Hardware Summary - Comparing Sun Solaris 8 and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Technologies

Hardware Summary
Intel-based hardware provides the best price/performance in the industry and both Windows 2000 and Solaris 8 provide SMP capability on Intel hardware to extend performance and reliability. However, the clustering solution for Solaris 8 requires SPARC-based systems and extra proprietary hardware and software to operate, increasing the cost and reducing flexibility in building a coherent solution. Windows 2000 includes support for clustering in the Advanced and Datacenter Server versions as standard, using off-the-shelf hardware. The control and management of the cluster is offered using the standard resource management tools.
Although Solaris 8 includes a RAID solution, it does not provide facilities for extended storage services. Solaris is also limited to the monitoring capabilities of specific UltraSPARC hardware solutions. There is no integration between the operating system and the monitoring of either the environment or power supply when Solaris is running on Intel hardware.
To ensure maximum availability, Windows 2000 provides comprehensive support for the underlying hardware—including storage support and monitoring of data center services. The ability to share different storage devices across the network, including online and near-line storage using standard tools is a clear advantage. By incorporating backup software into the OS you provide complete resilience.
The monitoring facilities also ensure that a Windows 2000-based server will be aware of any imminent failures. By monitoring temperature, power, and other environmental factors, a Windows 2000-based system can ensure maximum availability by changing its configuration, and even powering down to guarantee systems resilience to unscheduled system failures.
Internet Services
The future of the Internet is in the e-commerce marketplace, an environment that requires interactivity and demands high-performance and developer friendly applications.
Modern operating systems must be able to provide a suitable environment to host an Internet application. At the basic level this requires support for the core Internet protocols, a range of suitable application development tools, and mechanisms for controlling access and authentication.
For high-traffic sites, the OS should be able to manage the connectivity and ensure the best performance for individual users—either through intelligent management of the resources on a single machine, or by using clustering and network load balancing techniques to spread the load over a server farm.
Internet Standards Support
Both Windows 2000 and Solaris 8 have strong Internet standard support, although the level of integration between the services and the operating system varies. Solaris 8 does not provide native solutions for the HTTP or NNTP Internet protocols, although it does support the SMTP and FTP protocols. A summary of Internet services is shown in Table 3 below.
Table 3: Internet Services on Solaris 8 and Windows 2000
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Internet Service
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Solaris 8
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Windows 2000
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HTTP (Web)
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Via iPlanet Web Server
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Built-in/IIS 5.0
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Secure HTTP (SSL)
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Via iPlanet Web Server
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Built-in/IIS 5.0
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SMTP (Mail)
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Built-in
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Built-in/IIS 5.0
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FTP (File transfer)
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Built-in
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Built-in/IIS 5.0
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NNTP (Usenet/Discussion)
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Public domain solutions
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Built-in/IIS 5.0
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POP (Client E-mail)
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Via iPlanet Messaging Server
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Via Exchange Server 2000
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IMAP (Client E-mail)
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Via iPlanet Messaging Server
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Via Exchange Server 2000
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The Solaris 8 operating system does not support the primary protocols used for providing Web-based applications. Using the base Solaris 8 operating environment it is therefore difficult to provide a coherent Internet solution across the different services that would normally make up your Internet service. For example, using the built-in e-mail services and a third party Web server solution requires two different authentication systems. Although this requirement is not an issue for public Web services such as e-commerce, it is a significant omission for Intranet and Extranet applications.
It is possible with Solaris 8 to use the Sun Directory Service, which uses LDAP technology to store user and directory information. This can be used to provide unified authentication and security across the main Internet services. However, by doing this, the entire Internet service sits above the operating system and actually supercedes, rather than replaces the standard UNIX authentication systems.
As a replacement to the built-in SMTP support, Solaris 8 can be used in combination with the iPlanet Messaging Server to provide an advanced Internet-standards-based messaging server. The iPlanet server supports not only SMTP, but also POP and IMAP for client connectivity and the MIME standard for data exchange. You can also use iPlanet as a secure messaging solution, because it also supports message transfer using SSL encryption. The iPlanet mail service can be scaled across multiple servers without having to resort to clustering technology.
For HTTP support, you need to acquire additional software. The Sun recommended solution is to use the iPlanet Web Server, Enterprise Edition 4.0 (formerly Netscape Enterprise Server). The iPlanet Web Server supports the HTTP protocol, virtual servers, and SSL for secure connectivity. For authentication, the iPlanet Web Server can integrate with Solaris Directory Service or with the iPlanet Directory Server, which also uses LDAP for storing directory and authentication information.
The iPlanet server suite also includes servers for SMTP and NNTP and group calendar facilities using a proprietary protocol. As with the Web Server, any LDAP- compatible directory server (including Active Directory) can provide authentication for all these systems.
Windows 2000 Server includes Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0. This provides native support for SMTP, FTP, SSL, NNTP, and HTTP protocols. IIS 5.0 integrates closely with the operating system providing a unified authentication and security system linked to Active Directory. This allows for single sign-on (SSO) authentication to e-mail, FTP, NNTP, and Web services.
The IIS SMTP service allows for secure message sending and SMTP routing and forwarding while also providing secure e-mail forwarding using the SSL protocol. For client-based messaging, the Microsoft Exchange Server must be installed. This provides both native Exchange e-mail services and Internet-based protocols for supporting POP and IMAP connections. Because Exchange Server is integrated into Active Directory users require only a single login to the Windows network to access file, Web and e-mail services.
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