barry@adelie.Adelie.COM (Barry A. Burke) (04/01/88)
I have been asked to investigate the feasibility of porting our multiuser
UNIX application to a PC LAN environment. This port is made relatively
simple because the application is based upon db_Vista, which runs under
UNIX, PC's, and PC LANs. The application is I/O intensive (mostly I), and
currently performs acceptably under an 8-user load on a MicroVAX-II running
Ultrix and on a PC/AT (single user).
I need to find out a little bit of technical info regarding various PC LAN
options. I've read what most of the magazines have to say about PC LANS, but
none of them seem to answer my questions. Specifically, I need to learn the
following:
1) How much memory is required to support the "typical"
Hardware, NETBIOS, and vendor-specific Device Drivers for a
`slave' PC. I realize this will vary depending upon the
hardware and software vendors, but any/all information I can
get will be useful (eg. Novell with 3Com cards, IBM PC
Network with Token cards, etc.).
2) Which pc networks require a dedicated server?
3) On Non-dedicated server nets, how much memory is required by
the net software?
4) What type of performance can I expect for a given LAN - are
some better than others in supporting database-type
applications? What type of configuration will provide the
maximum disk I/O performance, sufficient enough to support
{8..16..24..32} users (using my MicroVAX-II 8-user
performance point)?
5) Do any PC LANs relocate themselves into LIM memory to free
up conventional memory (as you might surmise, my app. is
LARGE, so the less conventional memory userd by the LAN the
better.
6) Are there any other questions I should be asking?
I would appreciate anyone willing to spend a few minutes to answer these
questions to drop me a line, or even give me a call. I'll gladly post a
summary of the info I get -- I'm also collecting information from other
sources.
Thanks for your help!
barry
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