My apologies, I had replied quite quickly while running through the office. And re-reading the email and your comments I see your point on many issues, in that I didn't back up anything really, did I.
Both systems IIS and Apache, not to mention Netscape or iPlanet (are they the same now?) etc etc are all basically web server that can be hardened to equally high levels of security. The problem with IIS is that it is up and running almost out of the box and few web admins spend the extra time to go through the full hardening process which basically strips the machine down to being a web server and nothing else. This hardening is quite a lengthy process too as IIS is almost full open by default (it is getting better). So that accounts more for the high security numbers then the software itself. Please do not flame back as I know that it is far from perfect, even Microsoft recognize that!. But it can be made very secure. Buffer Overflows can cause little or no damage if the underlining OS is secured also along with the IIS itself. Known and unknown bugs are something you have with all software. I agree with your point that all the mentioned functionality can be provided by other tools and languages. There is nothing VBscript can do that some other language cannot. My point (badly made, granted) was that a typical Microsoft site setup will most likely be using VBscript if there are ASP pages. What I was saying there was if your existing site, which you mentioned was IIS, was using ASP pages then I was assuming some if not a lot of it was using VBscript, if this is the case then you may have been facing writing a lot of your site to facilitate the new system. Certainly Java, Perl, C++ will do just about anything you could dream of. Media software. I am very aware of many of the products out there for streaming media. I worked for an SGI reseller for a few years, some time back, so I have seen some very nice tools for media streaming, I have also seen the price tag. Yes you said money was not the issue but in the case of media software from the likes of SUN of SGI then it could become the issue. Microsofts offering is a free download and will be up and running very quick and is more widely supported by the hardware required. I have seen a few people set this up in an afternoon to broadcast the world cup matches around the office. I know quite little about the existing offerings on the market from other vendors and how they compare with the Microsoft offering so I will say no more and prepare to be corrected on anything I have said about Media software. Fair?? The load balancing point I made I will back up as follows. I am a Unix Admin as well and I have setup load balancing on SGI, Linux, Windows, and Tru64 to date. In my experience the setup for Windows was far easier. But yes I agree with your point that others will have had a better experience with a Unix system and will argue my point. So lets just say in my experience, the Windows load balancing was easier. I hope this helps more then my last email. Again I will make the point that if all is running well currently then why change. I will back that up by saying that at a recent Linux World seminar two recognized Linux gurus, one from RedHat and one from IBM were asked "should I change from Windows to Linux" and both answered as I have there (yes, I stole their line). If all is running then why change. Again I hope this has been a more helpful email and is not just part of a newly beginning flame!!!! Good Luck with your decision, please let us know what you decide in the end. Trevor Cushen Sysnet Ltd www.sysnet.ie Tel: +353 1 2983000 Fax: +353 1 2960499 -----Original Message----- From: Steve Bremer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 11 July 2002 19:24 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: NT/2000 vs Unix based Web Servers > But you don't have the full > range of toys to use for fancy web sites. Sun's Active One or Soft > Chili (old name) allows you to use VBScript ASP pages but not all > functions are supported and it runs only on Intel at the moment. I don't think the first sentence above is an accurate statement. Can you back that up? They may not offer all of the ASP functionality, but I would bet you can get all of the functionality of ASP using other tools (JSP, java beans, PHP, Perl, etc.). > SO if your site is ASP hungry then IIS is for you. Fair enough. > Apache gives you the > freedom of almost any hardware platform, but load balancing is far > easier to setup on Windows then any Unix systems. Easier for you maybe, but I'll wager that many *nix sysadmins would disagree with you. Personal firewalls > are freely available for both Unix and Windows systems which is a good > idea for a web site. And at the end of the day if IIS is already up > and running and you are having no problems why change. IIS has a really bad security history. Yes, all web servers have had their share of flaws, but IIS has had way more than it's share of flaws. If security is the highest priority for you, I'd look for an alternative to IIS. > Just secure it if you are worried about the security. It can be difficult to secure against unknown bugs (i.e. buffer overflows) that create security holes. > IIS gives you more functionality into > COM objects and streaming media is easier to build with Windows Can you back this up as well? If I may make an observation, it sounds like you're a person who is well versed in what the Microsoft world has to offer, but you're not as knowledgeable about what the non-Microsoft world has to offer. You may be correct, but I'd be a little more careful about making such statements without backing them up with proof. Steve Bremer
