Server Platform Choices
Assuming you decide to purchase a general-purpose server, you have a number of options from which to choose. Most generally, these include: what hardware, what operating system, and what Web server software.
Among hardware choices, you can pick among:
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“Wintel” based PCs or PC servers. These machines run on Intel or compatible processors. Vendors include Dell, Gateway, Compaq, IBM, HP, and others.
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Proprietary server hardware. Typically offered by traditional vendors such as HP, Sun, IBM, Compaq/DEC, etc., these servers generally use proprietary processors.
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The Macintosh, running on the PowerPC processor.
Your server operating system choice may be implied by the hardware choice. If for instance you choose a Sun server, the system will come with Sun’s version of Unix, Solaris. In other cases, your hardware choice may not dictate your operating system. For instance, you might pick a Compaq Prosignia server, which would be able to run either Windows NT or an Intel-or-compatible-processor-friendly Unix clone such as Linux.
The core server operating system choices, then, are:
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Windows NT. Windows NT is Microsoft’s operating system for server applications. Windows NT comes in two flavors, “Workstation” and “Server.” Microsoft does not intend Windows NT Workstation for production services, but rather for low-volume testing, development, and desktop use.
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A proprietary version of Unix.
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A Unix-like system for Intel servers such as Linux or FreeBSD.
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The Macintosh operating system.
Some sites may be tempted to run Windows 98 as a server platform, as it comes pre-installed with Microsoft’s Personal Web server. In general this is not advisable. Windows 98 is not intended as a multiuser, multitasking server environment, and the Personal Web Server is limited in its functionality. This tool could make a Windows 98 desktop PC a good testbed, on which content providers pre-publish their new documents for review.
In the Macintosh realm, you have a choice between Apple’s traditional operating system, at level 8.5 as of this writing, and Apple’s new OS-X operating system, which is intended as a server environment. OS-X blends some Unix-like server capabilities into the core Apple operating system; Apple claims this yields an easy-to-administer but robust server environment.
Finally, you have a choice of Web server software packages. Although there are dozens of Web server packages, only a handful are commonly used:
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Apache, a freely-available server software package, is used on about one-half of the production servers in use today. According to a survey by Netcraft.com, Apache represents about 54% of Web servers online.
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Microsoft’s Internet Information Server, or IIS, is popular as a server for the NT platform. Netcraft estimates that the various flavors of IIS represent about 24% of the server market, with share increasing.
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Netscape’s various servers (Fasttrack, Enterprise, Commerce) represent just under 7% of the server market..
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Web Site Pro, a tool from publisher O’Reilly & Associates, has just under two percent of the market.
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The most popular Mac server software, WebStar, has about 1 ½ % of the overall Web server market.
If you choose a server environment that’s popular, you are more likely to find training materials, magazine articles, tools, and online discussions to help support your developing site. Less-popular server environments may be appealing because of special features such as ease of administration.
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