OSS Web Stacks Outperformed by .Net? 349
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."
Left out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Left out? (Score:2, Offtopic)
*MySQL fans can kindly keep your flames to y
Re:Left out? (Score:5, Interesting)
They seem to have a generalized poverty of data. Their charts seem absurd to the point of being straw men. I mean, come on - I don't think there's anything seriously wrong enough with Linux that WAMP would have a score of 12 transactions/sec, competing with Windows, whereas LAMP would have a performance of 2. My experience with Windows vs. Linux has always been that they are similar in terms of speed from pure processing tasks to 3d games. Sometimes Windows does a little better, sometimes Linux is better. But they're usually in the same ballpark. The numbers are just too neat. It's like they put up a chart saying that Republicans, Germans, Koreans and Canadians have sex once a month, whereas Democrats, Brazilians, and the British have sex five million times per second.
Moreover, the whole rest of the article is morass of poetic circumlocution. My gut feeling as somebody who works with words a lot is that they're trying to obfuscate something with a giant wall of banal text. I don't know exactly what that is, because I don't feel like reading all of it, but if I had to guess I'd say that the real thing to take away from this article is that anybody can set up .NET and a Windows box, but that it requires a little bit of patience and research to make Linux work properly - research that these people were not willing to do.
Re:Well, even if Windows WERE faster, so what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Default: very different for MySQL on Linux and Win (Score:3, Interesting)
Net result: use default MySQL and you get a setup that inherently strongly favors Windows, because Windows setup is optimzed while the other isn't.
I don't know whether they made this mistake or not. If they did
Re:Short memories (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but with modern windows, what exactly is missing that dis-qualifies it from being a real multi-user OS? And FWIW, I've found VS2005 to be much better than any development studio I've tried for linux.
If you buy Windows to run AMP servers
So you think its better to have servers which don't integrate with your corporate network? $400 for Web edition isn't a whole lot to anyone running web farms.
Linux and BSD are more efficient to work with in server contexts
Your opinion, there's no fact to that. I replace my linux server at home with SBS 2003 because its easier to manage the network using SBS2003 than it was with Linux + SMB.
work better with 64-bit processors [Win64 is a huge compatibility joke atm]
I've heard quite differently; indeed, some people claim XP64 is the best desktop OS, even better than 32bit XP. I don't think the 64 bit servers are suffering huge problems either.
don't require you to call India each time your HD breaks and you need a re-install.
A bunch of FUD here; mearly replacing an HD doesn't require calling anyone, and alot of shops image the drives every night so that if there is a failure, they slap on the saved image and are up and running again in no time.
Heck, in BSD/Linux doing a ghost of your system is as simple as burning a tarball to a DVD.
You can easily save an image of a Windows installtion as well.
No need for 3rd party ghosting tools and praying that Windows lets you "get away with" using your OS...
Go ahead and spend hours and hours tarballing your server; the fact is that it would be faster to just create an image of the HD and burn that to a DVD. There's no praying involved; my former employer had great success doing such restores. And putting down a new image is faster than un-tarring a file to disk again.
Re:Short memories (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the grandparents point is that though it is technically a multi-user OS, it isn't a very good one. The kernel level schedulers on Windows give a really poor response under multiple sources of medium to heavy load.
I'm not aware of that many "development studios" for Unix. There's a couple, like eclipse and such, but many Unix writers tend to work a different way. In line with the Unix philosophy (rules 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 if you're interested) there's a lot of people who keep the editor, compiler, linker etc all seperate. If you're looking for a "development studio" for Unix, I think you're looking for the wrong thing. We don't have a Start Menu either.
So you think its better to have servers which don't integrate with your corporate network? $400 for Web edition isn't a whole lot to anyone running web farms.
Well, I'm sure anyone could have pointed out that large companies with large budgets can afford the $400 dollar cost. But that $400 dollars is a cost, and to a lot of companies, it's a big cost. It's an even bigger cost when many difference licences have to be purchased. (Obviously, Unixes have costs of their own, but the costs tend to increase in line with the use being made, or the complexity of the "solution" etc, and up-front licences payments (which are immoral, in my opinion) normally end up being a far less weildy solution than Free Unix is) And in my, and the grandparents opinion, it's an unjustified cost.
Your opinion, there's no fact to that. I replace my linux server at home with SBS 2003 because its easier to manage the network using SBS2003 than it was with Linux + SMB.
Of course it's opinion! The whole damn subject is opinion! As if a (very very poorly run) test on the speed of a server is the last word on the subject! There's little universal fact to your personal experience either.
I've heard quite differently; indeed, some people claim XP64 is the best desktop OS, even better than 32bit XP. I don't think the 64 bit servers are suffering huge problems either.
Have you actually used it? WinXP 64bit really doesn't work very well at all. I wouldn't know about 64 bit servers, but 64 bit WinXP is really not something that works very well.
Go ahead and spend hours and hours tarballing your server; the fact is that it would be faster to just create an image of the HD and burn that to a DVD. There's no praying involved; my former employer had great success doing such restores. And putting down a new image is faster than un-tarring a file to disk again.
It's possible to use either image or tar with Unixes. Tar is useful because it's easy to use diffs and delta compression on backups then. Tar's also useful when you only want to backup a certain area; such as
Re:Short memories (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Short memories (Score:3)
It used to be quite the opposite. It's the exception now because DOS [and mos
Re:Long dreams (Score:3, Interesting)
And note, they wouldn't have to port all the
WAMP vs LAMP (Score:5, Informative)
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.
I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb (Score:5, Funny)
If M$ wins, its fud and was paid for.
If apple wins, its because of Steve Jobs.
If OS/2 wins, we're trapped in a parallel universe.
Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't as if they haven't been caught buying studies before. So the distrust is well justified.
Plain and simple fact is if Microsoft could compete with the usefulness of a solid Linux distro their product would speak for itself. In some cases this is true but in essentially all technical senses Microsoft is just a plain loser.
Most of Microsofts problems is that they don't listen to the customers. I mean sure they listen to Dell, RIAA, MPAA, maybe even IBM and other
Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb (Score:3, Interesting)
To Dell/HP/Etc - You must not sell naked or Linux systems or your the price of OEM Windows gets larger. RIAA/MPAA - If you don't do what we like...we won't play with your DRM schemes. Government - If you stop pressuring us we will donate to campaign funds and let you keep using Office.
Go look at MS campaign fund history..
Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference being: Linux zealots post cooked results for free, because they just hate Microsoft that much.
Unfortunately, posting it slashdot doesn't make it true. I've seen m
Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Justified perhaps, but automatically accurate... not necessarily.
Ok, fanboy.
So when MS doesn't add new features they are slammed for not innovating enough, and when they do add new features they are slammed for contributing to bloat that you don't want. People bitched about IE6 not having tabs, etc. Firefox came out and MS finally realized it had to update IE so it added a lot of features people were asking for and the most-heard comment on Slashdot after IE7b2 was released was "it's ugly". Face it: Microsoft just can't win.
You sorta' answered yourself there.
Not every product is a winner. MS historically doesn't release every single product as a beta and quietly stop promoting the ones that suck. Instead they release final versions and some fall on their face. No company has a perfect record.
The problem is not that criticism isn't warranted, it's that MS can't win no matter what. If they release a weak or buggy product they get slammed, but if they take too long to release they get slammed. If they don't add new features they get slammed, but if they add new features it's called bloat. If an MS product gets bad reviews the reviewers are being honest, but if they get good reviews the reviewers are obviously being paid. For years MS got slammed for security issues, and they beefed up SP2 and suddenly there were waves of "but it broke my application" complaints. The list goes on.
Microsoft has gotten so big that they are in the impossible position of trying to keep everyone happy. I'm not particularly a Microsoft "fan", but I hate this wanton "Micro$oft is teh suxors!1!" b.s. OSS fanboys need to grow up and realize that Microsoft can't go back in time and correct the sins of the past, and since it is a monopoly it can't just genuinely screw its customers and break every file/application by releasing a new version of Windows that corrects all the problems of the old versions but offers no legacy support. They have a tough balancing act to do and, while they're not perfect, they're getting better.
Re:I'm going to have to use the /. rule of thumb (Score:2)
I use WAMP for development and LAMP for production. The main reason is that the server admins want Linux, but can't provide me with
Nice thing about OSS (Score:2)
Re:Nice thing about OSS (Score:2)
Apparently it's different if it's open source, huh?
Re:Nice thing about OSS (Score:2)
Re:Nice thing about OSS (Score:2)
I use a full windows setups (Win 2k/2k3, IIS5/6, SQL Server,
I also use a WIMP setup for our inhouse documentation Wiki site (Media Wiki running on Windows/IIS5)
And I use LAMP for my personal web site, primarily because that's what the host offered.
I've never had a problem performance whys with any of them so long as they are properly configured and coded. A poorly coded site will have performance issu
Re:Nice thing about OSS (Score:3, Funny)
Someone needs to be fired in the marketing department...
Re:Nice thing about OSS (Score:2)
Not that bad of combination for organizations that already maintain a Windows/IIS web configuration. Media Wiki is designed for LAMP, but if you poke it with a stick for a while, it'll run on WIMP.
-Rick
Re:Nice thing about OSS (Score:2)
Re:Nice thing about OSS (Score:2)
-Rick
Hits per second ~20 ?? (Score:3, Funny)
Running a web server over an RF port from the wrist watch to a phone scewed the results a bit, but its the only communication mode they had.
The smartphone was the only client they had handy to test with, since the test was carried out on a long flight.
Amazing stuff!
Worst... Benchmark.... Ever... (Score:5, Insightful)
For the
Not to mention the fact that using a portal application in your tests means that there is really very little way to isolate if it was a poorly written portal application or a crappy framework that the portal application was built on that's causing perf issues.
It is very difficult to test framework vs framework, but this is just about the worst way one could even attempt it.
At absolute best, this compares portal frameworks on various platforms. Even if they were trying to do that, they did a piss poor job.
Re:Worst... Benchmark.... Ever... (Score:2)
MindCraft would be the "worst" so far. (Score:5, Interesting)
#1. NO tuning was done on the LAMP stuff. None at all. They ran the stuff "out of the box".
#2. They didn't write their own app. That means they didn't test the SAME processes on each system.
#3. They didn't bother to find WHERE the differences were. Is it in the IP stack? Is it in the OS? Is it in the scripting language? Is it in the app?
How bad can "research" be and still be published in "eWeek"? There wasn't any research done for that article.
Microsoft has, in the past, taken various short-cuts when IIS was the server and IE was the browser. Is that the case in this "study"? Are the other "stacks" "slower" because they follow the protocols?
You won't know because they'd didn't LOOK for the REASON behind their "results".
At least MindCraft was paid to do poor research.
Re:MindCraft would be the "worst" so far. (Score:2)
something like - an html form with 255 input fields, and then write all that data to your database, then serve it all up in another page performing x, y,
If I may expand upon your post ... (Score:5, Interesting)
#1. Set a price limit. You can set multiple limits ($1,000 vs $5,000 vs $25,000 vs $100,000 vs $1,000,000+). The key concept here is that you get different characteristics as your budget increases/decreases. What characteristics does each "stack" offer in each price range? Yep, this does give the advantage to Free stacks (Free like speech, free like beer). Deal with it. In the Real World the bottom line is the bottom line. Each team gets to spend the money however they want to.
#2. Get the "experts" to tune each stack. BUT they must document each modification they make, including WHY they made that modification (what testing did they run and how did those test results tell them what mod's to make) AND they are only allowed to make mod's that can be found via public websites (no secret tuning parameters that are only known to the organization writing that software) AND they aren't allowed to touch any source code. They get what everyone else gets.
#3. The fun part. Each team gets to pull apart the work of the other teams. Even if your solution is faster for the specs given, how much wiggle room do you have? Is faster and fragile better than slower and stable? How much "slower" is acceptable for how much more "stable"? Can the other team defeat your security (network access only)?
#4. Freeze those systems. Then, over the next year, patch them and re-test them. Do the patches break the "tuning" that was done?
Now that would be an informative test process (and would result in lots of articles and interviews for the magazine publishing it).
Yeah, you can run Linux / Apache / MySQL / perl on a single drive workstation and get damn good performance for less than $300.
But that will be completely different from Oracle / Java on a cluster of Suns costing $10,000,000. And not just in the number of boxes you'd be running.
Re:MindCraft would be the "worst" so far. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:MindCraft would be the "worst" so far. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here (Score:3, Funny)
I'm just saying that, in this case, the benchmark is completely useless. It would be like conducting a drug trial to determine if a particular drug works, but letting the participants also take any other drugs they want in addition to smoking some crack on the weekends.
Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here (Score:2)
Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here (Score:2)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735619034/ [amazon.com] (ASP.NET 1.x)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201760401/ [amazon.com] (ASP.NET 1.x)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735621764/ [amazon.com] (ASP.NET 2.x)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735621772/ [amazon.com] (ASP.NET 2.x)
Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here (Score:2)
Re:Benchmarking Strategy Doesn't Matter Here (Score:2)
Nobody is asking for a bulletproof study. What we want is a study that (a) uses a valid sample size and (b) limits itself, as near as possible, to a single well-defined variable while controlling for all the other variables. A study with a tiny sample size is worthless. A study with 45 variables is worthless. Things th
Re:Worst... Benchmark.... Ever... (Score:2)
I figure if Slashdot can steal stories from Digg, I can copy my responses back and forth in the forums.
Test components too variable (Score:5, Insightful)
How is the statement that
Re:Test components too variable (Score:3, Insightful)
Suppose you have two stacks built of different components, and they benchmark the performance of the stack. (Which is what happened, apparently.)
What they CANNOT say is, "The difference in the stacks' performances is attributable to their different database engines". Because for all we know, it was some other component of the stack that really caused the difference in performance. However, the article didn't make this mistake.
What
Re:Test components too variable (Score:2)
Their methodology certainly wasn't valid. That makes the measurements invalid, which makes the reasoning little more than hard worked for conjecture.
At the very least they should have written software that did the same task for each stack.
Instead, they threw in an unknown variable with the portal software... each doing it's "own thing" and god only knows what that thing is
Re:Test components too variable (Score:2)
Sharepoint however has got a sizeable portion of native code - hence equating Sharepoint performance with
Retarded (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Retarded (Score:3, Informative)
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:Retarded (Score:2)
This is yet another article heading that makes it look to me that Zonk is here for a bit of flamebait. If this site was to expound the coolness of MS Windows without substantiation it would have been called \. - perhaps Zonk is here to balance and change it into |.
Re:Retarded (Score:2)
Girly man coder (Score:3, Funny)
ASP.Net is pretty nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ASP.Net is pretty nice... (Score:2, Interesting)
Classic ASP is a horror from hell and I think soured many from using MS web solutions.
Re:ASP.Net is pretty nice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now to talk about 2.0, well, MS really focused on productivity with this release. I'm really ha
Re:ASP.Net is pretty nice... (Score:3, Funny)
Who let the marketing guy in here?
Linux still wins (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Linux still wins (Score:2)
I understand (and agree) with your consternation, but your price is 50% more than actual retail for 2003 Standard R2... averages at just over $1000 retail with software assurance if you aren't a volume buyer. Volume buys take this down to around $600-700. If you want Enterprise, then you are paying more like $1400-2200.
Heck, even RHEL costs $$$. Circa $4500 for ES.
If you can run a free distro and get
Re:Linux still wins (Score:4, Informative)
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/howtob
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:Linux still wins (Score:2)
You can get the web edition server [microsoft.com] for less than $400 USD [amazon.com].
I can usually buy two or three of those with the money that I save in development time. Your results might vary, everybody likes something different. If I had to buy 50 of those then I might consider using something like JBOSS or LAMP.
Re:Linux still wins (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's the price breakdown for a SINGLE webserver that allows external connections to authenticate (non-domain, say a e-commerce site with user accounts) against a SINGLE SQL 2005 Database. Sql Express is free, however it's not licensed for unlimited users in a production environment.
Web Server (Prices from CDW.com):
And don't forget that you'll need SOME hardware to run that OS. Even barebones boxes with no data protection will run you $500 a box.
So, to start a basic e-commerce site on the legit, you're talking roughly $9,000 for windows and $1,000 for Linux/OSS.
TOUGH sell for Microsoft for the little guy.
Re:Linux still wins (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Linux still wins (Score:3, Informative)
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.
If you are using Integr
Re:Linux still wins (Score:3, Informative)
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 exa
Re:Linux still wins (Score:2)
I noticed that there wasn't a graph comparing the cost to run each system as tested, including software costs.
Especially something like... what would it cost to deploy an OSS solution with the same performance as the wamp solution?
What is the cost per transactions per second?
Must be something enterprise customers don't care about...
Re:Linux still wins (Score:2)
Re:Linux still wins (Score:2)
Integration vs. Cost effectiveness (Score:2)
I don't know a damn thing about any of this but it says to me from a layman's point of view that invidually maintained and installed components are just not as efficient as a completely integrated suite of applications, and this is exactly how the ignorant bosses of knowledgeable admins will see it. Though I was interested to see the rise in the use of OSS in the workplace.
I could have gone down the whol
Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, if I write my code to run on PHP and MySQL, I can swap out the underlying OS and web server. I could run it on a Linux box, Sun blade server, Dell running Windows, Xserve running OS X server... it's kinda nice.
If I go with
Plus, if each piece is seperate, it's less likely that any one piece will bring the whole OS down. I like being able to SSH to a box and jus
Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness (Score:3)
Where
Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness (Score:2)
You know "we" are not non-biased...
Anyway, I'll just say that my linksys router running Linux can do more than 1 transaction per second on web apps with Python. How these guys can pull off showing that that's the speed they get for an actual server is beyond me...
Actually, it's not... it's e-week... They have always been very MS-centered.
Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness (Score:2)
They would probably tell you that the article lacks so much detail as to even care about trying to determine if it means anything.
Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness (Score:2)
I don't know a damn thing about any of this but it says to me from a layman's point of view that invidually maintained and installed components are just not as efficient as a completely integrated suite of applications...
What are you basing this belief upon? Is there some logic and data to back up your belief or is it just what you believe because the Bible says so somewhere?
I'm being a little facetious here, but it is pretty obvious to any critical thinker that no one aspect of any software will determ
"performance"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy Throughput! (Score:5, Funny)
*No math was done to come up with the 17MB figure.
Also, no animals were harmed during the writing of this comment.
Re:Holy Throughput! (Score:2)
The do provide the other numbers [eweek.com] that show the numbers in pretty graphs.
Re:Holy Throughput! (Score:2)
The article also didn't mention that each portal was tested on a system using their minimum specs.
So, the lamp portal ran everything... including the db... on a 386 with 16MB of ram and a modem.
While the wamp stack required three quad processor servers with 16GB RAM and 10K SCSI RAIDS with 4 gig E network cards each.
Point is... the article doesn't mention a lot... hyperbole not withstanding.
With t
The article is NOT that conclusive (Score:5, Informative)
* - I've seen similar results in benchmarks of Mono &
Too bad the article haven't touched Mono.
Re:The article is NOT that *informative* (Score:2)
This tells us little to nothing about the tests... only their results.
Big difference.
(it isn't your link that is bad, the article is lacking)
I don't really understand what they are testing? (Score:2)
I don't think it is FUD, but I do get the impression that they are trying to invent a benchmark that really doesn't make any sense. Different PHP projects can have vastly different performance; and I'm not sure that Plone compares to Sharepoint server. I wouldn't know, though, because I don't use Sharepoint, and I have little/no idea what they did in the test.
Anyone have a closer hunch?
Test Goals? (Score:2)
Can I run exactly the same benchmark against the different por
Re:I don't really understand what they are testing (Score:2)
Just guessing, but...
They needed an article that would appeal to a certain kind of advertiser and it had to fit in the smallest space possible.
Linux administrators (Score:2)
Thank $DEITY I did try getting Linux desktops on my home network and shortly after settled for apt-based distros. Linux administration is a breeze compared to windows. Desktop users' life is also good if peripherals are recognized, especially if by OSS drivers. Your mileage may vary cause most of you were familiar with windows in the first place, I came from good old macos. Anyway I don't care to try and convince you with examples. Those who
Re:Linux administrators (Score:2)
Actually, the general consensus I've seen is that .net is a joy to use, more or less no matter which of the .net-managed langua
I only skimmed the article (Score:2)
stacks? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wikipedia: stacks [wikipedia.org] - Nope
Google definition of stack [google.com] - Nope.
Urban Dictionary: stack [urbandictionary.com] - Nope.
Dictionary.com - stack [reference.com] - Nope
Google search "IT stack" [google.com] - Only hit is the eweek article.
I think they made up this term.
s/stack/platform/g
or
s/stack/framework/g
Re:stacks? (Score:2)
Yes, you're apparently the only one.
No wonder Linux sucked! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, they ran an outward-facing Zope server (after being explicitly told not to) and the performace was lackluster? Go figure. In the real world, they'd run Zope behind an Apache or Squid proxy (as per every installation recommendation I've ever seen) which would immediately boost throughput by an order of magnitude. In short, using Zope to dynamically generate static content instead of caching the results whenever possible is insane, and pretty much no one does it. They also apparently forgot about ZEO, although I'm not sure how you can be savvy enough to get Zope up and populated without knowing about it's built-in clustering.
Apparently they had no interest in any tuning whatsoever, to the point of de-tuning it by installing it in an explicitly unrecommended configuring. And then it lost. Go figure.
Re:No wonder Linux sucked! (Score:3, Insightful)
Trains and planes (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Comparing J2EE/.NET to PHP/Plone is bollocks. Problems that are solved with J2EE/.NET today are so complex that choosing PHP/Plone instead is no option. It's like comparing trains to airplanes.
3. Where are tables, figures and graphs?
All well and good but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows Servers/App languages doesn't seem to scale well. It's a *great* way to get your business up and running asap. But you run into growth problems and need to switch to an enterprise solution (oracle, as/400, java, linux, etc.) once you reach a certain size. I still prefer windows as a desktop OS for now. I still slightly prefer windows office to openoffice. I think part of that is years of using office makes me comfortable but openoffice gets closer every day to replacing it for my home and personal use. I will probably not buy another version of office unless it is super cheap ($50/included free on the PC I buy).
It depends on configuration and how you measure it (Score:4, Insightful)
On equivalent hardware, with equivalent RAM, if you're running MySQL with the MyISAM engine it will blow away SQL Server performance for most queries, but at a cost: You do not have stored procedures or transactions. When you switch to InnoDB you gain those but take a performance hit and that advantage over SQL Server disappears. On the plus side, MySQL is free/free (unless you need the commercial license - which in turn depends on whether you bundle it with your application AND how you interface with MySQL AND the "license" of your software).
As far as
- What is the architecture and how efficient is the code? If you use, say, DotNetNuke as an example, it's a good argument AGAINST using
- How much RAM can you throw at it, and is caching appropriate for your application? With fully dynamic web sites where pages may display random content (rotating images, randomized quote of the day, etc.) unless you override the caching mechanism, the cache can effectively break your web site. However if caching IS appropriate and/or you override it when necessary,
- (related to above) are you comparing a poorly-coded, inefficient, beastly PHP application to a lightweight highly-optimized
What is my point? Unless you are comparing apples to apples, it's FUD or at best an amateur comparison. The way to test it is to implement the same task with a similar (as possible) architecture on each platform, with the application on each fully optimized, with both IIS and apache/tomcat/whatever fully tuned and streamlined to pull out every bit of performance from it, then load test both of those using the same sorts of tests. Comparing a highly-optimized single-purpose application to a general-purpose portal platform is not a fair test.
Also: Even though the article says "Even the most ardent PHP fans will admit that PHP is not designed with performance in mind," PHP performs damn well considering it's heritage, the fact that its primary platform is "a patchy server" and that it is FREE.
Why would one choose LAMP over
Where's that? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Pure and utter Bullsh*t. (Score:4, Insightful)
Zope is an object relational application server, making it slower than anything else running standard DB's. Technologically wise Zope is ten years ahead of Sharepoint - this is payed for with performance hoging and heavy-weight memory usage. 2Gigs is not enough for running Zope/Plone in a serious production enviroment.
Sharepoint is a monolithic built-to-fit solution that was grown over the course of almost a decade and finally has turned into something that doesn't crash every odd hour and - at last - performs the way it was supposed to back in 2001.
Keeping in mind that Zope was allready working back in 2001 and actually hasn't changed all that much since then. The entire redo - Zop 3.0 - still is in developement.
Sharepoint is usually used for CMS purposes, while Zope is usually used for highly abstracted business application developement.
Nobody in his right mind would get the idea to build an ERP system with Sharepoint.
Bottom line:
These guys didn't know what they where testing.
Cost (Score:5, Insightful)
To test the .Net stack, we ran Windows Server 2003 R2, SQL Server 2005 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Across the board, this configuration performed very well, with the top overall average throughput (by far) at 4.59M bps.
Quick check.....
$2,792.00 (Froogle Directron) Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise, 25 Clients
$5,489.18 (Froogle Non Academic) SQL Server 2005 Complete
$5,619.00 (MS Website Retail) SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Server License with 5 CALs
$1,124.00 (Dell) Suse Enterprise Linux 9 With Server Hardwarex ?c=us&cs=555&l=en&oc=MLB1580&s=biz [dell.com] Couldn't find Suse Enterprise 10
Integrated LAMP Stackhttp://www.novell.com/products/linuxenterpris eserver/lamp.html [novell.com]
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.asp
Hmmm, Could train a couple of Windows Admins with $11,000. Better yet just Hire a good Linux Admin.
To a large degree, we credit this strong showing to the high level of integration that exists among the components of this stack. While most of the open-source and Java systems are developed independently of each other, each of the .Net components is designed specifically to integrate and perform well together.
Even if the .Net stack had bombed convincingly in these tests, it would probably still maintain popularity in many companies.
Some people (PHBs) will never come around.
But its strong showing should give companies confidence that the .Net stack will handle most high-level enterprise needs.
For more than $12Grand it better blow away the Free Alternatives and configure itself and require zero admin.
I know I will get slammed for not using TCO but I don't believe those numbers at all. In my experience it takes the same amount of time for day to day maintenance. And when there is a problem (and there will be, no matter which one you choose) It costs me less time and therefore money to bring back up the Linux box.
Cost is not the only factor in a buying decision but is a factor, and if performance is arguably equal than it is a huge factor.
a curious mix of flawed logic (Score:3, Interesting)
"Probably most surprising was the solid performance that came from the
fud.alert: LAMP runs better on Windows.
Why would anyone move to Windows to use Open Source? Don't you still have to pay per simultaneous connection.
"Microsoft's
How does 'tight integration', which is a function of how easy the sysop maintains the system, affect the efficiency of a running 'stack'. Does the stack know it is better 'integrated' and therefore runs like a happy bunny?
"JBoss Portal is relatively immature
fud.injection: JBoss on CentOS is immature. JBoss on Windows is better.
"we credit this strong showing to the high level of integration that exists among the components of this stack. While most of the open-source and Java systems are developed independently of each other, each of the
fud.injection: open-source and Java don't perform well together. Open Source runs better under Windows. Oh please Mr. Manager don't move off that Windows boxen.
"Neither the open-source nor the Windows communities seem to be able to accept a marriage of open-source server components and Windows operating systems"
What licensing restriction do the current ms.EULA put on Open Source projects developed with\and for Windows? Name any possible benefit that would be obtained by running Open Source on Windows? And don't mention the ease of use GUI. A proper sysop writes scripts to maintain the system.
"there are many IT managers attempting to run open-source
How by any logic is it easier on Windows? This totally fails the logic test. Apache on Windows requires the same kind of config as Linux. Name any Open Source app that is easier to maintain under Windows. Provide concrete examples not opinion.
"JBoss on Windows far outpacing its Linux brethren"
I'm sure Marc Fleury would be interested in how Microsoft managed to get JBoss running faster on Windows.
"Enterprise IT managers shouldn't hesitate to look into the option of deploying open-source stacks on a Windows Server platform."
Yea, remember you still have your yearly tithe to pay Redmond. That's five seperate times in that article that you advised people to stick to 'open-source' on Windows. I do believe we have now all fully gotten the sub.text.
it's not "stacks", it's portals (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I know that Plone is a dog, and XOOPS may be popular on Sourceforge, but I don't think it's the most obvious choice for building a high performance portal using PHP. So, using these two as the basis for testing is silly.
The fact that JBoss Portal on Windows outpaces JBoss Portal on Linux has a simple reason: JBoss isn't fully open source; crucial parts of it (namely the Java runtime itself) are under Sun's control, and hell will freeze over before Sun bothers to do a good job implementing Java for their competitors' Linux systems.
As for things generally running faster on Windows, that's implausible. Differences between raw Windows and Linux system performance are at most in the single digit percentages, so if they saw any significant differences between the same applications running on top of the two platforms, either the application vendor spends more time tuning for Windows (as in Sun Java), or the testing labs screwed up.
In fact, the whole test is really ill conceived: none of the "portals" they compared provide the same functionality; it just doesn't make sense to test them against each other. Overall, this test mostly seems to test the competency of eWeek, and they aren't doing too well.
Actually RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
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:
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:
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 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:And if... (Score:2)
It is important to note that strong is not stronger and, in fact, could mean weaker. Couldn't it?
Also, in our imaginary world, the article might say: The conclusion is that OSS outperforms
Re:Not so fast (Score:2)
Well, they don't tell us the overall performance, but they do tell us what a basic install will do. In theory, enterprise linux distributions should be detecting the CPU and installing the proper kernel image/modules/etc. NT manages to configure itself properly no matter what [supported] CPU is in the bo
Re:Don't forget that, besides the software vendor (Score:2)
Re:Don't forget that, besides the software vendor (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't forget that, besides the software vendor (Score:2)
And, furthermore, what's the problem with being tied to a completely open architecture as opposed to a proprietary architecture? (heaven forbid! this is
Re:Like saying 'A Ferrari outperforms a Mini' (Score:4, Insightful)
A better analogy is this, because they refused to do any tuning on the OSS technologies: They bought a Mustang GT and a Nissan 350z and put them in a race. Then they told the driver of the Nissan that he could only use first and second gear. It would be nice if the Nissan was so dramatically superior that it could win even with that handicap, but since even a Ferrari would lose to a Mustang GT with just two forward gears at its disposal, it didn't happen.