NT over LINUX?

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Joined: Jan 1970

I work for a medium sized hosting company. All of our servers are running Red Hat Linux. Although none of our customers have requested NT hosting, a few sysadmins have suggested it. I can see no immediate advantages of running a NT hosting operation over Linux. Any thoughts anyone?

Andrew Nicley
http://www.icenethost.com

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My sites run off of Access databases, so NT is my only option. Since I am not allowed to install "unapproved" and non-work-related applications on my machine at work, and I do most of my site & database maintenance during down-times, lunch, etc., there is really no other type of database for me to use.

Access databases are popular, and lots of people know how to "do" Access. But they must be run on Microsoft OSs...

Maybe someday I'll play with MySQL and PHP...

mjames's picture

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I believe if you want to use ASP, you have to have a NT server, not UNIX, so that is the major advantage over UNIX.

Jaiem's picture

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With the current state of the technology, overall Unix/Linux/BSD/etc is generally more stable than NT.

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Linux: You can use PHP as an Apache Module (faster) and ASP as a CGI module (slower).

NT: You can use ASP (which is built into NT, faster) and PHP as a CGI module (slower).

A personal opinion - Linux Rules!!! Laughing out loud

[Edited by Hartmann on Jan. 25, 2001 at 09:43 AM]

Justin S's picture

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More stable? Maybe. Actually, NT is much easier to hack into than Linux. So I guess you could say "running NT is a security risk."

Also, two reasons people would want to use NT is 1) it is the "home" environment of ASP, and 2) it allows Access databases.

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Good points, but one big advantage ifor a hosting company is
total cost of ownership.

What do you pay for NT for a 200 node (small) system centre ?
What does it cost you to keep it running ?

I can't tell you the exact numbers (internal use only),
but NT averages at abou 250 times the cost of linux and
it gets worse for larger sites.

anti
ps:
One advantage I could see is that you can get very cheap NT "admins", while linux operators cost a lot more.
(School-Kids vs. Pros)

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Chad is the person that needs to jump into this thread since his company does both NT and Unix hosting. He can probably offer more exact figures on the higher cost of maintaining an NT server over a far more stable Unix box.

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Has anyone else noticed the trend that most NT hosts are more expensive than Unix/Linux hosts?

Justin S's picture

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Yep. The reason is it costs a lot more to maintain and run an NT server, compared to a Linux server. For example, Linux is open-source, thus making it free, while Windows 2000/NT costs $250. Then there's the Windows 2000/NT server, which is another $800. And that's just getting started!

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I also agree with the cost issue of NT over Linux. I would add that in my opinion Linux based or BSD systems are much easier to set up and maintain than NT or Win2k's. I have tried both O/S's and have stuck with Linux based. It really depends on your clients needs and your tech supports knowledge to really determine which one is "better". They both have their goods and bads. But I do think Linux has the edge as of right now.

X-treme

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Joined: Dec 1999

I can tell you that from the user's point of view, I needed both types. Part of my site uses ASP + Access, another part uses PHP + MySQL.

So far, the NT/ASP site is a real pain. It's not very stable as users need to work within the sessions time limit. I get support requests from users everyday...

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