, provide some modicum of an explanation as to their methods if for no other reason than to say "S
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
SP2 firewalls it by default, IIRC. Also, XP is not a server platform, so I don't know why you'd compare 2003 to XP as servers.
It's common enough for MS patches and upgrades and services packs to turn things on or off, change configurations or just plain break something. So it's happened before, and since most of us have to work and don't have time or interest to follow the details of MS Windo
Re:IIS dying out in Germany (Score:5, Insightful)
IIS not installed by default in XP (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually NT was their server and desktop versions. NT Server was the sever version, NT Workstation was the desktop version.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone installing IIS on their home computer is more than likely aware of Apache and didn't install it for whatever reason.
Maybe the decline in Apache is due to the leaps IIS has taken in both reliablity (4 of the top 10 hosts with the best reliablity are running W2k3), supportability, expandiblity and security. Not to mention OOTB it can do a lot more than Apache does OOTB.
Re:Should be tagged with haha (Score:4, Insightful)
"What? Evidence that Linux lost marketshare in something? UNPOSSIBLE! Looks like I'll have to make something up as usual!"
Are you that insecure in the software you use that you have to see any minor percentage point change in something as either the end of Microsoft or anti-Linux FUD?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
MIcrosoft Learns (Score:5, Interesting)
In the case of IIS 7, they have finally decided to create a Windows webserver in the modular blueprint of Apache. The betas of IIS 7 show that performance and security are better than anything that's come before it -- not just any IIS, but any webserver. Hell, the guys at Zend are saying that Zend on IIS 7 will be the most robust way to deploy PHP! And this is all built on the evolved form of Windows 2003 server, which has been the most secure O/S ever released by MS, something that a even a n00b with one weekend of training can lock down as tight as your favorite flavor or Linux.
Rather than stand around and argue about it, y'all need to get to work on Apache 3... and get ready to play catchup to MS again. The insecure days of IIS 5 are long gone; you've got your work cut out for you.
MIcrosoft Charges Too (Score:4, Interesting)
In my particular environment (high-availability, low-cpu count) microsoft license costs are extremely high compared to the same feature set in Linux. If you move into high-availability high-cpu count the costs are astronomical.
I have a sneaking suspicion that either:
A. Microsoft is gaming the system explicitly. (ex. Netcraft adjusts their collection methods)
B. Microsoft is gaming the system implicitly. (ex. the Office back end crack pipe.)
The idea that even an idiot parking domains would **pay** for something they previously got free is implausible.
OT Comment
I suspect some of the