Netcraft Says IIS Gaining on Apache 666
benjymouse quotes this month's netcraft survey "In the August 2007 survey we received responses from 127,961,479 sites, an increase of 2.3 million sites from last month. Microsoft continues to increase its web server market share, adding 2.6 million sites this month as Apache loses 991K hostnames. As a result, Windows improves its market share by 1.4% to 34.2%, while Apache slips by 1.7% to 48.4%. Microsoft's recent gains raise the prospect that Windows may soon challenge Apache's leadership position."
Re:Google Web Server (Score:4, Informative)
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/05/01/may_
Re:From the person above (Score:5, Informative)
Uptime (Score:5, Informative)
Re:From the person above (Score:3, Informative)
The biggest reason to use Apache over IIS is that Apache runs best on *nix systems... and so does most of the rest of the best web-oriented server and dev software.
Plus, there are so many great command-line tools (or GUI tools that have a command line mode with a simple switch) which can be (carefully) integrated into web apps that simply aren't available (or don't work as well) on Windows, and open up all kinds of interesting possibilities. Windows doesn't come close.
Re:What?! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:GoDaddy and the like? (Score:4, Informative)
People were paid to develop Apache. Open source != everybody worked for free.
IIS dying out in Germany (Score:5, Informative)
There is also a serious discrepancy in that other stats seem to show IIS on the last moments of extinction [securityspace.com] in hi-tech zones like Germany. NetCraft report doesn't really have any explanation of the figures it presents.
What's really problematic is that over time NetCraft has become less informative. No mention has been made lately of what the changes in market share are attributed to. In years past, even a percent or two got a few lines of explanation or analysis. Did one of the service packs or 'security' upgrades install and turn on IIS for all Windows users? Or are more domain parkers and cybersquatters using IIS in the server identification string?
This downturn started last year when MS paid GoDaddy to swap out (or claim to swap out) its domain parking. GoDaddy did get the OSS community to lay off by throwing some chump change to OpenSSH and we can see the result of these last 12+ months. The money did some good, but if it's just a one-off donation, then it's questionable whether then benefit offsets the harm. Either way it's funny to see GoDaddy decision makers thinking they can buy indulgences [thehostingnews.com]. Maybe it ought to become an annual fee.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What?! (Score:1, Informative)
Hell no, i use webmin for that(unless tweaking is needed). Can't get much easier.
No one "masters" IIS in one week.
In many ways, IIS is way more complex and difficult than Apache.
Apache, on the other hand, has a certain "way" everything is done. If one bother to RTFM and learn that "way", one can actually "master" apache in a weekend. Or at least be securely productive.
IIS has one way for each thing and it is relatively common for different parts to conflict with each other.
Security on IIS is really hard. It is really easy to forget some obscure setting, because of all those damn tabs.
Troubleshooting an IIS server is also really hard. Its logging plain sucks(although it has gotten better) and almost the entire operating system is involved in answering a regular http-request. Also, i have on 2 or 3 occasions had its settings database go corrupt on me. Which is fantastically difficult to deduce since things just slowly deteriorates for no apparent/actual reason.
And, sometimes, when for example the permissioning subsystem crashes(aaaaaarrrrgghh..), only a reboot works. Great.
Re:What?! (Score:5, Informative)
Here [webtoolbag.com] are several GUI administration tools for Apache.
Re:IIS dying out in Germany (Score:2, Informative)
*Sigh* More mindless bashing. Starting with Server 2003 (four years ago now) IIS is off by default. In Vista, its not even installed.
Or are more domain parkers and cybersquatters using IIS in the server identification string?
If you read the link, you'd see they seperate total sites from "active" sites. I took it to mean active as in "not parked." If you look at the active only trends, IIS is even closer to Apache in marketshare.
So the simple explaination is that IIS is being more widely deployed.
Re:From the person above (Score:3, Informative)
2. Lower cost. You may choose the lowest cost platform for deployment. If for you that is Windows you can use Windows.
3. Better security options. You may run Apache on secure Linux which does have a higher government security rating then is available for Windows. Or you could run on OpenBSD which does have a very good security history.
4. No vendor lock in. IIS is single source as is the OS it runs on. Apache is available from multiple vendors, runs on multiple operating systems, and on multiple CPU architectures. You can run Apache on everything from an iPhone to an IBM Z series mainframe.
5. Better integration with PHP, Perl, Python, and MySQL.
6. Larger software selection. Most CMSs and other Web frameworks seem to be Apache centric.
7. Tomcat and JBoss.
8. No licensing worries. No need to do accounting on your Apache Licenses. Just one less thing to worry about if you get audited.
9. ASP is available for Apache if you really want it.
So it comes down to what gives you the best flexibility and value. If you are just going to throw up an intranet for your office and you only know Microsoft products then yes IIS may be fine for you. If you ever plan on scaling it to a large user base or may want to use a CMS like Drupal or Moodle. Or plan on using industry standard tools like PHP, Perl, Python, MySQL, or Ruby on Rails, then you should probably invest the time in learning both Apache and Linux. Before anyone questions how big if a standard in the industry PHP, Python, Perl and MySQL are all I can say is that they are used by sites like Yahoo, Google, and Slashdot. I think MySpace is an all Microsoft site.
Apache can be easier to configure too (Score:3, Informative)
Some Linux distros come with tools to make setting up Apache easy as well. I just set up a test LAMP stack on my Mandriva desktop and it was very simple, apart form one well known and documented problem (you need to install MySQL before mod_php). All point and click, of course.
Ubuntu can install a LAMP stack for you when you install the OS. I do not find configuration of Apache on Ubuntu so easy though.
Re:IIS dying out in Germany (Score:3, Informative)
SP2 firewalls it by default, IIRC. Also, XP is not a server platform, so I don't know why you'd compare 2003 to XP as servers.
It's common enough for MS patches and upgrades and services packs to turn things on or off, change configurations or just plain break something. So it's happened before, and since most of us have to work and don't have time or interest to follow the details of MS Windows, it's logical to ask.
Not really. The "secure by default" push isn't a one event and now that its "done" MS is going to go back to turning everything on by default. I work with MS products everyday, and nothing has broken as a result of a SP or even update for quite a while now.
It's also logical to ask because the remaining MS Windows users have become so used to that kind of effect from patches, upgrades and service packs that they don't complain. In fact it gains them a few hours of overtime. The press doesn't comment either, because it happens again and again and is business as usual, and because the remaining trade magazines are so dependent on MS advertising that the editors won't let any non-praise slip through.
Um, most people that need to work if MS breaks a patch don't get paid overtime. The press has no problem repeating the same garbage over and over again. They love disaster stories and if something like Sql slammer hit again you can bet they'd be on it.
Easy to dismiss any and all critique or questioning as "bashing", isn't it.
When its not based in any truth, it certainly is.
Re:GoDaddy and the like? (Score:5, Informative)
Cisco, Foundry, and several other vendors make load balancing [wikipedia.org] devices that allow you to have one public-facing IP distributed to dozens of back-end machines. If you connect to 1.2.3.4 on port 80, you can actually be connected to machine A, B, C, etc.. these machines not necessarily running the same web server software or operating system. In this case the actual public-facing IP is often called a VIP (Virtual IP) since it's not assigned anywhere except on the load balancer.
You're right, it depends what you're counting. If you're counting the number of boxes that run a particular web server, then IPs will probably be more accurate, although load balancing will skew this. If you're counting the number of customers those chose IIS vs. Apache, whether or not they are jammed onto a large hosting server with other customers? Counting by sites will be more accurate there, although skewed by domain parking.
I love you too man!
I'm guessing 121 of those sites are SSL? Name-based multihosting and load-balancers mean you normally only ever need one public-facing IP for non-SSL sites. Better yet, all your back-end boxes can be configured identically, with all of the sites on every box, so you can spread the load evenly. Even if your application needs to keep the user on a particular box during a session, the load balancer can be directed to do so.
I agree (see above about skewing).
Re:Should be tagged with haha (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What?! (Score:2, Informative)
Right. That's what they actually told us in a first-year University course that had us learning FORTRAN. While this statement was perfectly accurate a few decades ago, more appropriate now is to say "It is extremely ill suited for anything but numerical and scientific computation".
Don't get me wrong. I actually liked writing "numerical recipies"-style stuff in FORTRAN. However it is clear that it no longer holds any advantage (but many obvious disadvantages) over more "modern" languages.
While the language itself holds no advanages, just because of the fact that it USED to have the advantage there is now an enormous amount of scientific FORTRAN code out there. If you don't want to write something from scratch, you might find a FORTRAN library that works. Yes, if you did start from scratch you would not choose FORTRAN nowadays, but if it is there already why not? And this is the reason FORTRAN is still alive. It is no particularly good, it is just adequate. But because it was once the best in some areas, chances are that something you want to use is already written in FORTRAN.
Re:IIS dying out in Germany (Score:3, Informative)
Actually NT was their server and desktop versions. NT Server was the sever version, NT Workstation was the desktop version.
Re:At the risk of being flamed... (Score:3, Informative)
Have a look - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/wind
Thus, even basic file-handling is done by an isolated process running at the lowest level of security by default (Network Service in Win2k3).
Re:Close your eyes and plug your ears. (Score:2, Informative)
That said, there actually are really many crappy IT managers out there. They may or may not be worth their payment, but if their task is to set up an in-house webserver and they already have a DC running with enough capacy, I would not blame them for using IIS.
Re:China, China, China! (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200707
IIS not installed by default in XP (Score:3, Informative)
You can test this yourself: Go into Computer Management, then Services, and look for the IIS process (daemon). Generally, it's not even present, let alone enabled. Similarly, ping an XP machine - even one with its firewall off (or inside the firewall - try going to http://localhost [localhost] - and you probably won't see anything at all (other than a server not found error). Netcraft would have a difficult time even detecting that the machine runs Windows.