Web Hosting Linux vs. NT

 
If you've been searching the Internet search engines or in the various forums and newsgroups devoted to web mastering, you could hardly fail to notice the heated debate going on at this time. No, it's not which is the best browser. This debate is about web servers. More precisely, which one is better: Apache or Internet Information Server (IIS). To tell you the truth, I've used them both (and a few others as well) and the simple plain truth of the matter is these two web server platforms are really functionally equivalent.

Ease Of Use

IIS is much easier for the novice as operators can maintain it from easy-to-use screens and forms. Windows 2000, on the other hand, costs a lot more than other operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD and Unix. Straight Apache requires a huge learning curve to learn how to operate and administer. Everything is configured in extremely obscure text files, and these configurations are done by hand (although you can purchase add-on utilities to enable entry of much of this information from screens and forms.)

Security

The security model of IIS is one of the best ever designed, based as it is upon NTFS (the security model of Windows NT and Windows 2000). This model is far superior to the anything provided with Apache for non-Windows systems. Of course, on Windows, Apache can use NTFS as well. Of course, IIS has been plagued with a number of vulnerabilities lately, and these are a concern. It's common to patch IIS at least monthly, and to install a new service release (a collection of patches) twice a year. Most of the bugs were worked out of Apache (prior to version 2) long ago. Of course, with the release of version two of Apache you can expect a number of security and other flaws to surface - these are a normal part of a product's life cycle.

Customization

IIS does NOT have the equivalent of HTACCESS. The HTACCESS file in Apache is used to individually configure virtual sites (web sites) without restarting the web server. However, on IIS you have a very flexible method of configuration with ISAPI filters and other similar methods. Both methods (HTACCESS and ISAPI filters) are very obscure and for advanced webmasters.

Look out for the next articles on Web Hosting Linux vs. NT  to be published soon!