Unix, Linux Uptime and Reliability Increase; Patch Management Woes Plague Windows

January 2008 by Laura DiDio, Enabling Technologies Enterprise, Software Economics and Infrastructure Research Fellow, ldidio@yankeegroup.com, 617-598-7265
Unix, Linux Uptime and Reliability
Increase; Patch Management Woes
Plague Windows
The Bottom Line: Linux reliability has come of age. Several major Linux distributions including Novell SUSE, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu scored high in reliability, improved over 2006 uptime statistics and achieved near parity with Unix distributions. Security incidents plagued Windows Server 2003, which saw uptime decrease by roughly 10% during last year. Corporations must continue to adhere to best practices in configuration, management and security to ensure optimal server operating system and application reliability. Key Concepts: Reliability, uptime, performance, management, service-level agreement, SLA, compliance Who Should Read: CEO, CIO, CTO, VP of IT, network administrator Practice Leader: Zeus Kerravala, Enterprise Research Senior Vice President, zkerravala@yankeegroup.com, 617-598-7235
Executive Summary
Unix, the leading Linux distributions from Novell and Red Hat as well as open source Ubuntu were the clear winners in the Yankee Group 2007-2008 Global Server Operating System Reliability Survey. Yankee Group's second annual Global Server Operating System Reliability Survey polled 400 users from 27 countries worldwide. The latest independent, nonsponsored web-based survey revealed that all versions of Unix-which typically carry very high workloads-are near bulletproof, achieving 99.99999% reliability. IBM's AIX Unix led all server operating systems for reliability with just more than 30 minutes per server of annual downtime.
The top Linux distributions Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Novell SUSE Linux notched the biggest reliability improvements in the latest survey. Each decreased per server per annum downtime by an average of 75%.
The biggest and most unwelcome surprise in the survey was that Windows Server 2003 downtime increased by 25% to nearly 9 hours of downtime per server per year compared to the results it achieved in the Yankee Group 2006 Global Server Operating System Reliability Survey (see the March 2006 Yankee Group Report, Unix, Windows and Custom Linux Score Well on Yankee Group 2006 Global Server Reliability Survey). Windows Server 2003's decreased reliability is attributable to a series of security alerts Microsoft issued in the summer and fall that caused network administrators to take their Windows Server 2003 machines offline for significantly longer periods of time to apply remedial patches. During the past 2 years, the Yankee Group polls have indicated that all of the major server operating system platforms achieved a much higher degree of reliability than they experienced in the prior decade. In general, none of the major server operating systems-Linux, Macintosh, Windows and Unix-are beset by the long list of bugs that plagued their predecessors in the 1980s and 1990s. Additionally, there is far less disparity now in both the number and severity of unplanned server outages and the actual downtime that businesses experience on their standard Linux, Windows and Unix platforms than at any time in recent memory.
The survey results indicated that individual corporate Linux, Windows and Unix servers experience an average of one to four failures per server per year, resulting in 1 hour to up to 10 hours of annual downtime for each server. The actual amount of downtime depends on the server operating system and its specific configuration (see Exhibit 1).
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Exhibit 1. Unix, Linux Server Operating Systems Show Improved Reliability in Server Downtime Source: Yankee Group 2007-2008 Global Server Operating System Reliability Survey
Windows 2000Windows Server 2003Open Source Linux (e.g., Debian)Lin... [download for more]