To all, UNIX vs. NT from Network World:
nwfusion.com
By Charles Bruno
Network World, 1/13/97
If migrating strategic high-end business applications to Microsoft Corp.'s NT Server is high on your list
of New Year's resolutions for 1997, do yourself a favor: Make this the first one you break.
Odd advice? Not really. The economics of NT Server have driven organizations to embrace the operating
system en masse over the past two years, but it continues to lag Unix in key areas that will impact your
ability to support enterprise-level, mission-critical applications. Rather than think about a wholesale
migration, experts say you should plan on NT Server playing a role at the lower tiers of your network
hierarchy, but let Unix handle the most crucial chores at the top.
''For at least the next 24 months, Unix is still king - that's the bottom line,'' says Brad Day, vice
president and senior analyst with Giga Information Group in Norwell, Mass. You may incur greater
upfront and follow-on costs using any of the popular Unix derivatives as a server operating system as
compared to NT, but they ''deliver the kind of power and reliability you need for enterprise-class
services,'' Day says.
To its credit, Microsoft has anchored NT Server's position as a workgroup server. It is adept as a
multipurpose file, print and applications server for small to midsize businesses. Likewise, its low cost
makes it a suitable platform for providing access to public Internet services or hosting textual content for
a company's Web site.
On the applications server side, if you are planning to replicate an application across several dozen or
even several hundred sites, NT Server is your best bet. Likewise, the server operating system can
handle some transaction processing applications and databases, but these are limited in size and scope
because NT Server sorely lacks the security and the clustering capabilities so prevalent in Unix today.
Therein lies the rub. What Microsoft so conveniently hasn't told you is that NT Server cannot cut it
today as a platform for high-performance, enterprise-class services. Unix systems from
Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Sun Microsystems, Inc. and others, have conquered the high-performance
end of the server market, excelling in such areas as transaction processing, data warehousing and
hosting intranet servers.
Demand for Microsoft's server operating system is certainly at a fevered pitch, second only perhaps to
the clamor for Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls in December. Market researcher International Data Corp. (IDC)
projects that NT Server licenses almost doubled in 1996, to about 720,000 licenses, surpassing Unix
licenses in the process. That suggests many network shops are buying in to the low-cost economic gains
Microsoft pitches over a more costly Unix environment (see graphic).
''Just because NT Server is doing well doesn't mean all Unix servers will fall over and die,'' says Jean
Bozeman, research manager for Unix and client/server operating environments in IDC's San Jose,
Calif., office. ''Unix performs very well as an applications, Internet and database server. There are just
different sweet spots for these OSes.''
That is indeed the case, and it has vendors in both camps trying to invade the others' turf. Microsoft and
business partners such as Compaq Computer Corp., Digital Equipment Corp. and others are
collaborating to outfit NT Server with higher performance facilities and much-needed clustering
capabilities. At the same time, Sun, IBM and HP are each moving in different directions to buck up their
OS offerings for use in workgroup settings.
Database dilemma?
In the meantime, customers are figuring out on their own what works best where.
Sid Dhanoa certainly has no regrets about moving the New York Racing Association's accounting
database to SQL Server running on top of NT Server. The director of information systems for the
Queens, N.Y., organization, Dhanoa has been running SQL Server since last April.
NYRA moved to NT Server after considering Unix, which it already uses for other applications. But
third-party software pricing and the ease of use of NT Server cinched the decision.
Windows clients cost about $30 per seat and SQL Server is about $80 per client, Dhanoa says. The
prospect of paying $695 per user license for a Unidata Corp. racing administration program for IBM's
AIX just didn't make sense vs. the economics of NT Server. ''SQL Server does nothing less for us than
I could do with a big relational Unix database,'' he says. ''So why would I want to pay that kind of
money for the Unix solution?''
The answer, analysts say, is because NT Server has its limits. Most user shops have embraced a
three-tiered database hierarchy where NT Server plays well in two sectors, according to Giga's Day.
While Unix systems have a stranglehold on the enterprisewide data warehouse or repository, NT Server
owns the first-tier client desktops and has taken over the mid-tier where applications logic is processed
into requests that tap into the repository.
This crucial mid-tier is where most application development work occurs. ''Most user shops will tell
you they want the second tier to be NT Server to create better cost efficiencies with their staffs,'' Day
says. IS units want to preserve their costly Unix programmers to focus largely on fine-tuning and
maintaining repositories. And they'll cross-train some Unix engineers to handle NT Server
administration, too. That's more palatable than incurring expenses for separate support staffs.
Unix, meanwhile, continues to hold its own at the data repository level. Unix typically handles data
warehouse applications that require more than 50G bytes of memory and a few terabytes of storage.
''To do that kind of complex data warehousing, you need massive amounts of memory,'' according to
Nancy Epple, vice president of Enterprise Solutions at Digital Equipment Corp. in Maynard, Mass.
However, she says, until Microsoft serves up a 64-bit version of NT Server, it will not be able to
compete effectively for that business.
A 64-bit version of NT Server will give users the kind of power they need for high-end data warehouse
applications. But Microsoft is working in other areas, too, to bulk up NT Server at the high end.
Digital, along with Compaq and Microsoft, are teaming on a project code-named Wolfpack, to bring
high availability and clustering to NT Server within the next 15 to 24 months. Initially, Wolfpack will
provide server availability extensions to a set of Microsoft APIs that allow two Intel Corp. servers to
provide hot backup to each other as they handle their own processing loads. Further down the road, the
Wolfpack collaborators will push out high-speed cluster interconnect technology to allow for scalability
among several Intel-based servers. This will support not only failover backup among the servers, but
automatic workload balancing.
Trio of needs
''Clustering, transaction servers and message queuing are definite requirements to move into that class
of server applications,'' concedes Jeff Price, Microsoft's product manager for NT Server.
While Wolfpack will address the clustering need, Microsoft already has made some headway with its
transaction server. Just last month, the company shipped Transaction Server 1.0, which lets youbuild
distributed applications that rely on multiple components to process requests. Transaction Server's role
is to coordinate the server-side pool of components necessary to serve the client request.
On the message queuing side, Microsoft is working on a project called Falcon, aimed at enabling NT to
guarantee delivery of a transaction or notify a remote server of nondelivery. Messagequeuing is
necessary for applications that communicate over a WAN, Price says. Microsoft has floated prerelease
versions of the product to users but has not specified when Falcon will be generally available.
Internet jockeying
Microsoft may have its work cut out in positioning NT as a credible high-end competitor to Unix in the
applications space, but it has fared well positioning the operating system as a platform for Internet
servers - at least at the departmental and workgroup levels.
Microsoft's bundling of Internet Information Server (IIS), along with its FrontPage Web authoring tool,
provides ''a staggering amount of layered software that you'd otherwise have to turn to Java
programming with Unix,'' says Mark Menasi, president of TechTeach International and author of
Mastering Windows NT Server.
One benefit of NT Server as an Internet platform is that it offers greater ease of use than Unix systems,
says Ram Tackett, an analyst with Currid & Co. consultancy in Houston. ''It's almost to the point
where you can push out administration to the workgroups,'' Tackett says. Moreover, SQL Server
comes with a Web Wizard feature that lets you define database sections to be published at predefined
intervals, or to publish whenever data elements change. The feature lets you automatically update
product listings without having someone knowledgeable in HTML or Common Gateway Interface
scripts, he says.
In response to Microsoft's bundling of layered Internet services into NT Server, Sun last month said it is
packaging its own Web server capabilities into its Solaris operating system. ''Our intent is to make the
Web capability a generic piece of every server,'' says Brian Croll, director of marketing for Sun
Microsystems, Inc.'s Solaris Servers business unit.
More to the point, Sun - plus Unix vendors, including IBM - is targeting the Internet as its best hope of
leveling the playing field against Microsoft and NT Server. By bundling in Web services with Solaris,
Sun intends to direct users toward using its JavaStation thin clients as graphical front ends to Unix
servers that do the bulk of the processing chores.
''When you move to a thin client, you gain on the cost of ownership for the desktop,'' Croll says. Plus
you gain control over software distribution and centralization of device management, he says, both of
which result in operating economies.
Some analysts, however, remain skeptical that the Sun-Oracle-Netscape network computer (NC)
concept will deliver the overall cost savings they promise. ''What Sun and other thin client advocates
ignore are the server costs,'' says Joe Barkan, research director of platforms and operating system
technologies at the Gartner Group, Inc. consultancy in Stamford, Conn. You may have 400 to 500
clients attached to NetWare or NT Server back ends, but in a JavaStation or NC station world, ''you
might be able to support 100 users per server'' due to the extra processing load servers take on. ''That
means you may be saving on clients, but you're spending more on extra servers to handle the loads,''
Barkan says.
The whole thin client hubbub will challenge Microsoft and Unix shops to ''focus on the total cost of
computing,'' adds Russ McBrien, a program manager for HP's Professional Services Organization
consulting group.
One area in which Solaris and other Unix derivatives will prevail is intranet servers, says Giga's Day.
Unix systems are ideally suited for intranets because they offer greater availability for mission-critical
data, are capable of supporting immense databases and have better security than NT Server, Day says.
Ultimately, from a cost of ownership position, NT Server wins out over Unix systems, analysts agree.
''The common hardware and broad availability from server vendors means the prices are lower than
Unix hardware,'' Microsoft's Price says. In addition, the bundled Internet services in IIS means less
outlay for layered options, and the commonality of NT Server with Windows means you don't need to
staff up with expensive technical staffers.
''If you have someone who knows Visual Basic, you have a server applications developer,'' Price says.
Increasingly, analysts are suggesting that users may employ a dual operating system approach for
Internet servers - NT Server to provide end users with access to the Internet, and Unix systems to
control access to in-house intranet services. At least, that's the tack they'll have to take until Microsoft
can buck up NT Server in the clustering and high-availability sectors to adequately handle those
applications.
Application servers
Microsoft may wind up slugging it out with Unix vendors for Internet server business, but it appears to
have wrapped up the applications server business fairly well. General Motors Corp. is a good example.
This past summer, the automotive giant handed Microsoft a mammoth order to install NT Server on
8,500 servers that anchor GM dealer sites nationwide and 900 more in Canada. The servers will preside
as the foundation for the GM Access program - a new dealership automation program that will enable the
flow of real-time information between distributed dealers and the auto giant's Detroit-area offices.
Each dealer site will have a replicated version of communications tools and common NT Server
applications. The replicated nature of the environment represents what analysts say NT Server is best
designed for - workgroup applications that must be rolled out on a wide scope.
''We had to design a platform that would allow us to do things in a very economic fashion in an
environment that is not used to high-grade technology,'' says Wayne Stein, project manager for GM
Access at Electronic Data Systems Corp.
Here again, though, NT proved to have its limits. GM's NT-based application servers will relay data
back to Unix hosts that contain strategic data repositories.
The decision to use NT Server as an application platform really depends on the nature of the application,
according to HP's McBrien. ''If you're just replicating the same application over a few hundred sites,
NT Server is the way to go,'' McBrien says. ''If you have mission critical applications, stick with
Unix.''
Donald Goss, technology services manager with NationsBanc Services Co., a Norfolk, Va., unit of the
giant banking conglomerate, is a self-proclaimed NT Server bigot. Nonetheless, he agrees with
McBrien.
''The main reason is just the processing power of Unix,'' he says. ''You're dealing with 2,500
desktops at NationsBank trying to access the database at one time, then you're looking at a Sun Sparc
6000.'' To handle the same load with NT Server, Goss says you'd need several Pentium class
machines.
The other determining factor that swings in favor of using Unix is the need for applications scalability,
says George Weiss, a vice president and research director in the Distributed Computing Platforms unit at
Gartner Group. Some transaction processing applications may run fine on NT Server, but others require
the clustering and high availability common on the database side, he says.
Once Microsoft delivers a 64-bit version of NT server, perhaps by year-end, Weiss says that mitigating
factor will evaporate and both NT Server and Unix should operate on a more level field, albeit with
some retooling required to prep applications for the new version of NT Server.
Which way to go?
So, if you've already resolved to move strategic applications to NT server this year, consider first
whether the economic advantages outstrip the need for availability and high-performance systems.
If your applications are highly distributed and they share files, NT Server is likely a solid choice.
Likewise, if you're providing Internet access to the masses in your organization, go with NT Server. On
the database side, NT server may well be the answer - provided you don't need it to scale beyond 50G
bytes within the next two years.
Go with Unix when your application needs dictate high availability and scaling into the gigabit and
terabit range. If you need a highly reliable Internet/intranet server with solid security, then Unix is the
better choice. And from an applications server perspective, again, consider the need for high reliability.
If cost of ownership is your chief concern, chances are NT Server will prevail in the near term - at least
until Sun and others establish the NC and JavaStations and produce hard evidence of the cost
efficiencies they promise. Hardware costs lean in favor of NT Server, as does training, management and
licensing costs.
So, from a cost of ownership perspective, NT Server seems the clear choice. But if your network
applications require high availability and raw processing power, cost of ownership isn't the real issue.
Keeping your customer base up and satisfied is what it's all about. |
