Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 02:40:36 +0200 From: Cynic <cynic@mail.cz> To: rootman <rootman@xmission.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Justification for using FreeBSD Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20010615015821.02135168@mail.cz> In-Reply-To: <01061417404103.00261@blackmirror.xmission.com>
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At 01:19 15.6. 2001, rootman wrote the following: -------------------------------------------------------------- >Hi, > >I don't know if this is the correct list to post to for this. > >Please let me know if -chat, -advocacy or -newbies would be better choices. IMO no list is a good choice for such a question. Anywhere you turn, 99.9% of responses will be biased. >I am a Technical Analyst for a software company of approximately 300 employees. > >About five months ago, news came from upper management that they wanted us to >have an intranet in place at our office. I had been experimenting with FreeBSD >3.4 at the time and already had it running Apache and had a bunch of static >pages in place. > >Our Network Administrator jumped on the wagon and got MS IIS running on one >of his NT 4.0 servers. > >Now, we have a fairly large amount of content, split between his web server and >my Apache server on FreeBSD. > >The manager I had when I set up my FreeBSD box thought that what I had done was >great and was impressed with FreeBSD/Apache. I recently got a new manager who >doesn't know the BSD's from Open Source and wants me to justify why we need to >have two web servers instead of one and why we need FreeBSD/Apache. The work has already been done, and doesn't have to be done again. I think that's enough of an advantage, especially if it'd "be a lot of work". >Basically, she wants to know how FreeBSD/Apache compares to NT 4.0/MS IIS. Besides the obvious (FreeBSD & Apache are free, as opposed to NT & IIS), there is a few things to measure: Apache 1.3 (current production version [you might try 2.0.16 -- AFAIK that's what apache.org runs on]) on unices is process-based, while IIS is multithreaded. That should theoretically translate to better performance of IIS. BUT--but hardware is so cheap these days that this doesn't really matter, especially for intranet. Besides, one (several?) of memory managers in Apache 2.0 is multithreaded, turning this further into non-issue. What matters, is price of the software, and your manager should get ready to keep paying if your company goes the MS path: you get IIS (i. e. ASP) bundled with NT Server, but that's bare bones. Any and all functionality you could imagine exists almost solely in the form of commercial components. And if you ever decide to take the IIS to the internet, you have to pay MS again for an internet licence. >I really don't want to try to fight the battle of getting all of our intranet >content moved to FreeBSD/Apache. This would also be a lot of work, since a >lot of content is already in place on MS IIS. > >So, she also wants to know what the advantages/disadvantages would be of having >two web servers instead of one. Disadvantages: well, that depends on what content dwells on those servers, and if you might want to develop an application across the two servers. That might bring in minor problems, but with WDDX and stuff... I think it's ok. But I see disadvantages in IIS... I mean, you don't have to ditch it, but: If your company ever decides to develop an application, the difference in cost will be prominent. Besides the cost of software I've outlined you need to take into account: * support costs (I'm not aware of MS mailing lists like the ones provided by ASF, FreeBSD, or e. g. PHP Group) * development costs -- ASP developers are more expensive, because you cannot download the software and play with it at night; there's nothing to fill the gap between Access (ouch) and SQL Server which translates to Informix or Oracle in unix world, and Oracle developers, just like the SQL Server ones, aren't cheap * HR costs - people who work with MS products switch jobs more often (this has been covered in wininfo IIRC [http://www.win2000mag.net] recently) than the unix types >I've already obtained some information from the FAQ at Apache.org and from >FreeBSD.org but I was wondering if anyone could provide any additional >examples, info or web sites I could check out. > >I need to be able to justify FreeBSD/Apache and the use of two web servers >or I'm afraid it will be "Bye Bye" for FreeBSD where I work. Is there any real need to move from one to another? Is the coexistence of IIS and Apache on your intranet source of any problems? What features do you need? You know (since we're talking intranet), if, for example, you company mandates iexplore as The browser, you _might_ be happier with IIS, because they account for each others bugs, while you could encounter glitches with the standards-focused Apache (although the Apache developers provide "hacks" like BrowserMatch for all browser bugs they encounter). HTH cynic@mail.cz ------------- And the eyes of them both were opened and they saw that their files were world readable and writable, so they chmoded 600 their files. - Book of Installation chapt 3 sec 7 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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