Operating Systems

Windows, Linux, NetWare, Apple OS/X

By Christine Burns and Keith Shaw, Network World, 02/23/04

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Winning company: Microsoft
Winning product: Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition

Picking the top server or network operating system is like volunteering to sit in the front row at a biblical stoning. You're likely to get hit in the back of the head from every direction.

That said, based on testing of five major operating systems geared to run on enterprise-level servers we conducted this year, Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 comes out on top with Novell NetWare and Red Hat Linux following closely. But note, we base our claims on our testing and acknowledge that they don't necessarily apply across the board.

We tested the enterprise edition of Microsoft's newest release, NetWare 6.5, Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 9.0, SuSe Linux - as a representative of the UnitedLinux effort - and Apple's OS/X 10.2.5. While this set of individual tests was not pitched as a head-to-head comparison, we used the same performance methodology and evaluation criteria across the tests. We also used the same hardware for all tests, with the exception of OS/X running on Apple's Xserve platform.

"From both an installation and management perspective, Windows Server 2003 is as flexible and versatile a platform as Microsoft has ever made," says Lab Alliance member Thomas Henderson, who conducted each of the operating system tests. "Microsoft paid attention to the criticisms of Windows 2000. [Win 2003] really replaces NT without the headaches caused by predecessor Windows 2000 - and it's a killer performer."

Microsoft says it has pretty much rewritten Internet Information Server, its Web server, as an integral part of this release. We believe it. In our maximum TCP connection test, which measures the capacity of the server to respond to TCP session requests, the numbers for Win 2003 came in almost 10-fold higher than those for Win 2000. In a more stringent transactional test, in which we tested static Web page transaction cycles, Win 2003 showed improvements of close to fourfold. In a straight I/O test, we saw a 31% increase in number of I/Os per second on Win 2003 (see review).

In addition to performance, Microsoft has added features that help Win 2003 support Web services, make server management easier, provide meta-directory capabilities and let servers running this operating system play a stronger role in storage-area networks.

Since rolling out Win 2003, Microsoft has issued almost a dozen security bulletins regarding the operating system. In terms of add-on features, the company in September released a free download called Automated Deployment Services, which supports the automatic and simultaneous installation of Win 2000 and 2003 “images” to multiple servers that have no operating system installed. In October, Microsoft delivered Windows SharePoint Services, a part of Win 2003 that lets end users set up Web sites for collaboration and information sharing, and in January released a general beta version of Win 2003 for systems using Advanced Micro Devices’ 64-bit Opteron chip. Microsoft also announced the phased retirement of its Win 2000 line beginning April 1. Watch this space: On tap for testing in 2004 is a detailed look at NetWare 7.0, due for release later this year; we look at how Novell is using technology gained through the recent SuSe Linux acquisition in its product and delivery. We’ll also check out what role the final release of the Linux 2.6 kernel, which came out in late 2003, will play in improving commercial Linux distributions. We also plan to look into some of the 150 new features of Apple’s OS/X 10.3 release — code-named Panther — in the near future to pinpoint any that might be enterprise-worthy. Finally, we plan to pick apart the network features that either ship with Win 2003 or are available as options. Our goal is to see how they might fare against point products that purport to accomplish the same end.

Novell NetWare 6.5 Novell began its move toward Linux with the September release of NetWare 6.5. While the vendor hadn’t yet ported all of its network services to Linux, our testing showed that its preliminary open source add-ons — Apache, MySQL and Perl/PHP — are well integrated, complemented by Novell’s mature eDirectory services and managed comprehensively by NetWare iManager 2.0. NetWare’s evolution as an open source platform is happening quickly and, in our opinion, successfully. Read more. Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 9 This Red Hat software, stacked up against other commercial Linux distributions based on the UnitedLinux platform, offers more hardware support, is easier to configure and offers more security options. However, it was somewhat comparable on performance and management. Read more. Apple OS/X 10.2 Apple’s first serious attempt at a server strategy combines heretofore unusual concepts for Apple: open source methodologies, open (even egalitarian) connectivity, an industry-standard 1U form factor and competitive Web application development services. We found the package to be fast and manageable. Although not quite as polished or malleable as its Linux competition, the Xserve platform coupled to OS/X is a respectable competitor to server platforms in the market. Read more.

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