Skip to content
  • Categories
  • Recent
  • Tags
  • Popular
  • World
  • Users
  • Groups
Skins
  • Light
  • Cerulean
  • Cosmo
  • Flatly
  • Journal
  • Litera
  • Lumen
  • Lux
  • Materia
  • Minty
  • Morph
  • Pulse
  • Sandstone
  • Simplex
  • Sketchy
  • Spacelab
  • United
  • Yeti
  • Zephyr
  • Dark
  • Cyborg
  • Darkly
  • Quartz
  • Slate
  • Solar
  • Superhero
  • Vapor

  • Default (No Skin)
  • No Skin
Collapse
Code Project
  1. Home
  2. The Lounge
  3. What is the most reliable and popular web server (hardware and software)?

What is the most reliable and popular web server (hardware and software)?

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved The Lounge
windows-adminquestionsysadminhardware
66 Posts 26 Posters 0 Views 1 Watching
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as topic
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
  • J John M Drescher

    apache on linux. Apache is the most used web server (although IIS is catching up). Even microsoft.com ran on apache just 2 years ago. I would say one of the big reasons for its popularity is that it fits very well in the rack server and vps ([^]). One of the big benefits is to run many web servers on their own virtual machine inside of a rack server without the overhead of having a windowing environment installed. On top of that linux machines do not need to be updated frequently. And the updates can be totally automated (cron job to update 1 time a week) if you want that.

    John

    modified on Monday, November 17, 2008 10:33 AM

    D Offline
    D Offline
    Dan Neely
    wrote on last edited by
    #31

    In addition to what Nemanja Trifunovic wrote, the only major MS site to run on an OSS platform was hotmail, which was written on a BSD platform and continued to be until a few years after MS bought the original creators out.

    Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

    J 1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • T Tomz_KV

      I must have done something wrong. My servers never run over 6 months without a rebooting. iisreset is more frequent than I would like. Do most of your sites host interactive web database applications?

      TOMZ_KV

      N Offline
      N Offline
      NeverHeardOfMe
      wrote on last edited by
      #32

      Yes, they are - almost all. I have one server of my own, hosting just a handful of sites, and the rest of my client base is hosted with a third-party hosting company. Some are on shared hosting solutions, some are on dedicated servers of their own. But all (bar one!) Windows... My own server will re-boot by itself preiodically anyway as automatic updates require, but apart from that, I never have had to re-boot it myself to resolve some problem or other. It just purrs away quietly all by itself, doing it's own thing.... as for the hosting-company shared servers... all I can say is, I don't often have downtime problems. And as for their dedicated servers, it's the same story as for my own one: I have never had to go in and manually re-boot any of them.

      1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • N Nemanja Trifunovic

        Tomz_KV wrote:

        I often hear people say that IIS on Windows server is not reliable and not suitable for a big site.

        Fortune 1000 companies never heard that, apparently[^]

        Programming Blog utf8-cpp

        D Offline
        D Offline
        Dan Neely
        wrote on last edited by
        #33

        Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:

        Fortune 1000 companies never heard that, apparently[^]

        Anyone have a more recent survey? That one stops in mid 07.

        Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

        L 1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • T Tomz_KV

          I often hear people say that IIS on Windows server is not reliable and not suitable for a big site. What is reliable and popular one? Does anyone know if there is any analysis/statistics done on different web server hardware and software?

          TOMZ_KV

          P Offline
          P Offline
          Paul Watson
          wrote on last edited by
          #34

          More how you use it that matters. There are some awful Apache powered sites and some great IIS powered sites (and vice versa.) Other factors are more important (licensing, administration, deployment, support costs, skills, resources, architecture, load-balancers, DNS, firewalls, CDN, client-side performance etc.) If you really want an answer then; You are on a Microsoft website which says to me you are a .NET coder which says to me go with IIS. I choose LAMP though as that is where my skills are. Actually more LAMR (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Ruby on Rails) than LAMP but LAMR sounds... well... lame.

          cheers, Paul M. Watson.

          T D 2 Replies Last reply
          0
          • P Paul Watson

            More how you use it that matters. There are some awful Apache powered sites and some great IIS powered sites (and vice versa.) Other factors are more important (licensing, administration, deployment, support costs, skills, resources, architecture, load-balancers, DNS, firewalls, CDN, client-side performance etc.) If you really want an answer then; You are on a Microsoft website which says to me you are a .NET coder which says to me go with IIS. I choose LAMP though as that is where my skills are. Actually more LAMR (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Ruby on Rails) than LAMP but LAMR sounds... well... lame.

            cheers, Paul M. Watson.

            T Offline
            T Offline
            Tomz_KV
            wrote on last edited by
            #35

            Nicely summarized, Paul! :)

            TOMZ_KV

            P 1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • T Tomz_KV

              I often hear people say that IIS on Windows server is not reliable and not suitable for a big site. What is reliable and popular one? Does anyone know if there is any analysis/statistics done on different web server hardware and software?

              TOMZ_KV

              M Offline
              M Offline
              Miszou
              wrote on last edited by
              #36

              MySpace runs on IIS[^]. Is that big enough for you?

              The StartPage Randomizer | The Windows Cheerleader | Twitter

              P T 2 Replies Last reply
              0
              • T Tomz_KV

                Nicely summarized, Paul! :)

                TOMZ_KV

                P Offline
                P Offline
                Paul Watson
                wrote on last edited by
                #37

                BTW if anyone tells you IIS is not good for big sites; MySpace. You might not like MySpace but they do massive load* and it is all .NET and IIS. They gave a talk at Mix'06 and the primary issues were the same issues LAMP users face; software and hardware architecture. * Still way more than Facebook. Don't let Facebok fanboys mix you up, MySpace kicks their arse in every area including making money. OK, OK, except growth. Facebook has better growth but it will top-out just like MySpace has. And they still won't be making any money.

                cheers, Paul M. Watson.

                N 1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • M Miszou

                  MySpace runs on IIS[^]. Is that big enough for you?

                  The StartPage Randomizer | The Windows Cheerleader | Twitter

                  P Offline
                  P Offline
                  Paul Watson
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #38

                  heh, geniuses think alike and all that ;)

                  cheers, Paul M. Watson.

                  N 1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • P Paul Watson

                    heh, geniuses think alike and all that ;)

                    cheers, Paul M. Watson.

                    N Offline
                    N Offline
                    NeverHeardOfMe
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #39

                    I would have thought that one of the defining qualities of a genius is that s/he *doesn't* think like anyone else! baa-aah! :)

                    P 1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • N Nemanja Trifunovic

                      John M. Drescher wrote:

                      microsoft.com ran on apache just 2 years ago.

                      It did not. For protection of dns attacks, it was using services of akamai, which runs on linux, but microsoft.com was always on Windows/IIS

                      Programming Blog utf8-cpp

                      R Offline
                      R Offline
                      ResidentGeek
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #40

                      I can vouch for this answer as someone who knew the site first-hand not-so-long-ago. Microsoft.com has run on Windows Server/IIS since at least 1999 (the point at which I became personally knowledgeable about it). I presume it did before that, as well.

                      Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

                      J 1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • N NeverHeardOfMe

                        I would have thought that one of the defining qualities of a genius is that s/he *doesn't* think like anyone else! baa-aah! :)

                        P Offline
                        P Offline
                        Paul Watson
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #41

                        I think you just called us both stupid. Doh!

                        cheers, Paul M. Watson.

                        N 1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • M Miszou

                          MySpace runs on IIS[^]. Is that big enough for you?

                          The StartPage Randomizer | The Windows Cheerleader | Twitter

                          T Offline
                          T Offline
                          Tomz_KV
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #42

                          I remember that it started with Coldfussion. Parts of the site are still in Coldfusion right now. Do you think it will completely move to IIS?

                          TOMZ_KV

                          R 1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • R ResidentGeek

                            I can vouch for this answer as someone who knew the site first-hand not-so-long-ago. Microsoft.com has run on Windows Server/IIS since at least 1999 (the point at which I became personally knowledgeable about it). I presume it did before that, as well.

                            Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

                            J Offline
                            J Offline
                            John M Drescher
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #43

                            I believe I have figured that out. The webhosting company that microsoft used did use apache but to cache instead of host the IIS webpages. I can say it was very shocking to me to see apache timeout errors from time to time on a microsoft site. I have not seen these recently though, but I rarely go to microsoft.com anymore.

                            John

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • P Paul Watson

                              I think you just called us both stupid. Doh!

                              cheers, Paul M. Watson.

                              N Offline
                              N Offline
                              NeverHeardOfMe
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #44

                              Well, these things are all relative you know... ;-)

                              P 1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • N NeverHeardOfMe

                                Well, these things are all relative you know... ;-)

                                P Offline
                                P Offline
                                Paul Watson
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #45

                                Paul, meet brick. Brick, meet Paul. You are relatives.

                                cheers, Paul M. Watson.

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • D Dan Neely

                                  In addition to what Nemanja Trifunovic wrote, the only major MS site to run on an OSS platform was hotmail, which was written on a BSD platform and continued to be until a few years after MS bought the original creators out.

                                  Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

                                  J Offline
                                  J Offline
                                  John M Drescher
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #46

                                  See my reply here: http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=2809445#xx2809445xx[^]

                                  John

                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • D Dan Neely

                                    Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:

                                    Fortune 1000 companies never heard that, apparently[^]

                                    Anyone have a more recent survey? That one stops in mid 07.

                                    Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

                                    L Offline
                                    L Offline
                                    Lost User
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #47

                                    dan neely wrote:

                                    Anyone have a more recent survey? That one stops in mid 07.

                                    Netcraft has been keeping track of market share since 1995. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html[^] Best Wishes, -David Delaune

                                    1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • T Tomz_KV

                                      I often hear people say that IIS on Windows server is not reliable and not suitable for a big site. What is reliable and popular one? Does anyone know if there is any analysis/statistics done on different web server hardware and software?

                                      TOMZ_KV

                                      M Offline
                                      M Offline
                                      Member 96
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #48

                                      I often hear people say they believe in astrology...what's the difference what people often say here or anywhere else?


                                      "It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson

                                      1 Reply Last reply
                                      0
                                      • P Paul Watson

                                        More how you use it that matters. There are some awful Apache powered sites and some great IIS powered sites (and vice versa.) Other factors are more important (licensing, administration, deployment, support costs, skills, resources, architecture, load-balancers, DNS, firewalls, CDN, client-side performance etc.) If you really want an answer then; You are on a Microsoft website which says to me you are a .NET coder which says to me go with IIS. I choose LAMP though as that is where my skills are. Actually more LAMR (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Ruby on Rails) than LAMP but LAMR sounds... well... lame.

                                        cheers, Paul M. Watson.

                                        D Offline
                                        D Offline
                                        Dan Neely
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #49

                                        I choose lamp because I've never bothered with anything more sophisticated than a filedump and it's cheaper. If my ambitions ever go beyond setting up a photogallery at some point I'll probably get IIS, but since I haven't done so anytime in the last half dozenish years...

                                        Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

                                        1 Reply Last reply
                                        0
                                        • T Tomz_KV

                                          I remember that it started with Coldfussion. Parts of the site are still in Coldfusion right now. Do you think it will completely move to IIS?

                                          TOMZ_KV

                                          R Offline
                                          R Offline
                                          Rama Krishna Vavilala
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #50

                                          No everything is in IIS/ASP.NET. You may still finds urls ending with cfm. The cfm extension is mapped to ASP.NET handler so that people did not have to change their bookmarks.

                                          Proud to be a CPHog user

                                          1 Reply Last reply
                                          0
                                          Reply
                                          • Reply as topic
                                          Log in to reply
                                          • Oldest to Newest
                                          • Newest to Oldest
                                          • Most Votes


                                          • Login

                                          • Don't have an account? Register

                                          • Login or register to search.
                                          • First post
                                            Last post
                                          0
                                          • Categories
                                          • Recent
                                          • Tags
                                          • Popular
                                          • World
                                          • Users
                                          • Groups