ITIC 2009 Global Server Hardware & Server OS Reliability Survey Results

For the second year in a row, IBM AIX UNIX running on the Power or “P” series servers, scored the highest reliability ratings among 15 different server operating system platforms – including Linux, Mac OS X, UNIX and Windows.

Those are the results of the ITIC 2009 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey which polled C-level executives and IT managers at 400 corporations from 20 countries worldwide. The results indicate that the IBM AIX operating system whether running on Big Blue’s Power servers (System p5s)  is the clear winner, offering rock solid reliability. The IBM servers running AIX consistently score at least 99.99% or just 15 minutes of unplanned per server, per annum downtime.

Overall, the results showed improvements in reliability, patch management procedures and an across-the-board reduction in per server, per annum Tier 1, Tier 2 and the most severe Tier 3 outages.  Among the other survey highlights:

  • IBM leads all vendors for both server hardware and server OS reliability as well as the fewest number of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 unplanned server outages per year. IBM AIX running on the System p5s had less than one unplanned outage incident per server in a 12 month period. More impressively, the IBM servers experience no Tier 3 outages. Tier 3 outages are the most severe and usually involve more than four hours or a half-day worth of downtime and can also result in lost data.
  • HP UX also performed well though HP servers notch approximately 25 minutes more downtime than IBM servers, depending on model and configuration – or just under 40 minutes per server, per annum downtime.
  • IT managers spend approximately 11minutes to apply patches to IBM servers running the AIX operating system, which is again, the least amount of time spent patching any server or operating system. The open source Ubuntu distribution is a close second with IT managers spending 12 minutes to apply patches, while IT managers in the Apple Mac OS X 10.x. Novell SuSE and customized Linux distribution environments each spend 15 to 19 minutes applying patches.
  • IBM also took top honors in another important category: IBM Power servers and AIX experience the lowest amount of the more severe Tier 2 and Tier 3 outages combined of any server hardware or server operating system. The combined total of Tier 2 and Tier 3 outages accounted for just 19% of all per server, per annum failures.
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 showed the biggest improvements of any of the vendors. The Windows Server 2003 and 2008 operating systems running on Intel-based platforms saw a 35% reduction in the amount of unplanned per server, per annum downtime from 3.77 hours in 2008 to 2.42 hours in 2009. The number of annual Windows Server Tier 3 outages also decreased by 31% year over year and the time spent applying patches similarly decline by 35% from last year to 32 minutes in 2009.
  • This year’s survey for the first time, also incorporated reliability results for the Apple Mac and OS X 10.x OS platform.  The survey respondents indicated that Apple products are extremely competitive in an enterprise setting. IT managers spend approximately 15 minutes per server to apply patches and Apple Macs recorded just under 40 minutes of per server, per annum downtime.
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