[NTLUG:Discuss] [Fwd: [WTLUG:discuss] Microsoft FUD]

[Steve Baker]

Alton Pouncey wrote:
> 
> Hahahaha.  I can't believe MS put this nugget on their website:
> 
> "There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General,
> Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based
> servers."
> 
> The marketing boys haven't done their math.  99.9% uptime equates to 4 minutes of downtime *per day*.  Who
> wants a system that is guaranteed to crash once a day?

It could be worse that that even. 4 minutes downtime means one
crash per day only if the system takes 4 minutes to reboot. If
your machine will reboot in 1 minute - then it means 4 crashes
per day. Actually, it's a pretty meaningless figure - I mean
suppose it takes me an hour to *notice* that the machine has
gone down and push the reset button - does that mean that it'll
only crash once every 15 days?

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure - well, Mean Time Between Reboot
at least) is the only measure that matters.

On my Linux servers at work, "Mean Time Between Reboots" equates
to mean-time-between-significant-Linux-upgrades since they simply
*never* fail and I only have to reboot them when I install an
upgrade. 'uptime' frequently shows >300 days.

It's not that Linux is especially good though - it's that Windoze
is especially bad - I get similarly good uptimes for Sun and SGI
machines running their respective UNIX flavors.

--
Steve Baker                (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail)
Raytheon Systems Inc.      (817)619-2466 (Fax)
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