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F E A T U R E

IPlanet Goes Where No Server's Gone Before

June 25, 2001
By Lori MacVittie

IBM Corp. HTTP Server

This free Web server from IBM left us, well, unimpressed. Performance was satisfactory, and, aside from its GUI-based management interface, there was very little exciting about the product.

The Web server is based on Apache, and not much has been changed from the open-source solution. Some basic configuration defaults, notably those in the performance-tuning category, are different, and LDAP support is installed by default, which we found to be a bonus. WebDAV support via the Apache module mod_dav is provided with the distribution, but support for Java, JSP and other development languages will need to be retrieved and added in after installation. Enterprises using Tivoli management products will like that this Web server is Tivoli-ready.

IBM's HTTP Server

Click here to enlarge

Setting up the IBM HTTP Server to support Java servlets is a trivial process -- if you've done it before. After you've grabbed the JServ distribution, all you need are a few additions to httpd.conf. We added an include so the module was loaded correctly and then configured the containers via the JServ configuration files. We restarted the Web server, and our servlet support was up and running.

IBM's solution gets a leg up on Stronghold by providing a well-developed GUI for administration and SNMP support (SNMPv2, WWW-MIB and Apache-MIB) and by making a good showing in the performance category. But without the abundance of features provided by competitors iPlanet and Zeus, this just wasn't enough to tip the scales.

IBM HTTP Server, free. Available: Now. IBM Corp., (800) 426-4968, (914) 499-1900; fax (914) 765-7382. www.ibm.com