Web server advice

[JW]

Hi all,

Currently at the company I work for we have an Apache 1.3.3 web server, we are not happy with some of its performance such as it's shortcomings with Ms Frontpage, and it performance time altogether. We were told that since we do our web site using Front page if we used MS IIS programs we would see better compatible performance, as well as faster access times. This server would only be used as the web server not a domain server or a proxy. So I thought getting Win2000 server would be too much, and since it wouldn't be a domain server maybe NT 4 Server would be unecessary, so maybe NT workstation using IIS 4 would be the solution we were looking for. I welcome any thoughts opinions, and recommendations you wish to provide.

Thanks,
JW

[yabuddy]

will it be on the internet? if not, install personal web server on a win 98 machine, its free!. look in add/remove programs, windows setup, communications. I dont know what kind of performance your looking for, apache is used on probly half the isps out there, unix boxes are pretty fast and very secure. you may have other probs. anyway, personal web server is good for small lans, small companys that need a internal web server. if you do try it on the internet id look into its security capabilities. to use fronpage youll have to download front page server extensions from microsoft. and yes they do have them for win98 it shocked me to see them there. also win2000 pro has it to, it may be more secure. otherwise nt4 would be good option its gotto be pretty cheap to buy now that win2000 is out. there is other specialty software out there for web serving but i never looked at it, youll probly have to search for it, nt and apache have the market cornered ......good luck!!

[JW]

Thanks for the response. Yes it will be on the internet hopefully catching a pretty high amount of traffic. I want this to be a pretty fast responding site with a good amount of security. The thing about our current server is that it doesn't display our site as well as we thought it should and we sometimes have trouble publishing to the site and sometimes get message about the incampatibilities due to the
front page extensions. So basically I thought since front page is by MS and IIS running on a NT server or workstation I thought we may see better results. Alot of times with our current server our page never comes up at all. Also this server was setup by a contractor before any of us were hired and none of us know anything about Unix so if we changed we could have a little more control and have more of an idea. Do you recommend IIS on a NT Server or Workstation? Do you think this will do what we want?

Thanks for all of your help
JW

[yabuddy]

id say server, it will probly perform better than workstation. another thought, what version of front page are you using? if your using fp2000 you may just need to install 2000 server extensions for apache, im not sure about backwards compatability between fp98 (or previous) and fp2000 extensions. and yes unix is a whole different ball game. going to something you know like nt, may just be easier.

[Xayd]

IMHO, if you've got Apache running now, don't go with NT/IIS.

Company I work for is running NT4/Netscape Enterprise for its webservers, along with Verity search software, and the word that comes to mind is DISASTER. These 20,000 dual P3 servers with thousands of dollars worth of M$ software can barely handle more than 50 users per server (we've got triple redundancy, and T3 bandwidth). We have at least a half hour to forty five minutes of downtime during our peak hours every day.

If you're looking to spend upwards of a couple hundred grand to make sure you have enough speed to handle your traffic, sure go M$ and hire yourself an army of MCSE's to chat with M$ tech support about why their crapware doesn't work like it should. Otherwise, consider the fact that there's a reason why M$ uses Unix on its internal networks and Hotmail runs on Apache/FreeBSD.

Xayd