Sun_WS03

Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies Microsoft Corporation Published: August 2003 Abstract This paper compares the features of the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 family and Solaris 9 Operating System from Sun Microsystems. Their hardware support, Internet services, reliability, manageability, and development and deployment features are summarized and compared. ® Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT. 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The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 Packaging .................................................................................................................................... 2 Hardware Support.......................................................................................................................... 4 CPU, SMP, and Clustering Support ............................................................................................. 4 Device Support............................................................................................................................. 6 Hardware Summary ..................................................................................................................... 9 Internet Services .......................................................................................................................... 10 Internet Standards Support ........................................................................................................ 10 Scalability ................................................................................................................................... 11 Internet Service Management .................................................................................................... 13 Security ...................................................................................................................................... 14 Internet Service Summary ......................................................................................................... 16 Reliability ...................................................................................................................................... 17 Core System Reliability .............................................................................................................. 17 Fault-Tolerant Device Support ................................................................................................... 18 Fault-Tolerant Resource Sharing ............................................................................................... 19 Failure Recovery ........................................................................................................................ 19 Dynamic Reconfiguration ........................................................................................................... 21 Windows Datacenter Program ................................................................................................... 22 Reliability Summary ................................................................................................................... 23 Manageability ............................................................................................................................... 24 Management Interface ............................................................................................................... 24 Keeping Current ......................................................................................................................... 25 Directories and User Authentication .......................................................................................... 26 Managing the Desktop ............................................................................................................... 27 System Deployment ................................................................................................................... 28 Manageability Summary ............................................................................................................ 29 Development and Deployment ................................................................................................... 31 General Application Development Environment ........................................................................ 31 Web Application Development Environment ............................................................................. 31 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Development and Deployment Summary .................................................................................. 33 Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 34 Related Links ............................................................................................................................... 36 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Introduction The server operating system is a core part of any company’s overall IT infrastructure. The operating system on your servers must do much more than just share files among users on a local area network (LAN). Servers must provide the infrastructure for IT, serve as the platform for business applications, and provide sharing and collaboration services locally (over an intranet) and globally (over the Internet). To work effectively, an operating system must provide a comprehensive and connected suite of services, including data storage, directory, security, and backup services to support a range of customer scenarios. You must have an effective operating system that can support these services and can also provide information and applications to users. The operating system must be flexible and able to meet many different demands. The operating system must provide a reliable, available, and serviceable environment that is easy to manage and use. Recent trends have led to modular, flexible applications that use a number of independent but compatible services. These services are provided by using a distributed computing model, which moves the focus away from the desktop to an array of servers that can support a large number of service requests on demand. This change in how services are provided has led to a change in the way that servers are configured and deployed. A large, central server that provides multiple services while it supports the needs of many users is seldom the right choice because it lacks flexibility and the ability to be expanded in small increments. Instead, customers are using an array of servers to provide a range of server and application services. Each server is part of the integrated system, and the whole system must be easy to manage and control. The change in how services are provided has not changed the requirements for availability. Data center applications are expected to always be available, and system downtime that is not scheduled is not tolerated. To achieve a high level of availability, systems must support clustering and device failover, such as the support that is offered by other storage systems. If you use multiple servers to provide a service, you must also efficiently distribute requests to servers that can process the requests. In every environment, the operating system must be scalable, whether in a small-sized or mediumsized business that runs an internal service or in a large enterprise data center that supports a global service. For such an operating system to be viable, it must be easy to manage and low cost, both at the time of the initial purchase and during its ongoing support and management. Traditionally, UNIX platforms, primarily led by Sun Microsystems Solaris operating system running on the SPARC platform, provided servers with this combination of features. UNIX, and more recently Linux, has often been the solution of choice at all levels in all types of organizations. However, because ® ® Microsoft Windows server technology continues to evolve, Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 now provides features that are comparable to UNIX implementations. These features are often provided as standard components of Windows Server 2003, including features that require additional software in a UNIX environment. These features include directory services, load balancing, clustering, software update services, and advanced network and resource management tools. Windows Server 2003 extends these features to include an integrated service that provides Web and Internet applications. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 1 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Solaris is available for the SPARC platform and a limited set of x86-based servers. The price and performance of SPARC platforms have improved, but SPARC has not yet matched levels that are provided by x86-based servers. To gain clustering and Web application support on the SPARC platform, you must invest in additional hardware and software. Windows Server 2003 takes advantage of the Intel platform and includes support for both the existing IA-32 and the IA-64 processor architecture. The cost of Intel hardware, even with symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and advanced storage solutions, is much lower than comparable SPARC-based servers. Recent advances also mean that memory and bandwidth limitations of Intel hardware are no longer serious issues. In today’s business environment, the most important criteria to use when comparing the two operating systems include:  Hardware support. With the cost of hardware continually falling, an operating system must take the best advantage of the leading hardware from a wide range of suppliers and take advantage of compatible hardware enhancements that are offered by third-party companies. Internet services. The way that a company deploys and manages its Internet presence affects how customers and clients perceive the company. Access times, availability, and the ability to easily deploy and build feature-rich sites are all critical components of a company’s Internet presence. The operating system should provide a comprehensive foundation for Internet-enabled services. Reliability. Companies are no longer expected to remain open only eight hours a day, five days a week. Services, especially on the Internet, must be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To support this, the operating system must provide maximum reliability and availability through both software-level services and hardware support. Manageability. With servers distributed over multiple networks and locations, administrators need tools that enable them to centrally manage their servers and provide comprehensive management and support services to their users. Development and deployment. Reducing the time to market for applications and services is vital. Having a coherent environment where applications can be easily developed and deployed with a minimum of effort is as important as the reliability of the target platform. ®     Packaging In Solaris 9, Sun Microsystems has changed how it packages various management tools and middleware applications. For example, Solaris 9 now includes a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory server, developer versions of a Java application server, and other tools. The combination of Solaris and these applications is the Sun Open Network Environment (Sun ONE). There is one version of Solaris 9 but with different licenses, including Workgroup, Midrange, and Datacenter, depending on the CPUs on the Sun server. Solaris 9 supports the main Internet protocols for TCP/IP networking, LDAP directory, e-mail, domain name services, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), and file transfer protocol (FTP). Solaris 9 also supports remote management capabilities and standard remote access features. Solaris 9 includes development versions of the Sun ONE Web Server, Enterprise Edition 6.0; Sun ONE Portal Server 3.0 and Sun ONE Message Queue for Java 3.0; and the Sun ONE Studio development environment for Java. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 2 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper The Windows Server 2003 family includes the following products:  Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition. Includes four-way SMP support, support for up to 4 gigabytes (GB) of memory, and incorporates the standard suite of management tools, resource sharing, and Web publishing systems. Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition. Supports eight-way SMP hardware and up to 32 GB of RAM with 32-bit processors and 64 GB of RAM with 64-bit processors. Enterprise Edition also includes support for clustering of up to eight nodes and network load balancing and is optimized for use in environments that require high availability. Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition. Supports 32-way SMP hardware, up to 64 GB of physical memory, and 8-node clustering. Datacenter Edition includes support for clustering and network load balancing features and is tuned for data warehouses that support online transaction processing (OLTP). Windows Server 2003, Web Edition. Caters to the specific needs of Web servers. Based on Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition, Web Edition also supports 2 CPUs and 2 GB of RAM. Highly optimized for Web servers and includes the ASP.NET application technology and the Microsoft .NET Framework for deploying Web applications.    Like Solaris 9, all Windows Server 2003 products support standard Internet protocols for TCP/IP networking, LDAP directory services, domain name services, DHCP, file sharing and transfer (including FTP), and remote management. Additionally, all Windows Server 2003 products incorporate the Active Directory® directory service for managing access and authentication to systems and services on the ® network, the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) for enterprise management, and IntelliMirror management technologies for managing user files and configuration settings. Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, is supplied through authorized OEMs, who, in cooperation with Microsoft, rigorously test the integrated systems that they offer. Support is offered through the Microsoft High Availability Resolution Queue (HARQ). These support queues are staffed by OEM and Microsoft personnel to help resolve problems quickly with one telephone call. The Windows Datacenter Program now has third-party certified Datacenter Support Providers to expand customer support options for Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 3 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Hardware Support Cost is a key concern for chief information officers (CIOs) and IT managers. While hardware costs decrease almost daily, the scalability and availability requirements that customers demand of data centers are increasing. Many systems can now support large numbers of CPUs and have advanced storage options, such as redundant array of independent disks (RAID) arrays and storage area networks. To best use this hardware, an operating system must support the equipment at the system level. The operating system integrates with the hardware rather than relying on third-party applications and extensions to provide access to standard equipment. One example is the integration of an operating system and power management systems. The ability to switch over to an alternative power source should be a feature of an operating system, because power is essential for availability. Hardware and software costs are only one part of the total cost of ownership. Reducing the total cost requires hardware and software that are low in initial cost and even more importantly, in their ongoing support costs. In particular, today’s business environment requires the highest levels of availability and exceptional management capabilities. Hardware must be resilient, and an operating system must be aware of special high availability hardware features, both for monitoring purposes and for providing a reliable solution. An operating system must monitor the hardware configuration, detect anomalies, and then permit actions that promote overall reliability. Support for reliability must be provided at the single system level, such as when an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) switches to battery power, and at the distributed system level. A business environment, for example, must be able to handle application server component failure by using network load balancing or clustering solutions that provide redundant servers and components to take over from failed devices without significant loss of service. This configuration isolates users from the effects of a failure. Providing this level of availability goes beyond the abilities of standard hardware technologies. A support network has to support an operating system and hardware to ensure the continued compatibility of the operating system and hardware. The support network must also make sure that the operating system can take advantage of hardware features that support reliable operation. Any additional hardware and software that you use should be subject to the same testing and standards as the operating system. CPU, SMP, and Clustering Support Both Solaris 9 and the products in the Windows Server 2003 family support multiple-CPU configurations. Solaris is primarily used on the Sun UltraSPARC microprocessor-based servers. The UltraSPARC microprocessor architecture is a proprietary Sun design that is also licensed to third parties. It is only used in desktop and server solutions from Sun and a few other low-volume manufacturers. This means that Sun must amortize the huge design cost itself and can test across only a small number of systems. Intel, however, can spread out its design cost across millions of computers that are sold by hundreds of manufacturers. AMD is an additional source of Intel-compatible processors, and they provide a competitive environment that Sun does not experience. The current generation of UltraSPARC is UltraSPARC III, which is a standard component on a majority of the Sun servers that are currently being shipped. UltraSPARC III speeds are currently in the Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 4 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper 1 gigahertz (GHz) to 1.5 GHz range. Solaris 9 supports SMP solutions across the whole range of SPARC-based servers and workstations. By using UltraSPARC III, you can configure up to 106 CPUs in a single system (specifically the Sun Fire 15K). For data center applications, you can cluster up to eight nodes to provide the maximum performance or fault tolerance. The clustering technology requires additional hardware, including a Sun 1 GB Scalable Coherent Interconnect. Sun Scalable Coherent Interconnect increases the overall cost of the clustering process. Sun Cluster 3.0, a separate suite of cluster software, is also required. Sun Cluster 3.0 provides clustering and resource sharing technologies that enable a single cluster to share memory and disk storage and to provide these resources as a single logical system to clients. The operating system automatically handles the distribution of the workload to best use the available resources. The operating system can also be controlled by using the Sun Cluster Manager and the Solaris Resource Manager to assign individual tasks to each processor in a single node or cluster. All versions of Windows Server 2003 support the Intel Pentium processor family and the Intel Itanium ® and Itanium 2, which are 64-bit Intel processors. All versions of Windows Server 2003 also support at least two-way SMP systems. Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, supports 8-way SMP systems, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, supports 32-way SMP systems. The 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, support 64 processors, but no manufacturers currently offer compatible 64-way servers. Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, both include clustering technology at no additional cost and support up to eight nodes in a single cluster. Unlike Solaris, Windows Server 2003 clustering can be operated over the small computer system interface (SCSI) bus standard. Additional SCSI cards can provide resilience for the cluster communication without requiring additional software. Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, support scale-out and scale-up scalability. The scale-out model has network computing as its design center and follows the traditional Windows path. You can increase capacity by adding more servers, using a combination of the built-in clustering and network load balancing technologies. The scale-up model follows the traditional UNIX path, adding more processors, RAM, and storage to an existing server. Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, take advantage of Physical Address Extension support, which is part of the Enterprise Memory Architecture. Physical Address Extension support enables 32-bit Intel-based systems to address more than the usual 4 GB memory limit. For Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, Physical Address Extension support enables up to 32 GB of addressable memory; Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, raises the addressable memory to 64 GB. Systems that use Physical Address Extension support will page to disk less often, thereby increasing performance while taking advantage of the cost-effective 32-bit processor model. Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, for Intel 64-bit processors support 64 GB and 128 GB, respectively. In addition to the SMP and clustering technologies, Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, supports hardware partitioning. Hardware partitioning enables you to run multiple instances of the operating system on the same server. Hardware partitioning is currently available on the Unisys ES7000 and IBM xSeries 440. This level of control was previously only available on the larger UNIX systems. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 5 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper For resource management, Windows Server 2003 includes tools for you to allocate individual resources for each application. For Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition, and Windows Server, Web Edition, this control is handled by the API for the operating system and enables software vendors to maximize the performance of their applications. On Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, this control is achieved by using the Windows System Resource Manager, which can allocate individual resources, including processors and memory, to each application. Table 1 compares the CPU, SMP, and clustering support that each operating system offers. Table 1. CPU, SMP, and Clustering Support Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition Windows Server 2003, Web Edition Solaris 9 Operating Environment Feature Platform Processor Bit Width Maximum CPUs per Node Maximum Nodes per Cluster Advanced Job Control Maximum Addressable Physical Memory (GB) 1 2 Intel 32 8 N/A Yes 32 SPARC 64 106 8 Yes 576 Intel 32 2 0 Yes 4 1 Intel 32 8 8 Yes 32 2 Intel 64 32 32 8 Yes 64 64 2 Intel 64 32 2 0 Yes 256 2 1 Through the API. Through the API plus Windows System Resource Manager (WSRM). Device Support Device support and management in any server environment is a vital component of an operating system’s feature set. In addition to supporting multiple CPU and node-clustering abilities, an operating system should also support enterprise-class storage devices, system health, and performance monitoring technology. For storage, support should include:    Online storage abilities, such as redundant array of independent disks (RAID) hardware. Nearline storage abilities that are offered by high-capacity removable media. Offline storage provided by tape backup systems. Monitoring features should track the physical environment to make sure that it is within working limits and monitor power to avoid the effects of an imminent power failure. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 6 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper In today’s business environment, related system hardware, such as networking equipment and peripherals and the associated drivers and support software, must be as resilient and reliable as the server hardware. For example, tape backups must have software that can be used in a time-critical environment without the risk of data loss. Solaris 9 can monitor the core components of an UltraSPARC-based system, and then take appropriate action. This ability depends on the Sun proprietary hardware designs (the high-end Sun Fire server line, for example). Individual failures are monitored, and the operating system takes appropriate action automatically, if possible. For example, if the temperature of a CPU module exceeds the defined range, Solaris can turn off the CPU and allocate the processing to another CPU. The Sun Fire range of servers (Sun Fire 12K and Sun Fire 15K) also adds the ability to configure an SMP server as one or more logical computers through dynamic system domains. The configuration is established by using the Solaris Domain Manager, and it can be configured while the computer is running as CPUs are allocated to individual pools, as necessary. Although this configuration is typically used to provide multiple services from a single fault-tolerant hardware platform, you can also use the system to provide redundancy to all the components within the system, including processors, RAM and input/output (I/O) cards, and devices. However, Solaris has no built-in support for advanced storage solutions, such as removable storage or nearline storage libraries. Solaris supports only the most basic backup tape systems, including tape archive (tar) and cron. You must rely on additional Sun products or third-party products if you want to use any other form of additional storage (nearline, offline, or online). Solaris 9 includes basic tools for monitoring the network and network performance, but these tools are designed for monitoring local systems instead of monitoring the whole network. Again, you must rely on additional Sun or third-party software to monitor the whole network. As a core aspect of the Microsoft operating system strategy, Windows Server 2003 has one of the widest ranges of device support of any operating system. The Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL) enables hardware makers to make sure that their products work with all versions of the Windows Server 2003 software. Products that pass the Microsoft Hardware Compatibility Test (HCT) are placed on the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). This list enables users to immediately verify whether a product is approved for use with Windows Server 2003. Furthermore, in the case of Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, there is a more stringent Datacenter hardware qualification program for products that have been thoroughly tested and proven to be compatible and highly reliable. By agreement, hardware components that have not been qualified through testing cannot be sold with a Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, system. The OEMs that offer Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition systems also have to make sure that all hardware drivers, kernel software, virus software, and disk, tape, and backup management software are also rigorously tested for Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition. This testing helps to maintain highly dependable Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, systems. Microsoft has added more certification options to expand the range of configuration options that are supported by Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition. Windows Server 2003 includes extensive support for many RAID systems, ranging from those that are incorporated into server systems from companies such as Hewlett-Packard to RAID systems that are built into off-the-shelf motherboards and many RAID PCI card solutions. Windows Server 2003 also incorporates support for the recent developments in integrated device electronics (IDE)-based RAID 7 Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper systems. IDE-based RAID systems provide similar storage and throughput demands as SCSI-based systems but at a significantly lower cost per gigabyte. Removable storage, ranging from Zip and Jaz drives to Magneto Optical libraries, is controlled by using the same management console as with other storage, and they become a part of the standard storage resources. You can monitor and track the storage on multiple removable devices and share these devices remotely over a network. By using the Distributed File System (DFS), you can make all storage on the Windows Server 2003 servers in a network available under a single structure. The system is available, whether the servers are configured as a cluster or not. Also, the system supports a variety of storage methods, from singledisk drives to RAID arrays, and enables removable storage to be made available across the network. You can use the Windows Server 2003 Backup utility to back up a computer without any additional software, and support for a wide range of tape devices, including multiple tape libraries, is built into the operating system. You can also use the Windows Server 2003 Backup utility with removable storage for archiving and performing backups that take place while the database is still active to reduce downtime when you back up active databases and other services. Windows Server 2003 includes technology for monitoring the internal systems of many standard hardware configurations. This technology enables you to monitor Windows Server 2003–based systems from a central console and identify problems such as overheating and device failures. For power management, Windows Server 2003 can monitor the power supply on configured systems and integrate UPS solutions. You can configure a Windows Server 2003–based system to lower the power usage of systems that are running on backup battery power. In the event of imminent power failure, you can put the system to sleep and configure it to wake when power is restored. Microsoft has acquired technology from Connectix that enables users to run multiple copies of different versions of Windows as guests by using Windows Server 2003. This technology provides capabilities similar to those found in software such as Sun Dynamic System Domains. Table 2 compares the device support that each operating system offers. Table 2. Device Support Feature RAID Storage (Software) RAID Storage (Hardware) Removable Storage Nearline Library Storage Distributed Storage Backup Device Support Tape Library Support Environmental Monitoring Power Management UPS Monitoring Solaris 9 Yes No No No No Limited No Yes Yes No Windows Server 2003 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 8 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Hardware Summary There are two ways to increase the performance and reliability of a system. The first way is to increase CPU and memory in a single system. The second way is to use clustering technology. Both approaches imply a total cost overhead that you must consider when you select a solution. Based on current TPC-C benchmarks for clustered and nonclustered servers, Intel-based hardware provides the best price-performance ratio in the industry, and Windows Server 2003 is the leading operating system for this platform. With the support for SMP hardware (currently only limited by hardware availability) and the ability to build multiple node clusters (up to a maximum of eight) with Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, the cost of expanding a Windows–based server is significantly less than with Solaris and the current SPARC architecture. Solaris is limited by the hardware that Sun and its partners make, resulting in a significant hardware cost premium even for mid-range equipment. To ensure maximum availability, Windows Server 2003 provides comprehensive support for the underlying hardware, including storage support and data center service monitoring. By incorporating backup software into the operating system, you provide complete resilience. The monitoring abilities also make sure that a Windows Server 2003–based server is aware of any imminent failures. By monitoring temperature, power, and other environmental factors, a Windows Server 2003-based system can ensure maximum availability by changing its configuration and can even shut down to help ensure the system’s resilience to unscheduled system failures. For more information about the fault-tolerant support offered by Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003, see the Fault-Tolerant Device Support section later in this document. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 9 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Internet Services The future of the Internet is in the e-commerce marketplace, an environment that requires interactivity and demands high-performance and developer-friendly application support. Operating systems must provide appropriate environments for hosting Internet applications. At the most basic level, these environments must support the core Internet protocols, a range of appropriate application development tools, and mechanisms to control access and authentication. For high-traffic sites, an operating system must manage the connectivity and ensure the best performance for individual users, either through intelligent management of the resources on a single computer or by using clustering and network load balancing techniques to spread the load over a server farm. Internet Standards Support Both Windows Server 2003 and Solaris 9 have strong support for Internet standards, although the level of integration between the services and the operating system varies. Solaris 9 does not provide native solutions for Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or Net News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), although it does support Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Table 3 compares the Internet standards support that each operating system offers. Table 3. Internet Standards Support Internet Service HTTP Secure HTTP—Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) SMTP FTP NNTP Post Office Protocol (POP) Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) Solaris 9 By using Sun ONE Web Server By using Sun ONE Web Server Built-in Built-in Public domain solutions By using Sun ONE Messaging Server By using Sun ONE Messaging Server Windows Server 2003 Built-in, Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Built-in, IIS 6.0 Built-in, IIS 6.0 Built-in, IIS 6.0 Built-in, IIS 6.0 Built-in By using Microsoft Exchange Server Solaris 9 relies heavily on the Sun ONE application suite to provide much of its Internet functionality. The Sun ONE products include the Sun ONE Directory Server, which provides an LDAP–based authentication service; the Sun ONE Web Server for Web serving, including Java Server Pages and Secure HTTP support; and the Sun ONE Messaging Server to support client-side mail access through the POP and IMAP protocols. Together, these products provide a scalable environment for deploying Internet applications, but they do not form an integrated and complete platform. For example, you can now install the Sun ONE Directory Server with the operating system. It provides authentication and directory services that augment, instead of replace, the existing file-based user and group access and Domain Name System Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 10 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper (DNS) abilities. However, the Solaris 9 Directory Server does not have the same degree of integration with other operating system services that Active Directory offers. The Sun ONE application suite is a set of discrete packages that work with Solaris to provide an application platform. Because there is no low-level integration with Solaris, the application platform is not as flexible as it can be, and it is not as easy to take advantage of other features of Solaris. For example, network load balancing and the distribution of requests among a group of servers rely on separate software. Integration over a cluster is also more difficult because it relies on a separate level of integration with Sun Cluster services. Windows Server 2003 includes IIS 6.0. IIS 6.0 provides native support for SMTP, FTP, SSL, NNTP, POP3, SOAP, Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), and HTTP protocols. IIS 6.0 integrates closely with Windows Server 2003, providing a unified authentication and security system that is linked to Active Directory. This integration enables single sign on (SSO) authentication to e-mail, FTP, NNTP, and XML-based Web services. In addition to basic POP3 mail server support, the IIS SMTP service enables users to send messages and perform SMTP routing and forwarding. IIS also provides e-mail forwarding security by using SSL. For advanced client-based messaging, you must install Exchange Server. Exchange Server provides both native Exchange Server e-mail services and Internet-based protocols for IMAP connections. Because Exchange Server is integrated with Active Directory, users must log on to Windows only one time to access file, Web, and e-mail services. Scalability As the users, transactions, and traffic on the Internet increase, the size of the infrastructure and servers that are required to support Internet-based services must also increase. To successfully scale Internet services, an operating system must respond to the increasing load, both within hardware constraints and through the use of distributed computing technology such as clustering, network load balancing, and transaction services. Solaris 9 can manage the network resources for an individual server by using the Solaris Bandwidth Manager. The Solaris Bandwidth Manager enables you to configure available network bandwidth on wide area network (WAN) connectivity for each application and each user. For example, you can allocate significant bandwidth to an Internet link to the HTTP protocol, ensuring maximum throughput for Web applications. However, the settings are fixed according to individual protocols and computers— there is no load balancing among multiple computers. Additionally, you can configure a single Solaris 9 server to provide performance and services to specific applications. By using processor sets, a multiprocessor server can assign groups of processors to handle individual applications. This assignment ensures that mission-critical applications achieve maximum performance without sacrificing individual CPU performance to noncritical tasks. By using Solaris Dynamic System Domains on Sun Fire 38XX through Sun Fire 15K servers, you can configure a SPARC-based SMP server to act as one or more physical computers. The configuration of each Solaris domain is dynamic. For example, during the day, you can configure the system to provide maximum performance to client-facing e-commerce applications, but at night, you can configure the system to provide the best support for batch jobs, replication, or backup systems without completely disabling the e-commerce site. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 11 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper For performance-intensive or mission-critical sites, you can purchase Sun Cluster 3.0 to support up to eight nodes in a failover cluster on Solaris 9. You can configure the cluster either to ensure scalability and availability or to ensure reliability. When Sun Cluster 3.0 is used with the Solaris Resource Manager, the cluster can be configured to maximize the available resources on all servers. For resilience, any individual server within a cluster can replace a failed server with only a small loss in availability. Like Solaris, Windows Server 2003 also supports advanced resource management, either through the API that is used to build the applications or as part of the main operating system configuration. Like Solaris 9, you can control all aspects of the processes that are running within the system, including setting resource limits on applications and application groups and restricting applications to specific processors or processor groups. In Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, Windows System Resource Manager (WSRM) provides an easy-to-use interface for assigning system resources to multiple applications and sets policy for resource allocation to be managed dynamically. Load balancing is also supported, both between servers in a single group and across servers in a cluster. Windows Server 2003 additionally benefits from the integrated message queuing system. The message queuing system enables servers to easily exchange requests and information at an operating system level, instead of at the application level. You can also take advantage of the improvements in IIS 6.0 to improve performance. IIS 6.0 is an integrated part of Windows Server 2003. There is a core kernel-mode driver to provide key functionality, including the initial handshake of the HTTP service, which is tightly integrated with Windows Server 2003. A separate application handler (or worker) is responsible for servicing the individual requests. The two features work together to produce a significant performance increase—up to 100 percent— compared with the system that IIS 5.0 employed in Microsoft Windows 2000. The secondary benefit of this system is that a failure in a worker process does not affect the core Internet service. User-defined scripts, script handlers, and the Active Server Page (ASP) service are all handled within their own application compartment; the core kernel-mode driver never runs user-defined code. Meanwhile, the kernel driver monitors the worker processes and queues requests. If a worker process fails, the kernel driver creates a new worker process and passes it the next request in the request queue. The whole system works together to make sure that any problems with servicing requests from clients do not affect the whole Internet service. There may be a failure, but the effects do not tie up the whole Internet service while the problem is resolved. Worker processes can also be configured to renew, even after they have successfully run, according to different criteria, including elapsed time, number of serviced requests, and memory usage. By recycling worker processes, IIS makes sure that stale data and unclaimed memory do not increase the chances of future failures. Because of this compartmented application model, you can create specific worker pools for different applications, and each pool can have its own configuration. For example, you might set one pool to use recycling (as described previously) to achieve maximum throughput. You can also use the application pools in combination with network load balancers—with or without cluster configurations—to redistribute a failed request to an alternate application pool or even to another server. To further improve performance, IIS 6.0 also incorporates Web garden technology that enables an application pool to have more than one worker process at any one time. Unlike the queue model 12 Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper described previously, a Web garden simultaneously distributes a number of requests to a number of workers. A Web garden can help alleviate blockages in applications that might tie up a worker process—for example, a large database query. Solaris 9 requires additional software to provide Web server functionality. Depending on the Web server technology that you use with Solaris 9, some of the features that Windows Server 2003 offers are also available in the Solaris 9 server platform. For example, Solaris supports compartments for certain applications, and you can use this feature to provide a certain level of protection when you combine it with the Sun ONE Web Server. However, it is not as configurable as the IIS 6.0 solution. You can also configure a Web garden and request queue system by using the Apache 2.0 Web server, which is an Open Software solution for Web serving. However, there is no integration with the main operating system, no queuing system, and no way to redistribute requests from the current server to another server in the same server farm. Although Solaris 9 provides tools to control the network bandwidth and resource use within a server farm, there was no way of managing application performance across a network for Internet services until the recent acquisition by Sun of a third-party application. Windows Server 2003 supports all of the resource management features that Solaris 9 offers, as well as the ability to control the performance of the network as a whole. This capability was introduced with Windows 2000 Server products. Internet Service Management Sun Web server services management on Solaris 9 is handled through a Web-based administration console. Although the interface may be practical for remote management, it has significant limitations. Because there is no integration between individual Internet services on Solaris, each service can have its own administration interface. For most services, the only interface that is provided is through a command-line interface. Although this is compatible with a remote connection, it is less than ideal for most services. Additionally, because the different services use different management tools, the administrator must understand a number of different systems. This lack of integration also means that if a problem occurs for one service, the other services are not automatically notified of the problem. For Internet applications, this lack of notification can have serious result, including loss of service and possible data inconsistency or corruption. As mentioned previously, IIS 6.0 is integrated in Windows Server 2003 and is part of the core operating system functionality. IIS can be controlled by using the MMC, which is available in both native and Web formats. IIS can also be managed remotely by using command-line administration scripts. Because Internet service support is built into Windows Server 2003 with IIS, you can manage all aspects of your Internet service from a single computer, either locally or remotely. This includes HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and NNTP services. For remote management, you can also use an HTML-based administration tool that enables the control of services from any frame and script-capable browser. By using a combination of wizards and traditional property dialog boxes, Windows Server 2003 and IIS make it easy for most any user to set up and manage Internet services. Table 4 compares the Internet management services of each operating system. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 13 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Table 4. Internet Management Services Service GUI Web Site Management GUI Mail Server Management GUI Directory Management Web-based Web Site Management Web-based Mail Server Management Web-based Directory Management Command-Line Management Tools Solaris 9 and Sun ONE Web Server No No No Yes No No Yes Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Security To support e-commerce applications, the operating system and the Web application environment must be able to support communication security. Security for Web applications centers on the following areas:     Access control. Used for controlling which files clients can access. Internet Protocol Security (IPSec). Used to restrict access to specific IP addresses or domains. Authentication methods. Used for identifying individual users. Encryption. Used to support encryption of information across a network. Because Solaris 9 does not provide an integrated solution for Web protocols, the available security options rely on the Web server software that you use. If you use the Sun ONE Web Server, Solaris provides very good overall security. Authentication on both systems occurs through a local registration database, or it can be integrated into the Sun ONE Directory Server by using LDAP. The authentication systems in the Sun ONE Web Server and the Sun ONE Directory Server provide basic and encrypted authentication and certificate-based authentication. The Sun ONE platform also offers a certificate server and management system for deploying and controlling authentication using the certificate system. This system is offered at an additional cost. Solaris 9 access control uses either built-in authorization tables, or you can integrate access control into an LDAP directory service. However, the configuration of the access control system is in addition to the permissions that are configured for each file and directory on the physical file system. The lack of integration complicates the process and may make Web sites unavailable if the file system permissions are modified. Solaris 9 includes support for both 40-bit and 128-bit SSL encryption in both the Web Server and Sun ONE applications. Solaris 9 supports integration with the operating system, but only if you also use the Solaris Directory Server as the authentication system for user logons. Additionally, both the Solaris Directory Server and the Sun ONE Directory Server offer unified authentication across Internet services, allowing for a single logon-plus-password combination for e-mail, Web, and group collaboration. Windows Server 2003 uses the Active Directory service as the core for all authentication and control when supporting Internet services. Active Directory is an integral part of the operating system, recording Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 14 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper not only information about users and accounts, but also directory information for services and resources across the network. For compatibility, you can also access Active Directory by using standard LDAP protocols. By using Active Directory, you can configure a user with a single account that provides access to Internet services and other services that are hosted by the network, including shared files and printers. Users can have a single logon to gain access to the network. The access control lists (ACLs) that govern the underlying file system also handle access control to individual Internet services. Modifying file access within the file system also modifies access to the file over the Internet. The use of a single access control reduces duplication of information across internal and external systems. For e-commerce, Windows Server 2003 supports the 40-bit and 128-bit SSL protocols and Server Gated Cryptography (SGC), a common standard that is used for online transactions with financial institutions. To further restrict access, IIS 6.0 supports IP-level security for restricting access by IP address, domain name, or a combination of the two. The Active Directory service and the Solaris and Sun ONE Directory Server services support multiple databases. With multiple databases, you can spread authentication across multiple domains. However, in Solaris, the partitions between directories are physically separate. Windows Server 2003 uses the same unified directory structure for all the domains that it controls. For network-wide searches, Solaris uses a referral system to forward an individual search across each physical partition. This referral system increases the time that is required to search for authentication information across individual LDAP directories and servers. Because Active Directory uses a single database, searches across multiple domains occur concurrently. Solaris 9 supports replication of the LDAP database by using a master-slave model. For each database, there is one master directory that can be replicated onto multiple subordinate directories. Synchronization takes place on a manual basis or at specific intervals. Because there is only one master server, Solaris relies on one computer in the network to provide authentication services. With Active Directory, all servers are peers. There is no single Active Directory-based server that holds the core information for the whole network. If a security breach or hardware failure occurs, a server can be taken offline and immediately replaced with a new server that duplicates the Active Directory information from its peers. Because the synchronization process for Active Directory is automatic and two-way, updates on a local server also update the security records on the other servers that share the same Active Directory service. Because all the computers in the network use the same unified directory, they can all individually authenticate requests. This configuration is particularly useful in a distributed environment, because it ensures that authentication provides access to the whole network. Table 5 compares the security features of each operating system. Table 5. Internet Security Features Service Authentication Services Encrypted Authentication Solaris 9 Yes Yes Windows Server 2003 Yes Yes Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 15 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Certificate-based Authentication SSL Encryption (40-bit) SSL Encryption (128-bit) Access Control IP-based Security Transparent Storage Area Network (SAN) Support LDAP Authentication and Integration Authentication Integration Unified Operating System and Internet Access Control Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Internet Service Summary By providing a solid base of Internet services, especially for e-commerce and Web applications, Windows Server 2003 provides an advanced and developer-friendly solution compared to Solaris 9. Beyond support for basic Internet protocols, Solaris 9 relies on combining a set of servers—which Sun describes as ―integratable‖—to provide support for Web-related services and applications. Windows Server 2003, on the other hand, incorporates support for traditional Internet protocols and Web servers as a tightly integrated set of operating system features. One of the greatest strengths in Windows Server 2003 is the integration of Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0. Windows Server 2003 also provides advanced reliability and scalability across an Internet server farm, because Windows Server 2003 can distribute requests based on the resource load of individual servers. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 16 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Reliability To ensure the maximum reliability of a system, reliability features must be incorporated into every aspect of an operating system. The operating system must be able to tolerate faults and monitor the server health to predict when faults may occur and take action to rectify any problems. At a core level, an operating system must also be able to protect itself from the effects of the applications that it supports. If an application stops responding, the whole system should not fail. Therefore, the operating system must employ techniques to make sure that individual applications cannot adversely affect one another or the operating system itself. An operating system must also be able to apply and enforce appropriate security policies to prevent malicious use and deliberate attacks from inside and outside your network. For superior reliability, an operating system must be able to support fault-tolerant devices so that automatic failover is enabled if hardware fails. This support includes RAID systems that allow for recovery from disk failures and clustering to provide resilience if a complete hardware failure occurs. Other fault-tolerant services include UPS support so that a system can be shut down with safety to help prevent data corruption if a power failure occurs. More importantly, if you are using many servers to provide a range of services over a LAN or the Internet, an operating system must be able to handle failure across distributed servers. For example, users must still be able to access information from other locations when file storage is shared. To minimize downtime, you can use many methods to improve the recovery time after a fault has been identified or after faults have been corrected. These methods include file system recovery tools and backup and recovery systems. For diagnostic purposes, the operating system must also be able to log its current status and provide the tools to examine the logs to trace the origin of the fault. Although outages that are not planned present the most serious issue for high reliability, planned downtime can also be a factor. The ability to dynamically reconfigure the operating system without needing to restart the system can help to improve availability and reliability of the system. Core System Reliability Both Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 provide extended abilities to make sure that individual applications do not affect the operating system. Both operating systems support protected kernels and protected memory areas for individual applications. If an application fails because of a memory access failure, the crash only affects the allotted area and not the whole operating system. While Solaris 9 features a hardened kernel to resist failures that are caused by faulty drivers, Windows Server 2003 introduced Windows Driver Protection. Windows Driver Protection was developed by Microsoft and its third-party partners initially for Microsoft Windows XP and is included for the first time in Windows Server 2003. It prevents the installation of drivers that are known to cause problems and directs customers to an updated version of the driver. Additionally, driver rollback enables Windows Server 2003 to return to a working state more quickly if faulty drivers affect performance. If you perform sideby-side DLL installations in Windows Server 2003, you can prevent the accidental removal or overwriting of DLLs. Windows Server 2003 also builds on this compartment model for its Web server, IIS 6.0. Individual sites, directories within sites, and applications that run within a site can all be assigned to their own Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 17 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper compartment. If a system error or application failure occurs, only the compartment for that area of the site fails. This configuration significantly reduces the crippling effects of a failure in your Web site on all other areas of the system. Compartments also act as security barriers, preventing malicious software from accessing other parts of the operating system and the other applications on the same server. Solaris 9 provides Solaris Containers that isolate applications in their own compartments. If a single container fails, the problem is not propagated to the other containers. However, Solaris Containers are limited to individual applications, and they are difficult to use with a server application such as a Web server. Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, introduces WSRM, which isolates applications and enables fine-grained assignment of resources to optimize use of system resources. Fault-Tolerant Device Support Solaris 9 incorporates a monitoring ability that is designed for the SPARC platform, but it is not designed for Intel hardware. In supported systems, this ability enables you to swap components while the computer is running. Sun Cluster 3.0 is a separate product and can provide a reliable environment. When you use Sun Cluster 3.0 to deploy a cluster, you can configure up to eight computers as a single device. If one computer in the cluster fails, the other computers in the cluster automatically take over the processes and services that the failed device supported. The clustering facility requires specialized hardware to link the individual nodes. Solaris 9 includes the Solaris Volume Manager. Solaris Volume Manager enables you to combine multiple disks into a single, large logical volume. There is, however, no built-in RAID or other faulttolerant disk support; for this, you need a separate hardware or software package. Solstice Disk Suite is a separate software-based solution for disk management that provides RAID features in software without requiring special RAID hardware. Disk configuration is handled in real time, and for most operations, you do not have to restart for the changes to take effect. Windows Server 2003 supports memory mirroring that enables fast failover for fault-tolerant servers. Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, both include support clustering of up to eight nodes to provide system-wide redundancy for individual applications. While Solaris requires special hardware to enable the clustering technology, Windows Server 2003 supports clustering on standard SCSI-equipped server hardware, thereby lowering the cost to provide fault-tolerant clusters. Systems that support clustering are tested under the HCT. Windows Server 2003 includes built-in support for software-based RAID solutions and extensive support for many RAID controllers and RAID systems. This support includes those RAID solutions that are built into many data center servers. You can use to Disk Administrator tool to configure all disks and RAID systems to provide a consistent interface for managing data storage. Additionally, Windows Server 2003 supports monitoring the system environment on appropriate hardware and integrates with many UPS systems to support advanced reliability if a power failure occurs. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 18 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Fault-Tolerant Resource Sharing The resources that are made available by two or more servers must remain available if one of the computers fails. Solaris 9, when it is used in combination with Sun Cluster 3.0, can provide some of this functionality but only when sharing disk resources by using the network file system (NFS). Sun Cluster 3.0 can redirect some resource and network requests in a cluster, but this function is limited. Sun Cluster 3.0 cannot queue the requests for later distribution. It is also cannot redistribute requests beyond the network load balancing techniques that were discussed earlier, although you can write code to perform a similar function by using a Java-based application. Active Directory can reduce the typical effects of a system failure, because there is no single point of failure in Active Directory that would delay the processing of individual requests. Windows Server 2003 also includes an improved DFS. DFS enables you to aggregate multiple shares on different computers into a single namespace. If you use this system to share your directories and files, you can eliminate the complex relationships between drive letters and remote network devices. DFS also enables you to create a single resource that is available, even if one of the DFS mount points fails. DFS also integrates with the cluster management system to enable a single cluster to share resources as one block. If a single node in the cluster fails, another node can take over for the missing mount point without the failure becoming apparent to the client. For additional resilience, Windows Server 2003 also incorporates Message Queuing (also known as MSMQ). Message Queuing can automatically redirect requests or queue them, redistributing the requests to a computer that can process the request. By using Message Queuing, you can bypass both failed systems and overloaded systems. Message Queuing is also integrated with the cluster technologies and provide similar fault tolerance in cluster-based server environments. Failure Recovery The most critical task to be performed after a failure is to verify the integrity of the information in the permanent storage system. Solaris 9 includes the UNIX fsck utility, which enables the operating system to repair a file system during a system restart. However, recovery is not always perfect, and you may lose files and data. For fault-tolerant file systems, you can use the logging features that are provided with the UNIX file system type. The logging features improve reliability by providing basic journaling features. Changes are written to a log that can be more easily recovered and used to bring a file system back into a safer state after a system failure. Alternatively, you can purchase the VERITAS File System. The VERITAS File System provides software-based RAID solutions and supports journaling. Windows Server 2003 includes the NTFS file system, which also uses journaling technology. Unlike NTFS, the VERITAS system is only supported for data storage volumes; you cannot use it with the operating system boot volume. NTFS is very tolerant of disk failures. It employs a transaction logging technique to make sure that all requests are recorded on the disk. If a system failure occurs, the file system can process the pending changes that are recorded in the log to return the file system to the operational state before the computer failure. When NTFS is used against a disk in a cluster environment, the log that is produced during the checking sequence is kept so that changes can later be monitored. If a system failure occurs, Solaris 9 automatically writes a log of the failure to disk. The computer then automatically restarts to its normal operating state. On Solaris Enterprise Server systems, Solaris 9 also supports Automatic System Recovery. Automatic System Recovery monitors the components within a Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 19 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Sun server, and if a component failure occurs, it automatically restarts the system. During the restart process, the failed component is ignored or disabled by the operating system, and the operating system continues to restart as usual. Automatic System Recovery supports unattended operation, because the computer restarts even if a critical component on the computer is not working correctly. For more serious problems, Solaris also supports an interactive environment for repairing the operating system. However, effective repair requires extensive knowledge of the underlying file system and the tools that are available for repair. For nontechnical users, this can be a daunting interface, and even if a user has UNIX experience, repairs require a high level of expertise. Solaris 9 includes a basic tape backup system, but it is not reliable or practical for most server installations. The ufsdump utility requires command-line experience, and it cannot always restore your system perfectly. Although ufsrestore recovers files and their contents, it does not retain inode numbers and allocations, which might break some links and file relationships. Solaris 9 also requires additional steps to restore boot settings. There are several options in Solaris 9 for recovering a system after failure. One option is to start from a CD-ROM, and then use the mini-root system to perform the restore operation. Another option is to reinstall the operating system and restore the files from a backup tape. These options increase the recovery time significantly. In practice, most Solaris users purchase Sun Solstice Backup or a third-party software, such as VERITAS NetBackup. The UNIX File System (UFS) snapshot enables Solaris 9 to create a point-in-time image of a particular file system. You can then use this image to bring the system back to a known, ready state if the system fails. Windows Server 2003 uses the Volume Shadow Copy Service to create a shadow copy of a particular file system. However, the Volume Shadow Copy Service enables users to recover files without administrator intervention. Other third-party solutions are available for Solaris 9 backups, including LEGATO Networker, but these other solutions work on top of the operating system. LEGATO Networker integrates with other application software, including Oracle, Sybase, and VERITAS, and provides tools to back up whole networks and many different operating systems. However, it remains a separate component with a separate management interface that can increase software and maintenance costs. Windows Server 2003 supports an automatic restart option that can save memory contents to disk so that you can trace a problem. To aid in the recovery process, Windows Server 2003 includes the Recovery Console. The Recovery Console enables you to manage NTFS volumes from floppy disks or from a bootable CD-ROM. If the file system fails, the Recovery Console enables you to recover the system from the boot disk. Additionally, you can start a server that is running Windows Server 2003 in safe mode, and then reconfigure the system without loading additional drivers and services. The Microsoft Reliability Service enables you to monitor event data from your data center servers, analyze the data, and then produce custom reliability and availability reports. It also enables you to monitor the availability of software and hardware components in your system, identify root causes of both planned and unplanned downtime, and then take preventive measures to improve system availability. You can use Cluster Administrator to set up and reconfigure Windows Server 2003 clusters remotely without rebooting. Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, both support up to eight-node clusters. New diagnostics tools in Windows Server 2003 can be used to compare and correlate the logs from all the nodes in the cluster. You can then use the Cluster Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 20 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Recovery tool to reconstruct a disk and the cluster state and bring the cluster back online as quickly as possible. Windows Server 2003 also enables you to store the current configuration for a server in a separate location. You can then use the configuration to reset the system back to its original state. This information is useful not only if the system fails, but also when you install new device drivers and hardware that may affect the system. Solaris 9 does not offer this feature, and you cannot implement a system like this using Solaris 9, because the configuration information is saved in a number of files and locations. Windows Server 2003 includes a powerful backup utility that can back up files to tape depending on different criteria. The Backup utility also supports powerful scheduling features. You can create a recovery boot disk to start the system, and then recover files from the backup to recover your system in the shortest possible time. The backup is also integrated into the rest of the operating system, thereby enabling backup and recovery of Active Directory and Exchange Server. Table 6 compares the system recovery features of each operating system. Table 6. System Recovery Features Feature File System Recovery Tools Fault-Tolerant File System Crash Logs Kernel Dump Files Automatic System Recovery Interactive System Recovery CD-ROM or Floppy Boot Recovery Configuration Backup and Recovery Simple Tape Backup System Enterprise Tape Backup System Solaris 9 Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Windows Server 2003 Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Dynamic Reconfiguration Solaris 9 supports dynamic reconfiguration. Dynamic reconfiguration enables you to modify all aspects of the operating system without restarting or resetting the system. The dynamic abilities extend to all aspects of the operating system, from configuring devices and services to installing new device drivers. This ability enables Solaris to support highly available installations, and it is common to have live Solaris servers with availability times stated in months. Solaris 9 also updates Solaris Live Upgrade, enabling you to upgrade the operating system while the computer is running. The next time that you restart the computer, the upgraded operating system version replaces the previous version. Having to restart the system is often underemphasized in the Sun marketing literature. If problems occur, you can return to the previous version to get the equipment back online as quickly as possible. Windows Server 2003 also supports dynamic reconfiguration. Dynamic reconfiguration enables the most common operations, such as adding Plug and Play devices, configuring virtual memory, and Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 21 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper modifying network settings, to be done on the fly. Additionally, Windows Server 2003 supports the installation of companion products, such as Microsoft SQL Server™ and Exchange Server, without having to restart and other applications that support the Microsoft Installer. By using the clustering abilities in Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, you can perform rolling upgrades. If you use this ability, you can take one computer in a cluster offline, upgrade that computer, and bring it back online to rejoin the cluster. You can then update each computer in the cluster, thereby allowing an organization to upgrade a server environment without any downtime. Windows Datacenter Program The reliability of servers and services is one of the most fundamental aspects of the computing environment. However, achieving reliability depends on more than just the operating system. You also need robust hardware designs that support the operating system features and communication between the hardware and operating system to make sure that the reliability levels are kept at a maximum level. To achieve this goal, Microsoft has teamed up with leaders in the server-manufacturing industry to develop the Windows Datacenter Program. This program provides a complete package of the hardware, software, and support services that are required for customers whose mission-critical requirements extend up to and include large-scale server installations. To help enforce the quality and reliability of the systems that are provided by the program, a customer must obtain Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, as part of the complete solution offered by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). In addition to qualifying the basic system, other components—including third-party hardware and software (for example, drivers and backup and antivirus software)—must also be supplied as part of the system to be tested. The Datacenter Server OEM rigorously tests the system, and then the WHQL validates the system test. The complete configuration must pass a stringent 14-day testing procedure and must meet or exceed the minimum 99.9 percent scheduled availability before Microsoft approves it as a Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, offering. Building on this reliability, Microsoft Datacenter OEMs are required to offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) of at least 99.9 percent uptime. OEMs may offer higher SLAs if they choose. The stringent qualification and rigorous system testing focus on the whole system and not just the individual components. This focus helps to ensure the overall reliability of the system. Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, is supplied through authorized OEMs, who, in cooperation with Microsoft, rigorously test the integrated systems that they offer. Support is offered through HARQ. These support queues are staffed by OEM and Microsoft personnel to help resolve problems quickly with one telephone call. The Windows Datacenter Program now has third-party certified Datacenter Support Providers to expand customer support options for Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition. After you select a system, the Windows Datacenter Program requires that the OEM offer a variety of services, including full installation of the operating system and any required drivers. The Windows Datacenter Program also requires an onsite evaluation of the system in your environment. The Windows Datacenter Program also requires an onsite service program that is supported by the OEM or a certified Datacenter Support Provider. You can even choose to subscribe to a yearly update license, which provides the latest version releases, supplements, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition service packs. The program provides an integrated hardware, software, and service offering that is a highly reliable and rigorously tested solution that is supported by Microsoft and OEMs. Approved systems are Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 22 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper supported for the duration of the current version of Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, and for the lifetime of the hardware plus 18 months. This ensures a complete support system, even after the end of the systems’ normal life. The program also makes sure you have a single point of contact if a Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, system fails. This point of contact is set up through HARQ to resolve the problem. The OEM and Microsoft then work to resolve the problem. In addition to reliability offered by Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, the fault tolerant ftServer 6500 4-way system from Stratus Technologies further illustrates Windows Server 2003 reliability. By working with Microsoft, Stratus Technologies offers a 100 percent uptime guarantee when you use Windows 2000 Advanced Server on the ftServer 6500. Stratus expects to extend this offer to Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition. Although Sun provides HCLs for both SPARC and Intel versions of Solaris, these HCLs only apply to individual components. They do not provide assurances for the majority of the systems that they sell, and, in fact, they only warranty Sun equipment. Intel-based hardware is not covered. Sun guarantees up to 99.95 percent uptime on single Sun Enterprise systems (such as the Sun Fire 10000, Sun Fire 12K, and Sun Fire 15K), and up to 99.975 percent uptime on any clustered Sun 1 Enterprise systems . Sun has initiated the SunUP program to support this guarantee. The SunUP program includes a knowledge base, the SunVIP software vendor support program, and other services to address the application environment. The majority of Sun systems are sold through a series of distribution partners, although Sun provides the support services for both Sun hardware and software. For the Sun Intel-based solutions, there is no single point of contact. In this case, you can resolve issues on a case-by-case basis by contacting both the hardware vendor and Sun. Reliability Summary Solaris is limited in both its core reliability features and its support for additional features that are provided by hardware solutions. Solaris guarantees only specific levels of uptime on a very small range of Sun-specific hardware. Certain server models support hot-swap devices, and Solaris 9 can manage and cope with these changes but only within a limited hardware set. Third-party drivers and hardwareplus-software combinations are required for more extensive support. For the data center, Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, provides robust system reliability. By making sure that the system that is delivered to the customer has passed testing and qualification levels that are required by Microsoft before the initial installation, Microsoft and OEM partners can easily guarantee the 99.9 percent and greater uptime levels. Approved Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition systems also cover third-party hardware and software, not just the core components of the operating system. Windows Server 2003 also incorporates a number of reliability tools and features into the standard operating system, including support for hardware- and software-based RAID arrays, built-in backup and recovery tools, distributed storage, and directory and application-level services. You can back up or restore configurations at any time, and system recovery can be handled from a CD-ROM and tape combination without any additional software. 1 For more information, see the Sun Web site at http://www.sun.com/datacenter/continuity/availability/ Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 23 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Manageability Networks are no longer controlled from one central location and are not supported from a single server or managed from a single console. Additionally, they are often not even supported by multiple servers in the same location. Having a distributed network with multiple servers spread over different floors, buildings, and even continents is now considered a normal practice. To manage these disparate services, you need a simple way to control and monitor your network without having to visit each computer individually. Managing server resources is one challenge. The other challenge is managing the resources on individual users’ computers. You must control users’ access to applications and shared resources and make sure that they cannot upset the configuration of their computers, which may increase support requirements and total cost. Management Interface Solaris 9 also supports a unified management interface through the use of Solaris Management Console. The Solaris Management Console is limited in scope and only controls some of the most basic elements of Solaris 9. Most of the management of complex systems and applications is still handled by using text files (which requires hand modification) or by using a selection of X Windows– based tools. You can now control some aspects of the system through a Web interface that is built on top of the Solaris Management Console. However, this Web interface is also limited to a very small section of the whole operating system. Both Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 support Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM), a system that the Distributed Management Task Force designed to make managing and monitoring individual computers accessible over the network. Integrating the access rights and group policies into Active Directory enhances support in Windows Server 2003. Windows Server 2003 uses the MMC, a central application that controls nearly all aspects of the operating system. The MMC provides a simple unified interface and reduces the information that the systems administrator must learn. The MMC provides a consistent interface and uses a combination of wizards and property dialog boxes to control all aspects of the operating system. Each subsystem and service is made available through a series of snap-ins that provide templates for controlling services. Individual sets of extensions can be configured in the MMC, thereby enabling administrators to set up different management extension collections. For example, you can create one extension set for controlling security and another for managing network-based services, such as printers and shared folders. The MMC is network-capable. Individual snap-ins enable you to manage services on a remote computer over a network. You can use the MMC from an individual computer to control the services and abilities of remote computers. The MMC is optimized to use the minimum amount of network bandwidth, which makes it perfectly suited to manage services over WANs. Windows Server 2003 provides a Web-based interface for certain parts of the operating system to enable better control of remote systems. For example, you can monitor the printer queues on a Windows Server 2003–based server from a Web browser, and you can pause or reassign individual jobs. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 24 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Finally, Windows Server 2003 includes an updated Telnet service and the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) support. The WMIC follows the standard DOS and UNIX conventions and uses existing shells, utilities, and the ability to be extended through additional scripts. An Alias system, which is a part of WMIC, enables you to create your own tools, with custom input, output, and report formats so that you can customize your administration environment. In addition to the support that Windows Server 2003 offers natively for operating system configuration, the MMC also enables third-party companies to provide snap-ins that control the applications and systems that they support. For example, you can control Exchange Server by using the MMC either locally or remotely. The management process is further simplified because systems administrators must only learn one management system. Table 7 compares the management features of each operating system. Table 7. Management Interface Features Feature Command-line Management GUI-based User/Group Tool GUI-based Network Tool GUI-based Printer Tool GUI-based File Sharing Tool GUI-based Service Tool Extensible Management Tool Remote GUI Management Tools Unified Management Tool Web-based Management Interface Compliant with Distributed Management Task Force WBEM Solaris 9 Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Partial No Yes Yes Windows Server 2003 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Keeping Current Keeping your server current with the latest system fixes, security patches, and updates can be an enormous task, even for a small network. Both Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 incorporate tools that simplify the process of checking and updating your computer to make sure that you are running the latest and most secure version of your operating system. Solaris 9 uses the Sun Management Center Change Manager, a software product that connects directly to the Solaris Patch Manager so that you can keep current. Only ―free‖ patches are available to all users through this service. For complete support, you must have a service contract with Sun. Updates are handled and distributed on an individual system basis. Updating a number of computers requires a separate installation on each system in your network. Patches for serious security or stability risks are made available to the public for free only after several weeks of use by Sun Support Services subscribers. Windows Server 2003 uses Windows Update, which was first used on operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 98 and Windows XP. Microsoft has significantly updated and improved Windows Update to provide free updates to all versions of Windows. You can download and select updates Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 25 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper manually, or you can set an automatic update schedule. Many of the updates do not require you to restart the system during installation, which further reduces downtime. For larger sites, you can also install Microsoft Software Update Services (SUS). SUS acts as a local distribution node for your network and enables all the servers and clients on your network to keep current through communication with a server on your own network. SUS helps to reduce expensive Internet bandwidth—you download an update package only one time, and then all clients can obtain the updates from your local server. You can update your computers faster and also reduce the effects of serious security problems by reducing the time that is required to patch the servers in your network. SUS also enables administrators to custom select the updates that they want to distribute to clients and servers on their networks. Directories and User Authentication Centralized management requires a service that stores information about a network and provides a coherent interface for recording user and resource information on an enterprise basis. This service must use standard Internet protocols and be integrated into the other services that the server network provides. Additionally, it should be resilient to failures. The reliance on a single server for authentication and directory information leads to potential problems. There is a single point of failure, even when the server is used in combination with other fault-tolerant services, such as clusters or hardware partitioning. Solaris 9 provides a centralized authentication facility by using the Network Information Service (NIS/NIS+). The NIS/NIS+ system uses a central server to propagate information to other servers within the network at specific intervals. The central server controls authorization for local computers, although clients can cache information to increase speed. The main disadvantage for clients that use this system is that there is no single point of authorization—users must authorize connections to each server, even if they all use the NIS/NIS+ system. For more extensive integration with Solaris 9, you can also use Sun ONE Directory Server. Sun ONE Directory Server builds on the LDAP standard to provide a centralized directory for user logons and contact information. Sun ONE Directory Server supports authentication at user logon and through integration with the Sun Internet Mail Server and the Sun ONE product family for e-mail, XML-based Web services, and group collaboration projects. Sun ONE Directory Server is not an integrated solution, and Sun has indicated that they will not use NIS/NIS+ in future versions of Solaris in favor of Sun ONE Directory Server. Sun ONE Directory Server is available as part of the Sun ONE product family, but it is installed as part of Solaris 9. Although you can use Sun ONE Directory Server for user-level authentication, its primary role is as an applicationlevel authentication system. You typically back up the system by using file-based or NIS/NIS+ user authentication systems. Additionally, because Sun ONE Directory Server uses a standard LDAP implementation for storage and distribution, integration across multiple directories is complex. Each LDAP server must forward requests that it cannot handle to another preconfigured server. There is no automatic referral to another directory. Windows Server 2003 uses Active Directory to store information about users, computers, and servers on the network. Active Directory uses a distributed model to share directory information. This model prevents a single computer failure from bringing your network to a stop. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 26 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Active Directory is also used by and made available to other applications, including the XML-based Web services that IIS, Exchange Server, and SQL Server support. All the applications share the same authentication information. This authentication information also controls access to the files and folders on each server. Windows Server 2003 does not require a separate authorization scheme. The Group Policy Management console (GPMC) is a new feature in Windows Server 2003. The GPMC simplifies the way that you define policies for a group of computers or individuals. You use the information in Active Directory to define and control Group Policy. For example, you can use the GPMC to create a new Group Policy for a department, and then apply this policy to a range of different applications and services. You can export and import policies on different computers. This ability enables you to quickly and easily apply a set of policies across a number of computers without manually setting permissions on each server. Table 8 compares the directory and authentication systems of each operating system. Table 8. Directory and Authentication Systems Feature Integrated Directory/Authentication Service Integrated Directory/DNS Service Integrated Directory/File Security Service LDAP Compatibility Group Policy Management Import/Export Policies Across Servers Distributed Directory Smart Card Authentication Kerberos Authentication X.509 Certificate Authentication SSO Capability Solaris 9 Partial No No Yes Partial No No Yes Yes Yes No Windows Server 2003 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Managing the Desktop Solaris 9 is not a client-oriented operating system. Native Solaris clients are terminals or X Window devices. Solaris supports more intelligent client computers to provide services such as file sharing, printer sharing, and mail and group collaboration services (by using the Sun Internet Mail Server or Sun ONE). Solaris does not manage client computers or the information and individual resources that each computer can access, except through the NFS and Automounter security settings. Windows Server 2003 incorporates the IntelliMirror management technologies. IntelliMirror enables administrators to set up user profiles that define the data that users can access, where the information they use is stored, and what applications they can access—either published or through a subscription. IntelliMirror uses the user profile information to set up a user’s computer when the user logs on to a network. Any user can use any computer within the network—IntelliMirror automatically sets up the computer according to the user’s profile with the same storage abilities and applications. This ability Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 27 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper reduces the need for individual computers for each user in a network. Instead, users can work at any computer without restriction. For added resilience and because most users use the same computer each day, IntelliMirror keeps a copy of each user’s files on their current computer and on the server. If a server fails, a user can still access the files. If a user moves to a different computer, the information is available to the user at that computer. IntelliMirror also enables you to define applications for users. IntelliMirror dynamically installs and configures these applications if a user moves to a new computer. If a user tries to access another application, the application is also installed on the computer in real time, or it is loaded from the server. As the administrator, you can modify an application’s availability for each user, group, or computer. This ability enables you to install an application on all the computers in the network without visiting each computer. Microsoft has also improved the control and distribution of applications to client computers in Windows Server 2003. Windows Server 2003 includes the ability to set software restriction policies so that individual users are restricted to a specific set of applications, whether or not the application is installed on their computers. By centralizing the process of storing user-specific data and the applications that each user requires, you eliminate many of the problems with supporting users in networks. Users are no longer restricted by the computer that they use. Because users cannot reconfigure their computers, they cannot break their computers, which helps reduce the number of help desk calls and lowers costs. Table 9 compares the desktop support that each operating system offers. Table 9. Desktop Support Feature User Data Management Desktop Application Management User Settings Management Roaming User Support Solaris 9 Limited Limited No No Windows Server 2003 Yes Yes Yes Yes System Deployment Solaris 9 supports remote booting. This ability enables administrators to start any SPARC-based computer from a central server without any form of local storage. This ability also makes it easier to install software and drivers. After you install the software or driver on the remote boot system, all computers that restart remotely will use the new version of the operating system and any software that the server supports. Solaris 9 provides Jump Start, which enables a central server to be the remote boot and installation point for new client installations. However, Jump Start is only an installation method for the operating system, and it does not manage or control the new client after the operating system is installed. If you want to provide a central server that all clients must use to execute applications, both operating systems provide a solution. Solaris uses the X Windows system. Here, X Window clients run on the server while the front-end graphical user interface (GUI) appears on a remote computer. For non-GUI Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 28 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper applications, you can use Telnet or Secure Shell services with the traditional text-based interface to the underlying UNIX system. Although it acts like a remote desktop, you are actually running multiple instances of the same application for individual clients. This functionality creates a process-heavy environment as well as a large volume of network traffic, and it does not resolve issues with user-level access. One user is like another on a multiple-user platform. Solaris does not directly provide integration services with other platforms. Sun uses Samba for sharing file and printer resources with both Mac OS/OS X and Windows clients as a supported part of its Linuxcompatibility software bundle. However, there is no integration of these third-party tools into Solaris, and you cannot manage these systems with the other operating system features. Windows Server 2003 incorporates tools that provide remote booting of clients, if required. However, because of the nature of individual computers, Microsoft recommends that you use standard computers with IntelliMirror. IntelliMirror provides an efficient way to distribute software and support clients because it is used on a user-by-user basis instead of on a client-by-client basis. When you use IntelliMirror with the Active Directory user management and logon abilities, you can provide a completely dynamic deployment environment for your users. For the initial installation, Remote Installation Services (RIS) enables a single server to deploy all versions of Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, and Windows Server 2003 (except Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition) to new computers in the network. RIS is integrated into Active Directory, IntelliMirror, and Windows Update to make the installation and setup of a new computer as easy as possible. Windows provides Terminal Server, which works similar to X Windows. Terminal Server provides a desktop service to the remote client. After the user has logged on, they access a terminal server as if they are using a local computer. The terminal server runs the applications remotely. Unlike X Windows, which provides the service for each application, Terminal Server provides the whole remote computer. Terminal Server also shares resources, not applications, so multiple instances of an application are shared more efficiently, thereby reducing the system requirements while increasing the number of supported clients. Remote Desktop Connections are available for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Macintosh OS/OS X, and Microsoft Windows CE. The Open Source program rdesktop can also be used to access a Terminal Server, as long as the necessary Client Access Licenses are purchased. To integrate a Windows installation into an existing network environment, provide as much compatibility as possible with the existing systems. Windows Server 2003 already provides file and printer sharing functionality for Macintosh OS-based and Macintosh OS X–based clients. This functionality is fully integrated into the same systems that are used for Windows clients. You can also use this functionality combined with the Services for UNIX 3.0 add-in to provide file sharing through NFS, printer sharing through lpr, and network services, including importing and sharing NIS data with Active Directory. You can also use Services for UNIX during migration. Manageability Summary Solaris 9 provides few management tools. You configure most of the Solaris system by using a command-line interface or a number of highly-focused applications that are disparate and are not integrated into the operating system. Although Solaris 9 provides remote management abilities through a Telnet or Secure Shell interface or various Web-based tools, it lacks a coherent system for managing Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 29 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper computers, either locally or remotely. However, Solaris 9 does provide remote booting for Solaris clients. Other issues include the fact that Sun ONE Directory Server is an additional component that offers little or no collaboration with the operating system where it is running. Additional core components and applications in the Sun ONE product family are also separated from the operating system. They act as applications instead of aiding the operating system to provide a complete service. Windows Server 2003 uses the MMC, which provides a simple and consistent management interface to both local computers and to remote services. For authentication and directory management, Windows Server 2003 includes Active Directory, which provides a central location for all the resources on the network. The information is shared and available to all servers, which enables users to log on to the network one time, and the uses never have to enter a password to access resource on the network. By using IntelliMirror, Windows Server 2003 provides a coherent way of distributing applications to client computers and enables users to sit at any computer within the network and access their files, applications, and environment. For more direct control, you can use Terminal Server and Remote Desktop Connections. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 30 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Development and Deployment Developing applications on any platform requires a rich environment for your programmers and an appropriate deployment and distribution facility to make your application available as quickly as possible. These capabilities are especially true with Web-based applications, where the need for an application can be measured in days or hours, not years or months. General Application Development Environment Both platforms support a wide range of languages and application development environments. Sun provides the Sun ONE Studio environment, which includes development support for C++ but primarily supports development of Java-based applications. The .NET Framework is a complete solution for developing and deploying applications. Microsoft supports an application development environment, Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET. Visual Studio .NET ® is a direct complement to Windows Server 2003 and includes support for C++, Java, and Visual Basic . Visual Studio .NET also supports C# and J#. Visual Studio .NET enables developer to take advantage of the new functionality offered by the .NET Framework, an integral part of Windows Server 2003. Web Application Development Environment For Web development, there are a number of solutions available for Solaris 9 when used in conjunction either with Sun ONE Web server or Apache. These solutions include the traditional Common Gateway Interface (CGI) technologies, such as Perl, C, C++, and other compiled and scripted languages, but they also include Java and Java Server Pages. Solaris 9 along with appropriate Sun ONE applications support Java and Java Web applications (or servlets). These applications enable you to deploy complex interactive applications with two-way communication between the client’s browser and the Web server. The servlets are loaded dynamically and allow for the best use of system resources. You can modify servlets without interrupting user applications, which helps to improve Web service availability. Sun also provides Sun ONE Active Server Pages, which enables you to deploy ASP-based Web sites and applications that were developed by using Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, and ® Microsoft Office FrontPage . Sun ONE Active Server Pages integrates with Sun ONE Web Server, Apache Web servers, or Zeus Web servers. Solaris 9 also has a wide range of Web serving solutions available. However, even when you use Sun ONE Web Server, the Web server platform and the operating system are not integrated. Similarly, the Web development solutions are not integrated with the Web server or the operating system. Solaris 9 does not include native support for Web protocols. Instead, Solaris relies on the Sun Web server 2.1 or Apache Web Server. These platforms support Java, JavaScript, CGI technology, Perl, C, C++, and other scripted and compiled languages. Windows Server 2003 uses IIS 6.0 as the Web serving platform. As discussed earlier, IIS is tightly integrated into Windows Server 2003 such that the features of Windows Server 2003 can be shared and used within IIS and the Web applications that it supports. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 31 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper IIS supports CGI applications and languages and development environments that use the Internet Server API (ISAPI) to provide integrated Web applications. By using Microsoft ASP.NET, you can use a wide range of languages to develop your Web applications. The .NET Framework enables you to develop applications in a variety of languages, and you can use several languages in the same application, because all languages use the .NET common language runtime. The .NET Framework also improves the support for the Component Object Model (COM). Through COM, individual components can be developed and then shared among all the applications on a computer. This combination of technologies enables you to quickly develop stand-alone or Web-based applications by using the same code base. ASP.NET provides an interface that supports COM-based applications on the Web. Using ASP.NET and COM technologies decreases the development time, because you can reuse objects. The .NET Framework also provides tools and technologies that enable objects to work across a range of servers. Web applications are often provided in a number of discrete services by using SOAP. SOAP enables you to access and manipulate objects on a remote server from the client computer. These objects can provide simple services from converting values to complete data access applications. Windows Server 2003 is fully integrated with the .NET Framework and offers native support for XMLbased Web services standards, including Extensible Markup Language (XML), SOAP, and UDDI. This support makes it easy to discover, share, and reuse XML-based Web services. Support for XML-based Web services technology in Solaris 9 relies on the programming language that you use. Java incorporates support for all the XML-based Web services technologies, but you must program and develop them individually. Table 10 compares the Web application features that each operating system offers. TABLE 10. Web Application Features Language or Application Environment C/C++ Perl Python Visual Basic Java Java Servlets Server-Hosted Scripts JavaScript ASP FrontPage Extension Support Web Service Support SOAP, XML-RPC Support UDDI Message Queuing Services Solaris 9 Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Through third-party Through Java or third-party Through Java or third-party No Windows Server 2003 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 32 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Transaction Services Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) Interface JDBC Interface OLE DB Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) ® No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Development and Deployment Summary Although Solaris 9 offers a great deal of flexibility for developing applications, there are limitations. There is no integration with the operating system unless developers incorporate it, and without additional development technologies, such as XML-based Web services, distributed applications and services would not exist. Windows Server 2003 provides integration with the .NET Framework, a powerful library of tools and technologies that provides functionality for XML-based Web services, distributed computing, and developing applications that integrate closely with the operating system and the features it offers, such as Message Queuing, network load balancing, and clustering technologies. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 33 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Summary Solaris provides some advanced reliability and scalability features that are aimed directly at data centers, including SMP and clustering support. Windows Server 2003 provides scalability and clustering for Intel hardware. Considering the lack of certain features in Solaris 9 that have to be complemented with additional Sun or third-party software, Solaris is an expensive solution because of the cost of ownership and management time. Solaris 9 requires UNIX expertise for management and additional software to provide even the basic functionality that Windows Server 2003 provides. Sun ONE Directory Server and Sun ONE are layered products that somewhat provide an Internet solution for Solaris, and the incorporation of Java into the Solaris 9 kernel shows that Sun is committed to supporting an Internet-focused operating system. Solaris 9 concentrates its abilities on expensive, single-system solutions, such as the Sun Fire servers, that are used in data centers. Although single-system solutions are centralized, they limit the effective reliability across the network. Because Solaris 9 does not provide a distributed solution as Windows Server 2003 does, Solaris 9 is vulnerable to many different single points of failure. There is no networklevel resilience—a single computer failure within a Solaris 9 network can make the whole network unusable. In contrast, Active Directory forms a core part of Windows Server 2003. By controlling all aspects of the resource management process, Active Directory ensures consistency across the network from access to the network as a whole to individual authorization of shared folders and other network resources. Sun Directory Service addresses some of these problems, but the technology is restricted to authentication on a single resource basis rather than on a network basis. With particular attention to the data center, Windows Server 2003 offers a more cost-effective solution for reliability. The Windows Datacenter Program makes sure that any hardware solution, after it has been tested and approved, can easily keep to its 99.9 percent availability guarantee. Because the whole hardware and software system is tested and approved, including the core operating system, backup systems, and software, customers can be confident that the system they purchase can provide the maximum level of availability. Additionally, the backup of a coherent support system by the Joint Support Queue makes sure that any problems are resolved within the required availability constraints. Windows Server 2003 supports many of the high-availability facilities that Solaris 9 offers. The Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, both support 32processor SMP systems and eight-node clustering. The advances in Intel hardware and the improvements that Windows Server 2003 supports mean that performance for many applications— particularly in the data center and e-commerce arena—may exceed those that Solaris offers on either Intel or UltraSPARC hardware. The release of a 64-bit Intel Itanium processor provides another significant advance in performance, and Microsoft has been working hard with Intel to ensure maximum performance from the new processor. The wide range of Windows Server 2003–supported hardware enables you to deploy solutions across your network without worrying about the scalability of your existing hardware or software platforms. Clustering on Windows Server 2003 is handled using standard components, and you can deploy Windows Server 2003 on a much wider variety of hardware at a much lower cost. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 34 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper For deploying applications to the public over the Internet, Windows Server 2003 also demonstrates a clear advantage. With built-in support for the major Internet protocols and the support of the .NET Framework, you can use Windows Server 2003 to provide Web applications and XML-based Web services using SOAP, XML-RPC, and UDDI. The management support that Windows Server 2003 lowers the total cost for the network. By centralizing the management process, the typical overhead costs that are associated with supporting a distributed client-server network are significantly reduced. Additionally, because Windows Server 2003 provides a network-oriented solution, it offers a much more resilient solution to the problem of providing network resources. By building clustering, network load balancing, and distributed storage into the operating system, you can deploy a Windows Server 2003 network without having to worry about the future scalability of the network. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 35 Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 White Paper Related Links See the following resources for further information:    For additional information about enterprise management services, see the Microsoft SMS Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/default.asp For additional information about Active Directory, see the Active Directory Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/activedirectory/default.mspx For additional information about the technical differences between Active Directory and Sun Directory Service 3.1, see ―Comparing Microsoft Active Directory with Sun Directory Service 3.1‖ at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evaluation/compare/adandsds.asp For the latest information about Windows Server 2003, see the Windows Server 2003 Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003. Comparing Sun Solaris 9 and Windows Server 2003 Technologies 36