[thelist] The Perfect Web Server - An elusive Search

[Ken Schaefer]

It's been said many times: your OS will only be as stable and secure as your
admins are competant in the platforms.

Any of the major OSes can be made to be secure and stable - it's a matter of
knowing what you are doing.

I would pick the platform you feel most comfortable with and skill up on that
platform. It doesn't matter whether it's Windows, or MacOSX, or *Nix - if you
have the necessary knowledge you will be fine.

FWIW, even though you have ranked Windows last on your list of OSes, there
are many major banks and financial institutions (the type of people who need
to worry about continuous uptime and security) running parts of their
critical infrastructure on Windows. So, it can be done if you have the
expertise.

If you feel more comfortable with Red Hat, then go with that instead.

Cheers
Ken

: -----Original Message-----
: From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-
: bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Jose Hurtado
: Sent: Saturday, 6 May 2006 10:38 AM
: To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
: Subject: [thelist] The Perfect Web Server - An elusive Search
: 
: Fellows,
: 
: After a long time thinking about it, our company has decided to have a
: web-server in-house to host our clients websites and our own too... so far
: we have a hosted VPS, but the cost and reliability is not what we expected.
: 
: I am familiar with UNIX, Linux, OS X and Windows, but by no means an
: expert
: in the server side of each!  I have decided not to even consider Windows
: for
: the very bad track record it has on stability and security, not only on
: the
: desktop but on the server as well.
: 
: I would appreciate any advice on WHICH server OS to choose over the others,
: these are my main criteria:
: 
: 1. Rock solid Web server OS. One that could be online for a year without a
: hiccup!
: 2. Full Apache 2 support.
: 3. Able to execute well PHP/PERL/RUBY and Ruby On Rails.  J2EE would be
: nice, not required.
: 4. Full support for MySQL, nice to have support for Oracle or other major
: databases.
: 5. Very desirable to have an administration interface, not just the
: command
: line.  Something above and beyond Webmin!
: 6. Support for Postfix email.
: 7. Excellent mirroring, backup and availability tools built-in.
: 
: So far I have identified 7 possible Operating Systems that could
: potentially
: do all of this, but none is perfect, and I have been unable to decide on
: one
: over the other. These is my short list, could you comment on them? or
: suggest a new entry and why? So... here they are:
: 
:    - Fully Open Source - Free
:    - FreeBSD UNIX Rel. 6 (Open source - BSD license, free)
:       - Fedora Core 5 (Open source, GPL, free)
:       - CentOS Linux (Open source, RHLE like, free)
:       - Sun Solaris 10 & Open Solaris (Now both open source and 100%
:       free)
:       - Commercial or Partially Open Source - Not Free
:    - Red Hat Linux ES (Partially Commercial - Open Source GPL license)
:       - Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 (Partially Commercial - Open
:       Source GPL license)
:       - Apple OS X Server
: 
: 
: Your input or ideas on choosing among those OSes will be greatly
: appreciated!
: 
: Jose L. Hurtado