Uptime - Who says Linux is better

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Okay I was doing some uptime checks today and decided to share some of my results with the forum. I'm always hearing how Linux boxes can go over a year without a reboot. Normally this is quickly followed by the opinion that Windows can't even go a few months.

Well guess what, whatever linux can do - windows can do just as good.

Code:

C:\Documents and Settings\_#######>uptime ##########
\\########## has been up for: 351 day(s), 7 hour(s), 13 minute(s), 56 second(s
)


C:\Documents and Settings\_#######>uptime ##########
\\########## has been up for: 482 day(s), 8 hour(s), 15 minute(s), 25 second(s
)

C:\Documents and Settings\_#######>

 

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I take it you are not downloading and installing any critical updates the *need* to re-boot?

Also, in any given year, i will experience about 20 power outages.. you must be running on a much more stable grid then here

 

He could have UPS ?

 

My friend uninstalled his kernel and replaced it with a newer one. I don't know why he didn't just recompile it and install over the top, but still - his machine has been running like that for the last (at least) one year.

 

My old boss told me about two Novell servers that hadn't been rebooted in years. One had been walled in (brick and mortar, not a firewall) and the found it be tracing they cable that disappeared into a wall. The other when it was time to move, they didn't turn it off, but moved it and the UPS together. And no, this person never exagarated.

 

Interesting. I think both OS's are good, each has their benefits. Personally I dont really care about up time as I do have to reboot the servers once in a while. On the other side Linux has proven to be just as stable as windows and more cost effective.

I think it really goes down to what you use your servers for and who are the IT professionals who manage the servers. Some guys are extremely good with linux others are good with windows and some are good with both. Its what makes the best solution for your environment.

 

Uptime isn't really a big issue with my current client so long as the downtime takes place outside of service hours.

I just sometimes get fedup of hearing about the latest Linux release and how much better it is than Windows. You only have to look on the web to seen how bias these guys are.

We do use UPS devices but we haven't had a single power problem in the past 16 months I've been here. Probably helps that I work for an electricity supplier

 

A lot of these points are now largely historical.

Windows and the PC architecture were a complete dog’s dinner for around 10 years. Thankfully this is now largely fixed.

Microsoft allegedly did this by employing a lot of UNIX gurus to work on NT.

I once had to pick myself up off the floor when I saw a documentary that said Microsoft required 3 re-writes to get to windows version 1.0 ! This is despite many other companies successfully developing OS's throughout the years.

Windows Enhanced or Protected mode occurred largely by accident thanks to a guru dev working on his weekend.

There were software timing loops even in Windows 98. Plus there was the single threaded kernel / locking.

For a long time Windows could simply not run for more than a few days without crashing or a reboot even if unmolested.

UNIX has a history of being a stable multi-user system, Windows does not. It really did take Microsoft a looooooong time to sort its act out, many people argue they held back computing by 20 years...

Nowadays they offer broadly similar services and reliability levels. Agreed any important services should not have a single point of failure anyway, therefore service uptime is unrelated to server uptime.

 

Uptime of individual systems is totally irrelevant
its the uptime of the services it provides that's important

a DC or DNS server for instance can often be rebooted without interruption to service (provided you designed your infrastructure with care and best practice)

a SQL server on the other hand would need to be part of a cluster, which is why most of the important ones are, same with exchange

DFS handles file server downtime quite well, as do third party services such as doubletake/replistor

rsync is great although namespace issues can become a problem then without the appropriate services running

Linux? Unix? Windows? who cares, as long as the job gets done.