Windows NT/IIS Recommendations

Microsoft is well-known for making great desktop operating systems. Most people are unaware that the world of servers, particularly Internet servers, is completely different than that of desktop computers. To achieve acceptable performance, Servers require different, sometimes opposite characteristics from desktop systems.

The Benefits of Windows NT/IIS

Windows NT/IIS can be a good server platform for hosting accounts for beginners and home users. The platform is familiar to desktop computer users, and it interfaces well with easy-to-use desktop products like Microsoft FrontPage. It does have some potential for database-backed site development.

Limitations of Windows NT/IIS

The Microsoft Internet server platform is, however, known to have some fundamental stability problems and uses non-standard and proprietary Microsoft technologies. This creates interoperability problems and makes IIS sites much less accessible to end users (visitors.) It also locks companies into using proprietary development tools that become progressively more expensive as their businesses expand.

Consequently, the vast majority of competent, experienced professional web developers don't use IIS for serious hosting applications.

The Solution of Choice

An independent company, Netcraft, provides regularly-updated statistical information on the webservers that make up the Internet. Refer to The Netcraft Web Server Survey, in particular, the first table. Note that most sites run the Apache webserver under some variety of UNIX. Apache's share of the market is twice that of IIS and expanding, while IIS is presently losing market share. A key point of fact is that much of the "other" category is actually made up of Apache / Apache-based products.

The 1999 "decrease" in Apache's marketshare is accompanied by an increase in the "other" category. During that time period, it became possible for people to customize the message returned by Apache when queried. So, most of the "other" category was actually Apache.

Also note that Netscape's webserver product, which runs several thousand dollars per server license, is gaining marketshare against Microsoft's free IIS. People are paying to switch from IIS.

These findings have recently been enhanced and corroborated by another independent company, Security Space.

Netcraft's What's that site running? service will tell you what webserver software a particular site is running. Check out the sites you like and see what they are running.

Some of our previous hosting vendors have said that most companies that start with an NT/IIS hosting package switch to a UNIX/Apache solution as soon as they begin to grow.

The web server software (Apache) is just the beginning of the story. There are also many superior development tools available for UNIX-type platforms that are very widely used and well developed and supported. Two notable examples of these are the excellent HTML-embedded scripting language PHP3 and the MySQL database server. Tools such as these are being used to build successful high-volume internet sites that are flexible and scalable.

The Evermore Recommendation

As professional web developers, Evermore Enterprises doesn't do much development for IIS-hosted accounts. You would be much better off in the long run with a more standard hosting service. We have a reseller account with our primary web service provider (WSP) that allows us to provide a significant discount on premium hosting services. They are a premium hosting provider rather than a mass-market discount service. They are extremely technically adept and very flexible in meeting current and future hosting requirements. With our discount, pricing ends up being about the same as for a mass-market discount hosting account. Refer to our Hosting page for more information.

This approach will provide superior performance, increased reliability, and will be much more scaleable than any NT/IIS solution we've seen.

Alternately, you could use a better mass-market discount service such as Online Marketing or Webaxxs. They both provide the necessary services (for about the same price as premium hosting service through Evermore Enterprises) but, offer a bit less flexibility.

For a more extensive commentary on this topic, please refer to John Kirch's article Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 versus UNIX

A listing of more articles on this topic may be found at this site.

Copyright © 1999-2009, All Rights Reserved Contact@Evermore.com