6 Most Reliable Operating Systems for your Server

Most of the time, the software used on a web server machine is just as important as the hardware inside it.

The base of all the software of any web server is the operating system. It is the single most important thing that you’ll install on a machine, and it is quite difficult to replace without down time, which is bad for any web site or application you host on it. Sometimes, especially if you have a lot of customizations, it is literally impossible to replace the OS.

That’s why you should take extra care when choosing your server’s operating system, or alternatively optimize all of your software to work independently, which may be very hard to do. Some operating systems work better for some purposes like stability, reliability, upgradeability and others work better for totally different purposes like performance, speed, support for the newest features, etc.

To get you started, here are some of the best operating systems for web servers, which can be used for various applications and are the most popular among users and webmasters.

Oracle Solaris OS. This is one of the top OS choices for large scale applications that require the best stability, performance and reliability possible. It has a long history of development and evolution, and it started from a UNIX OS created by Sun Microsystems back in the 80’s. It was only recently acquired by Oracle, which hasn’t yet removed the free version of the OS, so everyone can enjoy one of the best enterprise-level operating system on any of their servers.

The latest version includes a lot of useful features like Predictive Self Healing, which automatically repairs any problems that may occur, and DTrace, which helps the administrators observe and optimize how the operating system works. The code optimization for various platforms practically guarantees a high performance; along with the ZFS file system, one of the best in its class, hardware encryption acceleration and virtualization support, and a lot of other great features.

One of the bad things about Solaris is the lack of support for the free version and the very small base of open developers and community members, which leads to a lack of drivers and 3rd party software for the OS, but if you are knowledgeable enough or have a great IT team, you can relatively easily overcome these obstacles.

FreeBSD. A lot of webmasters and server admins swear that this OS is the best ever for any web server applications, and they are probably right. It has a UNIX core and a long history of being used for enterprise applications, and it was specifically created for big, large scale applications, unlike Linux, which was started as basically an amateur project. FreeBSD is an excellent choice for web sites and applications that require it to handle extreme traffic level.

Just to give you an example, Yahoo! uses the FreeBSD OS for all of their servers, and Microsoft uses it for their Hotmail servers, preferring it over their own solutions, simply because it can handle the tens of millions of users better. FreeBSD has the same troubles as Solaris – not enough developers and a small community of open users, but that can be easily solved with knowledge and/or a paid team that would work on porting/creating the software and drivers necessary for this great operating system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux. One of the most popular operating systems for web servers, created based on Linux and maintained by the Red Hat Corporation. It is often THE choice for a lot of big scale applications, when stability and reliability are vital. The OS is extremely well maintained by developers and any bugs are fixed in no time. The only bad thing is that they choose extreme stability over a bit of performance gain, so it’s not as fast as other operating systems.

Being based on Linux, its source is of course open and free for anyone, and that’s the main reason there is a whole open source and completely free community that created and maintains CentOS – a free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, supported for free by the community’s developers and users.

SUSE Linux Enterprise. This is yet another great Linux-based operating system built for web server applications and focusing on stability and reliability first and foremost. You can think of it as Novell’s response to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but having a different package system. Performance isn’t a top priority for this OS, either. But it is a good choice when you want your OS to be easy to administer, have a large choice of software packages and keep your data safe. There is a completely free version named OpenSUSE that is officially released and maintained by Novell and supported by a great community on their own forum, so if you don’t have the money, you can get this excellent OS for free.

Windows Server 2008 R2. This is Microsoft’s own OS for web servers and the business and enterprise industry. While they have the same name, the R2 version is vastly superior to R1, because it’s based on Windows 7, not Vista (which as you may know, is a failure of an OS and a great resources hog). You should be careful when buying it, and make sure it says Windows Server 2008 R2.

Why would you want a paid and mainly inferior OS, with a closed source to boot? Well, if you need great ASP.NET support or you want to run Microsoft’s IIS web server software that has an advanced and very good API plus a lot of unique features like the IIS Media Services, you basically have no other choice, as they only run on Windows. The performance is actually not that bad, R2 is quite fast, especially when compared to R1, and if you don’t count the closed source, lack of great free software and lack of a lot of customization options that are normal for an open-source OS, it is actually a great operating system for a web server.

BONUS – Mac OS X Server. Since its first release, Mac OS X Server was quick to become a popular choice for web servers, mainly because it was already a great, stable and tested desktop OS and it’s very easy to administrate. On top of that, it can work with custom built packages (unlike Windows) and is based on BSD, which guarantees its reliability. Apple has definitely created a good OS and made a good first step into the servers market with it.

It is vital that you consider and choose the operating system you will use for your server, because if you go big and you run into any limitations or incompatibilities related to the OS, you will have a very hard time fixing things.

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