[mapserver-users] mapserver & windoze NT 4 vs. 2000 question

[Shawn L Johnston]

On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, TCHaddad wrote:

>
> So....
>
> we may be getting a new box in our office that our mapserver app.s will be moving to. I'm fishing for possible migration issues that might be significant enough to sway what we actually buy:
>
> Right now we have a Mapserver app. running on an NT 4.0 SP 6 workstation (not server), with Apache 1.3.20 as a service. Everything works great.
>
> In spec-ing out what our choices are for something new, we're being given the choice of a box with NT 4.0 again (server version this time) or with Windows 2000 (server version), for the same price. I guess both come with IIS 5.0, so Apache would no longer be mandatory.
>
> My questions are: do I care which of these 2 Operating systems we choose? Are there any significant issues as far as Mapserver or Mapplet are concerned? What about if we get into more XML/ the WMS stuff in 3.5? I've never had a complaint with Apache... are there Mapserver issues with IIS?
>
> Apologies in advance if these are dumb/moot questions, I just know nothing about Win 2k server and saw from the archive that a few people may have had issues. As long as I hear that none are major obstacles, I'm confident we can work out any minor kinks.
>
> Thanks to all,
>
> Tanya
>

Tanya,

I would suggest that your first consideration would be how roboust your
new box is going to be. If it has a fast processor, and a fair amount of
RAM you might wish to go with Win2k. If its a little on the slow side you
may wish to go with NT 4.0.

To give you a rough idea, I loaded Win2k Server on a Celeron 466 with 128
MB's of RAM and it ran very slow. On a PIII with 512 MB's of RAM it runs
like a dream... Your milage may vary ;)

After hardware I'd look at what types of other applications you may be
running on this machine. If your going to run MS SQL you might want to
look at NT 4.0 as there were a few reports of having some performance
marks over Win2k.

Of course, I'd be happy to send you a copy of Caldera OpenLinux ;)

Good luck,

Shawn