Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Mark Russinovich's reponse Was: [OT] Comments to WinNT Mag !! (fwd) | From | Nathan Myers <> | Date | Sun, 2 May 1999 12:18:41 -0700 |
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Dr. Russinovich's observations pointedly miss the point. His attempt, and failure, to define enterprise service in his editorial merely highlights the fact, a point I will return to below.
Yes, scalability is important for an enterprise server. Yes, raw hardware efficiency is important for an enterprise server. However, they are not crucial. All systems everywhere have been inefficient when compared with their successors. What _is_ crucial is reliability.
NT is unique among candidates for enterprise service in that it entirely lacks this feature. It is meaningless to compare the efficiency of a running system against one which might have done some operations faster if it had not crashed. It is even less meaningful to speculate erroneously which operations those would have been.
I promised to return to the issue of how to define enterprise service. My own definition of an Enterprise Server is:
A computer system which performs an essential service for a large organization. A key feature distinguishing an enterprise server is that the effects of even a short-term failure exceed the entire cost of deploying the system. For example, it takes only a few minutes' down time at a nationwide stock exchange to justify the expense of entirely replacing the system with something more reliable.
More succinctly: "An enterprise server does not crash."
Until NT attains a difficult-to-measure level of reliability, its advocates would be wise to avoid mentioning it on the same page with the word "enterprise".
Nathan Myers ncm@nospam.cantrip.org
p.s. This is starting to drift off-topic for the list. Sorry.
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