[Fwd: Microsoft document comparing Windows 2000 to UNIX (FreeBSD).] - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Hi guys,

Thought people would be interested in this.

:)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Microsoft document comparing Windows 2000 to UNIX (FreeBSD).
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 17:58:47 +0000
From: jra@dp.samba.org
To: <snipped>

Amazing article... written by Microsoft on the Hotmail conversion.

http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html

(It may be slashdotted right now though).

The most interesting section is titled "Problems with Windows", and
is an honest look at the differences between Windows 2000 and FreeBSD.
It is worth reproducing in full :

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"PROBLEMS WITH WINDOWS

Consider the above list of UNIX strengths to be also a list of Windows
weaknesses. However, there are some specific issues that need to be
called out.

 1)      A GUI bias. Windows 2000 server products continue to be
designed with
the desktop in mind. There are too many functions that are either too
difficult
or impossible to perform using a text-based interface.

Why is this important? There are several reasons:

 *        GUI operations are essentially impossible to script. With
large
numbers of servers, it is impractical to use the GUI to carry out
installation
tasks or regular maintenance tasks.

 *        Text-based operations are more versatile; an administrator can
usually
do more to a system (good and bad) than is provided by the restricted,
planned
methods using the GUI.

 *        There is in place at Hotmail an established secure channel
into the
production system, using a text-based secure shell interface.

 *        Using a GUI amounts to hiding the true system modifications
from the
system administrators and operators. UNIX operators like the sense of
control
that comes from their ability to modify system tables and configuration
files
more directly.

 *        Operating a GUI through a slow network connection can be too
slow to
be useful. Although this is less important, it can still be a
consideration when
there is a need to administer or diagnose a system through a dialup
connection.

There are, indeed, many non-GUI administrative programs provided in the
core
Windows 2000 product and in the Resource Kit. The problem is that the
collection
is somewhat arbitrary, incoherent and inconsistent. Programs seem to
have been
written to fill an immediate need and there is stylistic inconsistency
and poor
feature coverage.

2)      Complexity. A Windows server out of the box is an elaborate
system.
Although it performs specific tasks well (such as being a web server)
there are
many services that have a complex set of dependencies, and it is never
clear
which ones are necessary and which can be removed to improve the
system's
efficiency.

 3)      Obscurity. Some parameters that control the system's operation
are
hidden and difficult to fully assess. The metabase is an obvious
example. The
problem here is that is makes the administrator nervous; in a
single-function
system he wants to be able to understand all of the
configuration-related
choices that the system is making on his behalf.

 4)      Resource utilization. It's true that Windows requires a more
powerful
computer than Linux or FreeBSD. In practice, this is a less important
constraint. When you are building a large operation, you will use
smaller
numbers of relatively powerful systems. The PC systems in use at Hotmail
are
perfectly capable of running Windows, and the machine's basic power is
the same
whether it is run with UNIX or Windows. For most of the time, it is only
executing application code and most of the extra elaboration is not
apparent.

 5)      Image size. The team was unable to reduce the size of the image
below
900MB; Windows contains many complex relationships between pieces, and
the team
was not able to determine with safety how much could be left out of the
image.
Although disk space on each server was not an issue, the time taken to
image
thousands of servers across the internal network was significant. By
comparison,
the equivalent FreeBSD image size is a few tens of MB.

 6)      Reboot as an expectation. Windows operations still involves too
many
reboots. Sometimes they are unnecessary, but operators reboot a system
rather
than take the time to debug it. For example, a service may be hung, and
rather
than take the time to find and fix the problem, it is often more
convenient to
reboot. By contrast, UNIX administrators are conditioned to quickly
identify the
failing service and simply restart it; they are helped in this by the
greater
transparency of UNIX and the small number of interdependencies. Some
reboots are
demanded by an application installation, and are not strictly necessary.

7)      License costs. As we will see when discussing load balancing,
the
license cost of Windows software is a major consideration when
converting from
the unencumbered UNIX implementations. Although there were no costs to
the
Hotmail project, as a Microsoft department, the team did consider the
software
costs in order to make the conversion a useful model for future
customers.

 *        They used Server in preference to Advanced Server (no features
of
Advanced Server were necessary).

 *        They reluctantly used Services for UNIX and Interix, to get
access to
features that were not adequately provided in Windows. Future releases
of
Windows will have the features that would make it unnecessary to add
those
subsystems and avoid their notional cost.

 *        No business analysis was undertaken to determine whether the
benefit
of the conversion would outweigh the notional cost of the Windows
licenses. "
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember, the above was written by a *Microsoft* business unit :-).


My favourite other parts :

*) "Windows is too complex to understand at first, particularly during
a conversion from UNIX."

*) "The rdist mechanism can be used for configuration changes; if the
change is simple then rsh can be used. The key fact about UNIX that
makes this work is, again, that all system administration tasks can
be done from the command line.
Windows should provide the same functionality"

*) "An application like Hotmail often uses the application access to
write
statistical data of business interest (such as creation of a new account
or sending of an email message). Administrators can use other tools to
analyze the logs, archive them, or simply count occurrences and throw
the
logs away. Typical usage is at the order of one event per second; the
high
performance associated with the kernel log is not required.
There are no features in Windows 2000 that provide the same combination
of
convenience and configurability"

Talking about cron :

*) "Although the Windows Task Scheduler service is fundamentally able to
look after such jobs, the interfaces provided in Windows does not
measure
up to the task."

This is an internal paper that *leaked* from Microsoft due to poor
security,
hence its candour and honesty. A sanitized version of the same paper is
aparently available from Microsoft TechNet, with all "incorrect"
conclusions
removed.

On IIS vs Apache :

*) "Apache running under UNIX supports both kinds of updates very
simply. A
CGI application can be replaced, even while the old file is being
executed,
and the next execution will use the new file. The same is true of
content.
If Apache's own configuration files must be updated, there is a
procedure
to signal the server to reset itself and reread its configuration, and
that
takes around a second.
Unfortunately, IIS 5.0 does not support either kind of update well."

I guess what makes me so angry about this is that I always believed that
Microsoft, for all its faults, believed in its own products and
services.

But when the chips are down and you have to make something *work*, the
blinders must come off.

Please distribute as widely as possible !

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.