On Wed, 19 Feb 1997 long-morrow @
CS .
YALE .
EDU wrote:
> Though I have seen Macs in use at ISPs (ie. for running DNS servers via
> QuickDNS, etc.) and as Web servers (at Web hosting companies) my
> experience as a Mac user (running MacOS System 6 and 7) has been that
> they are not very reliable -- because of the lack of pre-emptive
> multitasking a Mac will often hang and because of the lack of memory
> protection between processes (and the OS) a Mac will often crash and
> burn. This will happen to me usually at least once a day, especially
> if running multiple non-trivial applications such as Netscape with Java
> and the Real (Audio/Video) player. Often the Mac system software on
> disk has gotten into such a state that the machine will no longer
> run reliably or even boot -- necessitating a re-install of MacOS.
Well, I could cite all sorts of instances here, including some from NASA,
proclaiming the stability of Macs in comparison to other Windows & NT
servers, but I'll stay away with that and simply say that it all depends
on how well the application is written (of course, that makes sense...no
protected memory...*doh*.....but has protected memory taken us into a era
where writting sloppy applications is acceptable?)
Again, I could go into lots of cases....I could site our own company's
(and several others) history with NT & Mac's) and refute your claims, but
I think the issue was security. And IP security alone is where I
targeted my answer.
> Though it could be made fairly secure (from the remote network)
> I wouldn't want to use a Mac for a high capacity/usage production server
> because the server process or the Mac itself might crash during the
> night and stay down until morning. Unix and NT machines -- though
> more likely to be broken into -- are more reliable at keeping server
> processes up and running (they can even babysit them and restart them
> if necessary).
Well, I wouldn't rule it out either. It can be made Butt-Tight (excuse
the expression) compared to other boxes.....and MacOS7.5.3 is very stable
IF you don't go throwing tons of other extensions or other crap on
there. Not only that, but even in the event of a total system lock up or
Type 11 error, you can have it reboot itself (contrary to popular belief)
and restart it's services.
Sure, it doesn't have the data throughput as a full blown Linux/Unix
server, but if the said company is on a 64k leased line or a T-1, it'll
still serve over 2 million hits a day with no hiccups. Knowing this,
it's obvious that a company would rather be bothered with having to
restart it's web server once every couple of weeks rather than risk thier
bread and butter (read -> confidential company info & product developmets)
being splattered all over newsgroups by hackers (ie-id software) or
exploited by the competition.
And considering, that just in Belgium, a very Mac-un-friendly country
(worse than the US), that over 1/3 of all web servers are on Mac's,
to say that it doesn't have it's place as a web server, is rather
ignorant.
Off the record, I favour Mac clients and Unix servers....but I don't
discount NT....not cause I like NT, but I know it has it's place in this
world of ours.
Just my thoughts,
Kevin McPeake cowboy @
home .
byelex .
nl
Internet Consultant http://www.byelex.nl/
<< You know something's up when your Thought process is idle. >>
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY S STARTED TIME COMMAND
cowboy 28365 0.0 0.2 2.84M 264K ttyp1 S 12:57:12 0:00.02 Thought
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