OSS Web Stacks Outperformed by .Net?

Gimble writes "eWeek has an article up that looks at the performance of portals using open source stacks and comparing them to their MS equivalents. The article's conclusion is that .Net outperforms the open source stacks, mainly because of its tighter integration, but also notes that running the open source stacks on Windows (WAMP) delivered strong performance." From the article: "Based on our forays into user forums for many top open-source enterprise applications, there are many IT managers attempting to run open-source products on Windows servers--attracted, no doubt, to the benefits and efficiencies of using open source without having to become Linux administrators. The results of our WAMP stack tests indicate that these folks might be on to something."

WAMP vs LAMP

[Poromenos1]

I'm no system administrator, but I have a home box running WAMP (XAMPP on 2003) and it's good enough for my needs. Recently I tried out Ubuntu Server to see what it's about, and I'm tempted to buy a new pc just to run that. When I tried to run mod_python under WAMP it took a whole lot of debugging and configuration (apparently it didn't like the already installed python 2.4), but with Ubuntu it was as simple as apt-getting it.

I would very much like it if I could continue using Windows (because I run other programs that are not available on Linux) but it can't match the simplicity of Ubuntu.

The article is NOT that conclusive

[MK_CSGuy]

I've read the article before it hit /. and their conclusion is that there is no clear winner. .Net outperforms OSS solutions on some tests and vice-versa. The surprising(*) results are how good WAMP performed in some of the tests (if you really want specifics RTFA). Here is a direct link to the tests [eweek.com].

* - I've seen similar results in benchmarks of Mono & .Net, i.e. Mono apps with .Net framework vs pure .Net and pure Mono, so although there is no connection between JIT compilers and web servers performance, the trend is there.
Too bad the article haven't touched Mono.

Re:Retarded

[LO0G]

IIS runs in kernel space? Since when?

The HTTP server component (http.sys) runs in the kernel, but IIS (everything that isn't involved with the HTTP protocol exchange)is in user mode, and has been for a long while.

Re:Linux still wins

[ThinkFr33ly]

Ya, I wouldn't want to pay that either. Luckily, Windows doesn't cost that much money.

Windows Server 2003 Web Edition, 32-bit version - $399 Open NL
Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition - $999 (5 CALS)
Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition - $1,199 (10 CALS)
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition - $3,999 (25 CALS)

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtobu y/licensing/pricing.mspx [microsoft.com]

You can also get licenses for a lot less than retail on eBay, and it's perfectly legal. I've purchased Web Edition for as little as $200, and Enterprise for $1200. There are lots of companies who buy these things in bulk and end up not using them.

In addition, if you're not hosting an external site (customer facing) you can get an Action Pack subscription for about $300 that gives you access to up to 5 licenses for each of these OS's.

See: https://partner.microsoft.com/40016470 [microsoft.com]

Re:Don't forget that, besides the software vendor

[billwert]

.net 2.0 naitvely supports x86, x64, and ia64, fyi.

Re:WAMP vs LAMP

[josath]

You should take a look at colinux. It takes a little bit to get it set up, but it's not too bad. And once you do, you can stay in windows, but have a fast linux server run in the background -- it's not virtualized at all, but it runs directly as a separate process under windows. For me, it is actually much much faster to run colinux than even cygwin! And they have a debian image, so you have the advantage of apt-get there. You can 'bridge' it to your network, so from your perspective, it just appears as a separate PC on the network, with it's own IP address, etc etc.

Check it out: http://colinux.org/ [colinux.org]

Re:Linux still wins

[plague3106]

If you're supposed to be a windows expert, quit now. You are clueless.

First, you'd be the Web Edition of server 2003 for your webserver, no connector needed.

Second, your costs for Sql are not acuate; we are what you'd consider a small business, and Sql 2005 Standard cost us $2,999. Opps, wrong again. (FWIW, the server hardware cost $7,000)

Finally, please cite your refence that you can't use Sql Express for 'unlimted connections in a production environment.' I've failed to find such a statement from MS.

Where's that?

[Just Some Guy]

- your average comp sci college grad already knows visual studio

Depends on your school, I guess, but the average comp sci student at mine would already know Emacs, GCC, a Lisp derivative or two, and BSD/Linux. I literally never once saw Visual Studio on a comp sci lab machine.

Re:Short memories

[tomstdenis]

I was fairly certain the Home edition of XP lets more than one user log in at a time. It would seem odd that only Pro supports it, since usually Pro is part of a domain (and when it is, doesn't let more than one user at a time login.. but this makes sense).

You'd be wrong. When another user remotely logs in, it logs anyone sitting at the terminal off.

Are you asking why MS doesn't port it to Linux? I'd think the answer to that is fairly obvious.

Really? What is it? I thought the VS teams job was to promote the use [and purchase] of VS and not prop up Windows sales.

How is this different to poor driver support with Linux? Doesn't the blame go to the hardware manufacturers? Isn't that who's always blamed when Linux doesn't support X device? This claim doesn't back up the '64bit windows is a joke' theory.

Good point. However, to say that Win64 is better than Win32 would require you to say Linux is better too than win32 [for basically the same reasons].

As for the "costs". It creeps up. When you need site licenses for Windows, Office, VS, etc, etc, etc you end up paying millions of dollars a year.

Tom

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Anonymous Coward]

k thx bye - it's that warm, fuzzy, user-centric communications style that has helped to make open source achieve such widespread popularity over the years.

Talk about a group that doesn't care about the users.

Re:Linux still wins

[Anonymous Coward]

You are throwing away money on SQL server (you don't need it for a website) and CAL for Windows (you don't need them for a website), plus you are buying the wrong version of Windows (R2's new features are for domains).

Re:Linux still wins

[adolfojp]

I might be wrong. Correct me if I am.

You don't need connector licenses to use web hosted applications like web apps and web services. You use SSL to protect the data flow that needs to be encrypted, like passwords, credit card info, or anything confidential. You don't need connector licenses to connect to SQL servers like Postgresql or MySQL either.

This is a common scenario for an e-commerce site, or any site that users can create accounts on. A bulletin board is another example.

If you are using Integrated Windows Authentication for that kind of apps you are limiting yourself to clients that run IE. Use SSL instead and make your app cross browser compatible, the way it should be.

Re:Linux still wins

[corren]

God I hate Microsoft licensing. You're right, you can use Web edition of Windows Server. I've been searching this for hours.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtobu y/licensing/priclicfaq.mspx [microsoft.com]

Here's an exerpt from the preceding page:

The End User License Agreement states that CALs are required for access or use of the server software and goes on to list usage examples. If I am using the server in a way that is not listed (e.g., as an application server), do I still need CALs?

A. Yes. The list of examples in the End User License Agreement is not exhaustive but is instead meant to illustrate some common uses of the server software. If a device or user is accessing or using the server software, a CAL is required, unless:

  access is through the Internet and is unauthenticated, or

  access is to a server running Windows Server 2003 Web Edition, or

  access or use is by an External User and External Connector licenses are acquired instead of CALs.

Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb

[Dark_MadMax666]

I said group policies , not groups. group policies are very powerful management tool in AD (you can use practically for anything -from audit levels on servers ,to controllling ms office setting on user desktops). Oh and I have to use Selinux even to just use group based acl's?

  And webmin is just basic stuff (accounts/groups) - it does not let you do half of what AD tools do.

I did try very hard to find a comparable tool in OSS world to AD, and the closest thing I found was Novell directory ,bu sadly it neither OSS ,neither free and require licensing per client (to heck with it we already own anything neccesary for AD). Trhow in MS exchange integration with AD and you have no real alternative in todays real world to MS AD.

Actually RTFA

[dschl]

Well, most of it, anyways. It appears that the /. article linked to page 2, and the graphs [eweek.com] are linked from page 1.

I've played with Plone a little bit, and it is resource intensive, to say the least. However, when you look at their graphs, eweek ran plone under both Windows Server 2003 and Suse Enterprise Linux. Given that they used the built-in Zope application server as the web server for Plone under both Windows and Linux, I would expect the performance to be equivalent.

When you look at the graphs, Plone on Windows appeared to outperform Plone on Linux by an order of magnitude. Something smelled funny. Like debugging.

While I'm not sure how Suse configures their Plone packages, by default, the Zope packages come with debugging turned on, which cripples performance. If you look at Chapter 2 of the Plone Book [neuroinf.de] by Andy McKay, it states:

By default in Zope 2.7 debug mode is enabled. Note that Plone runs significantly slower in debug mode, approximately 10-20 times slower. To turn this off, add the following line to the configuration file:

debug-mode off

To make the out-of-the-box experience more impressive for Windows users (debug mode slows Plone down on Windows even more than on Linux), it ships with debug mode off already. If you have a Plone site running and want to know if debug mode is running, go to *portal_migration* in the ZMI and look at the variables listed there; this will tell you if debug mode is enabled.

If I were running an enterprise which needed to use something with the features and robustness of Plone, and was about to devote the hundreds (or thousands) of hours required to fill it with content, and tweak it to my heart's content, I'd read the [expletive deleted] documentation, and notice that I might need to turn off debug mode. Sure, eweek said that they wanted to keep everything untuned:

But the point was to test the stacks, not their ideal performance points, which is also why we didn't tune or optimize any of the systems but ran them as close to default as possible.

Too bad that they didn't turn Zope debugging on in Windows, just to be consistent.

This is not a complex tuning or advanced configuration issue. You don't need to use eye of newt, or sacrifice small animals on the night of a full moon to make this simple change. If debug was left on in Linux, it not only invalidates their results, it also shows their conclusions to be utter garbage. A big part of their conclusion that open source software worked better on Windows was based on the Plone example (the best "apples to apples" comparison in their entire test). Eweek said:

Probably most surprising was the solid performance that came from the stacks that contained a mix of a Windows server and open-source components.

Probably most surprising was the solid incompetence that came from the testers, and the failure to configure anything other than a Windows server in spite of readily accessible documentation on setting up these complex systems. The sad part is that some IT managers will rely on these flawed results.

Re:Linux still wins

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry mate, but I hope you don't advise anyone in business about Windows or you're costing them lots of money.

What they need are the Web Edition of Windows Server 2003 (not R2, which doesn't give you any benefit over the base 2003 with Service Pack 1 in a web hosting scenario) which costs $400 and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (allows unlimited connections but is restricted in the amount of CPUs and RAM it supports) which is free.