A Windows OS allows people with little or no experience with website development to create an advanced website quickly. The advantages of windows dedicated server are
Support Costs
The support costs for Windows NT are lower than those associated with Unix (hey, that's a Unix advantage, right?). Microsoft claimed in October 1999 (Microsoft Business, again) that in "previous studies," Windows NT has approximately 37% lower TCO (Total Cost to Operate) than Unix. They went on to state that certified Linux engineers are not nearly as plentiful, and this situation will cause support costs to be higher for Unix. Microsoft's Web site also states that retraining costs incurred in the move from Windows to Unix will also affect a company's bottom line.
Stability
The stability of Windows NT has been proven over the years, according to Microsoft, by customers such as Boeing, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell Computer, Nasdaq, and "many others who run mission-critical applications...." Microsoft claims that Unix does not have a commercial quality Journaling File System. This type of system is valuable if a computer system crashes. A journaling system will keep track of system entries during normal operation. In the event of possible data corruption, the user can double-check the journals to extract any missing data. In the same article, Microsoft stated that "there are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike NT where Compaq, Data General, HP, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers."
Hand In Hand...
Our two competitors have one thing in common: each agrees that its product is superior in stability, cost savings, and flexibility! But can our two "heavyweights" work together?
AT&T has authored a product called U/WIN. This software provides a mechanism for building and running Unix applications on NT, Win 98, and Win 95. The U/WIN package includes the following features:
Libraries that provide the Unix Application Programming Interface (API)
Files and development tools such as cc, yacc, lex, and make
Korn Shell and over 200 utilities such as ls, sed, cp, and stty
Microsoft has also made available several software packages to allow customers to integrate usage of both platforms. Windows Interix 2.2 allows users who currently have Unix and are considering integrating Windows into their paradigm to run Unix applications and scripts on the NT operating system. Microsoft's repository program has also been ported to Unix by a third party (Platinum). Their repository provides a common environment for development tools and data warehousing metadata that may be scattered and inconsistent throughout a business.
This concept supposedly eases the task of data warehousing. Said Michael Barnes in the Hurwitz Trend Watch, "If you don't have something as simple as data definitions that are standard across different applications, that makes a data warehouse useless or far, far less valuable."
How about an entire staff at Microsoft dedicated to developing applications for the Unix family of operating systems? SunWorld (April 1998) reported a team of about 60 Microsoft engineers with the job of creating software applications that would work with Unix flavors such as Solaris, HP-UX, and Irix. The manager of the Microsoft Unix team, Ramesh Paramewaran, had a sign on his office door that declared: "Peace and Love between Unix & Microsoft." The main Microsoft products being ported to Unix included Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, and COM (Component Object Model). Microsoft is motivated to make such efforts because many of their major clients (Shell Oil and Siemens, for example) have requested Microsoft products that will work with currently installed Unix systems.
Much ado has been made about whether or not Linux is truly more secure than Windows. We compared Windows vs. Linux by examining the following metrics in the 40 most recent patches/vulnerabilities listed for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS v.3:
The severity of security vulnerabilities, derived from the following metrics:
damage potential (how much damage is possible?)
exploitation potential (how easy is it to exploit?)
exposure potential (what kind of access is necessary to exploit the vulnerability?)
The number of critically severe vulnerabilities
The results were not unexpected. Even by Microsoft's subjective and flawed standards, fully 38% of the most recent patches address flaws that Microsoft ranks as Critical. Only 10% of Red Hat's patches and alerts address flaws of Critical severity. These results are easily demonstrated to be generous to Microsoft and arguably harsh with Red Hat, since the above results are based on Microsoft's ratings rather than our more stringent application of the security metrics. If we were to apply our own metrics, it would increase the number of Critical flaws in Windows Server 2003 to 50%.
We queried the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) database, and the CERT data confirms our conclusions by a more dramatic margin. When we queried the database to present results in order of severity from most critical to least critical, 39 of the first 40 entries in the CERT database for Windows are rated above the CERT threshold for a severe alert. Only three of the first 40 entries were above the threshold when we queried the database about Red Hat. When we queried the CERT database about Linux, only 6 of the first 40 entries were above the threshold.
Consider also that both the Red Hat and Linux lists include flaws in software that runs on Windows, which means these flaws apply to both Linux and Windows. None of the alerts associated with Windows affect software that runs on Linux.
So why have there been so many credible-sounding claims to the contrary, that Linux is actually less secure than Windows? There are glaring logical holes in the reasoning behind the conclusion that Linux is less secure. It takes only a little scrutiny to debunk the myths and logical errors behind the following oft-repeated axioms:
Windows only suffers so many attacks because there are more Windows installations than Linux, therefore Linux would be just as vulnerable if it had as many installations
Open source is inherently less secure because malicious hackers can find flaws more easily
There are more security alerts for Linux than for Windows, therefore Linux is less secure than Windows
There is a longer time between the discovery of a flaw and a patch for the flaw with Linux than with Windows
The error behind axioms 3 and 4 is that they ignore the most important metrics for measuring the relative security of one operating system vs. another. As you will see in our section on Realistic Security and Severity Metrics, measuring security by a single metric (such as how long it takes between the discovery of a flaw and a patch release) produces meaningless results.
Finally, we also include a brief overview of relevant conceptual differences between Windows and Linux, to offer an insight into why Windows tends to be more vulnerable to attacks at both server and desktop, and why Linux is inherently more secure.
Conclusion
Unix or Linux operating system is somewhat secure than Windows NT.
The Windows OS supports common Microsoft products. Microsoft’s FrontPage Extensions, Active Server Pages (ASP) and database programs like Access are helpful tools for creating websites.Interacting with a web server via these familiar products is easy.
Active Server Pages (ASP) enable you to make dynamic and interactive web pages. ASP has the advantages of simplicity and speed over CGI and Perl, which are common scripts used with a UNIX OS server. ASP also provides security, because your ASP code cannot be viewed from the browser.
