Linux also has scalability limits. Though commercial releases include
SMP support, they don't cut the mustard for some customers.
"Linux has a hard time scaling much beyond two or four CPUs," concedes
Aaron McKee, strategic products manager for TurboLinux Inc. "These
configurations are far more common than some may give credit to."
SMP improvements are coming. Erik Troan, director of engineering at Red
Hat, says the forthcoming Linux 2.4 kernel handles SMP "much, much
better." The new kernel will be available in source code this month, but
it won't find its way into commercial Linux releases until February.
Still, scalability is relative. On low-powered, uniprocessor servers,
Linux wipes the floor with both Windows
NT and NetWare.
We proved that in at least two recent head-to-head product reviews.
The story is dramatically different on high-end SMP servers. Here, NT
outpaces Linux at file serving, and Solaris outraces them both in Web
serving.
The moral of the story? Customers that need multiple low-end servers
for basic networking likely will be quite satisfied with Linux. If you
choose to recommend the SMP path, NT currently beats Linux for file
serving, and Solaris outpaces both of them at Web serving.
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