paul@frcs.UUCP (Paul Nash) (10/24/90)
We would like to know what RISC-based Unix platforms have Netware available (now or early 1991), and what their performance is like. The easiest way (for me) to measure performance is to compare to a 25/33 MHz 386 Netware server (faster, slower, much faster, much slower). We would like to know whether a medium-sized Unix box (say a MIPS 3000 or 6000) could do useful work _and_ be a Novell server with reasonable performance for LAN clients. We have considered PC-NFS, but for a large installation it gets quite expensive. Quite a few big sites already have a fair amount of Novell expertise already. Any other suggestions would also be welcomed, but Netware looks like the prime candidate currently ... -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Paul Nash Flagship Wide Area Networks (Pty) Ltd paul@frcs.UUCP ...!ddsw1!proxima!frcs!paul
paul@actrix.co.nz (Paul Gillingwater) (10/28/90)
In article <134@frcs.UUCP> paul@frcs.UUCP (Paul Nash) writes: > > We would like to know what RISC-based Unix platforms have Netware available > (now or early 1991), and what their performance is like. The easiest way Right now, Portable Netware is available on the Hewlett-Packard HP9000 series 800 range of RISC (HP-Precision Architecture) computers. Performance depends on which box you use -- they range from 6 users boxes (815) right through to several hundred user boxes (series 870) and soon will have multi-processor RISC with the 870/200. Here in Wellington, the local hospitals use an HP9000/855 with over 300 users. They're not using Portable Netware yet though. > We would like to know > whether a medium-sized Unix box (say a MIPS 3000 or 6000) could do useful > work _and_ be a Novell server with reasonable performance for LAN clients. Yes, if you want to pay for it. HP boxes are not cheap. > > We have considered PC-NFS, but for a large installation it gets quite > expensive. Quite a few big sites already have a fair amount of Novell > expertise already. HP also support PC-NFS, but their primary solution for MS-DOS and OS/2 heterogenous networking is HP LAN Manager. -- Paul Gillingwater, paul@actrix.co.nz
prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) (10/29/90)
paul@frcs.UUCP (Paul Nash) writes: >We would like to know what RISC-based Unix platforms have Netware available >(now or early 1991) Novell Portable Netware is available for DG AViiON systems, which are based on the Motorola 88K chipset. -- Robert Claeson |Reasonable mailers: rclaeson@erbe.se ERBE DATA AB | Dumb mailers: rclaeson%erbe.se@sunet.se | Perverse mailers: rclaeson%erbe.se@encore.com These opinions reflect my personal views and not those of my employer.
djl@mips.COM (Dan Levin) (10/30/90)
In article <134@frcs.UUCP>, paul@frcs.UUCP (Paul Nash) writes: > > We would like to know what RISC-based Unix platforms have Netware available > (now or early 1991), and what their performance is like. MIPS has announced Netware available on our entire range of systems at the end of 1990. The product is currently in Beta Test. We are not publishing specific performance numbers, but expect that our implementation will be roughly comparable to the aformentioned 386 PC for a single network. For multiple networks, one might expect a MIPS implementation to scale better than a PC. You hit the nail on the head with you comment "and can do something else useful at the same time." We expect to sell Netware on machines that also run a dbms, or a stats package, or some other cycle consuming application. -- ***dan {decwrl,pyramid,ames}!mips!djl djl@mips.com (No, Really! Trust Me.)
ron@Eyring.COM (Ron Holt) (10/30/90)
In article <134@frcs.UUCP> paul@frcs.UUCP (Paul Nash) writes: > >We would like to know what RISC-based Unix platforms have Netware available >(now or early 1991), and what their performance is like. > paul@frcs.UUCP ...!ddsw1!proxima!frcs!paul Portable Netware has been ported to MIPS though I don't remember if it was a DEC or MIPS machine. The performance was about the same as native Netware 386 which was disappointing to hear. I think a RISC machine with PNW should be able to beat the pants off of Netware 386. The main bottleneck appears to be with the AT&T STREAMS code upon which PNW is built. BTW, don't any Novell guys read this group? I would be nice if they could help inject some reality into some of these discussions... -- Ron Holt ron@Eyring.COM uunet!lanai!ron Eyring Inc. +1 801-375-2434 x434
lws@comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman) (11/01/90)
ron@Eyring.COM (Ron Holt) writes: >Portable Netware has been ported to MIPS though I don't remember if it >was a DEC or MIPS machine. It was a MIPS machine, they have announced this product in this group, it should be available by the beginning of '91, I gather. >The performance was about the same as >native Netware 386 which was disappointing to hear. The way I heard it, it was faster. Anyway, I think that's pretty good. >I think a RISC machine with PNW should be able to beat the pants off >of Netware 386. >The main bottleneck appears to be with the AT&T >STREAMS code upon which PNW is built. I'm wondering what you base this opinion on. There's not a whole lot to STREAMS. I don't think there really is any particular bottleneck in PNW (if there is, I'd sure like to know it) relative to Native. I think the performance difference can be easily explained by noting that the engineers working on Native NetWare have scraped for every smidgen of performance they can, by eliminating the OS (practically) and every bit of overhead they can find, and by writing Native (almost?) entirely in machine code -- no C for these guys, it's too slow. On the other hand, Portable is written with the distinct goal of being... easy to port to a wide variety of hardware and OSs, not just UNIX. So they haven't been able to design for quite the same degree of performance. Furthermore, UNIX has a LOT of overhead relative to NetWare OS. And there's a lot more going on on a UNIX box (other processes, that is) than under NetWare. The lower performance of Portable is just the price you pay for having a general purpose system that can do other things besides be a NetWare server. BTW, have you seen the performance differences between an ordinary UNIX box and an optimized NFS server? Same situation, only not even as extreme as the difference between Portable and Native. >BTW, don't any Novell guys read this group? I would be nice if they >could help inject some reality into some of these discussions... I am sure they are bound by non-disclosure agreements (if not simply good sense) not to publicize any information on activities by other companies wrt Portable. They are probably bound by their own good sense not to get into comparisons of Portable and Native. -- Lyle Wang lws@comm.wang.com 508 967 2322 Lowell, MA, USA uunet!comm.wang.com!lws The scum always rises to the top.
dougm@ico.isc.com (Doug McCallum) (11/01/90)
In article <1990Oct31.175210.9255@comm.wang.com> lws@comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman) writes: ... >I'm wondering what you base this opinion on. There's not a whole lot >to STREAMS. I don't think there really is any particular bottleneck >in PNW (if there is, I'd sure like to know it) relative to Native. I STREAMS does have some problems that have adverse effects on performance. We've seen them with other protocol stacks as well and it takes a lot of work to work around the problems (mostly related to STREAMS scheduling of queues). >The lower performance of Portable is just the price you pay for having >a general purpose system that can do other things besides be a NetWare >server. BTW, have you seen the performance differences between an >ordinary UNIX box and an optimized NFS server? Same situation, only >not even as extreme as the difference between Portable and Native. The performance difference is much greater than one would expect. I suspect it is just the level of maturity of the product and should improve over time but it is still a lot worse than you should be able to get out of a UNIX implementation.
louie@cellar.bae.bellcore.com (Paul Louie) (11/02/90)
In article <134@frcs.UUCP> paul@frcs.UUCP (Paul Nash) writes: >We would like to know what RISC-based Unix platforms have Netware available >(now or early 1991), and what their performance is like. The easiest way >(for me) to measure performance is to compare to a 25/33 MHz 386 Netware >server (faster, slower, much faster, much slower). We would like to know >whether a medium-sized Unix box (say a MIPS 3000 or 6000) could do useful >work _and_ be a Novell server with reasonable performance for LAN clients. > [stuff deleted] I recently have an opportunity to work at a client's site where there are Netware 2.15 SFT installed running in a HP RS-20 (386/20) and Portable Netware running in a DEC machine. Now although the scenerio is not ideal for Mr. Nash's question it does give some light on the performance of different Netware platform. The NW 2.15 is necessary, because there are MACs on the LAN. I never told why Portable NW being there. Now, the PC based NW have 84 users and the DEC have only 31. Doing things like VT-100 emulation shows that response time from 2.15 is about 0.5-1.5 sec and 2-5 sec for the Portable. Both LANs access the same host(DEC). So, in my opinion, with Netware 386 being available a PC fileserver can beat any Portable configuration, RISC or not. I believe the reason for this is that on the PC, NW was designed and tune for the hardware. And in the Portable environment it has to run as an application and so many low level activities are out of its control. Paul
ron@Eyring.COM (Ron Holt) (11/02/90)
In article <1990Oct31.175210.9255@comm.wang.com> lws@comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman) writes: > >>I think a RISC machine with PNW should be able to beat the pants off >>of Netware 386. >>The main bottleneck appears to be with the AT&T >>STREAMS code upon which PNW is built. > >I'm wondering what you base this opinion on. Most of the information I have on Netware comes from the many people I know at Novell (I live in Provo, Utah - Novell's headquarters). In particular, my comment on STREAMs comes from an informal presentation given by the director of the PNW group to a CS class at BYU. According to my notes (which may be incorrect, but I don't think so), one of the biggest bottleneck in PNW performance is the STREAMs scheduling latency. (Ethernet hardware receives packet, finds buffer in which to copy data, links it on a STREAMs queue, waits for clock interrupt to reschedule the process to run...). This is not my opinion, just what was mentioned in the presentation. There may be other factors that contribute to PNW's performance. My recent posting has generated several email replies. A few unattributed quotes: "I'm not convinced its just the STREAMS code. We looked at it and there are some really bad sections of code that cause problems to the STREAMS scheduler. Basically they bypass some STREAMS mechanisms where they shouldn't to buy some performance only to lose it due to other things. Also, there are sections of code that are quite amusing in how poorly written they are. The code was essentially written by non-UNIX/non-C programmers as far as I can tell." Another viewer writes: "As for the bottleneck being the Streams code, after looking at it, we determined that it was mostly the pnw code. <censored> also VARs PNW. In my opinion, (and I didn't tell you this!), their code is some of the worst most inefficient code I've seen." >So they >haven't been able to design for quite the same degree of performance. >Furthermore, UNIX has a LOT of overhead relative to NetWare OS. I agree. Novell cannot optimize Portable NetWare at the expense of portability. However, the OEMs who license PNW certain can. Native Netware has the disadvantage of being supported on only one hardware platform though it is highly optimized for that platform. With faster chips and systems, I feel that a Netware server that's faster than Netware 386 could be built even if it is Unix based. >And >there's a lot more going on on a UNIX box (other processes, that is) >than under NetWare. Under a production environment, sure, other processes are running. But when people (including Novell) benchmark PWN, I'm sure that they don't have unneeded processes running at the time. >The lower performance of Portable is just the price you pay for having >a general purpose system that can do other things besides be a NetWare >server. Like I said, I think OEMs such as DG, MIPS, NCR, etc. ought to consider optimizing THEIR port of PNW. BTW, I'm not trying to start a Netware bashing discussion. But I am interested in discussing issues involving network performance and understanding where the real problems are in network performance. >>BTW, don't any Novell guys read this group? I would be nice if they >>could help inject some reality into some of these discussions... > >I am sure they are bound by non-disclosure agreements (if not simply >good sense) not to publicize any information on activities by other >companies wrt Portable. They are probably bound by their own good >sense not to get into comparisons of Portable and Native. Well, they get asked to compare PNW and Native everyday and I'm sure they are used to it by now. It just that I see many people posting information that clarifies their company's products without violating any non-disclosure agreements. I know they have an Internet connection, maybe nobody there has access to Netnews. Considering the amount of traffic in this group that relates to NetWare, I would think Novell would be interested in this group. -- Ron Holt ron@Eyring.COM uunet!lanai!ron Eyring Inc. +1 801-375-2434 x434
morgan@jessica.stanford.edu (RL "Bob" Morgan) (11/06/90)
> Considering the amount of traffic in this group that relates to > NetWare, I would think Novell would be interested in this group. Well, no one has asked this for a while, so I'll ask again. Can some NetWare-involved person start a NetWare-specific newsgroup? Lord knows there's more than enough traffic about NetWare to fill a couple of normal newsgroups. That way those of interested in LANs themselves, rather than in some specific application running on some LAN-attached computers, can get a word in edgewise. Some Novell person started a move in this direction a year or more ago. I think they had even chosen a name for the group (comp.sys.novell, as I recall). I hope someone can revive this. - RL "Bob" Morgan Networking Systems Stanford
rxcob@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Owen Baker) (11/07/90)
morgan@jessica.stanford.edu (RL "Bob" Morgan) writes: >Well, no one has asked this for a while, so I'll ask again. Can some >NetWare-involved person start a NetWare-specific newsgroup? Lord >knows there's more than enough traffic about NetWare to fill a couple >of normal newsgroups. That way those of interested in LANs >themselves, rather than in some specific application running on some >LAN-attached computers, can get a word in edgewise. >Some Novell person started a move in this direction a year or more >ago. I think they had even chosen a name for the group >(comp.sys.novell, as I recall). I hope someone can revive this. I agree, I think most people like me who are reading this group for Novell information would also prefer not to have to wade through the "10BaseT" discussions! How about a new group for Novell (again)?? +-------------------------------+-------------------------------------------+ | Owen Baker | Communication Services Unit | | rxcob@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au | RMIT - Victoria University of Technology | | (61) (3) 660-2038 | Melbourne, Victoria, Australia | +-------------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
donp@na.excelan.com (don provan) (11/07/90)
In article <1990Nov1.192549.11283@Eyring.COM> ron@Eyring.COM (Ron Holt) writes: >Most of the information I have on Netware comes from the many people I >know at Novell (I live in Provo, Utah - Novell's headquarters). In >particular, my comment on STREAMs comes from an informal presentation >given by the director of the PNW group to a CS class at BYU. One thing to keep in mind is that when someone from Novell's Provo engineering group looks at streams, they are probably comparing it to the standard NetWare SPX interface. In addition, they probably compare SPX applications running over the SPX interface, which is the interface they were designed for, and with SPX applications running over the streams interface, which isn't. In general, this means they are looking at query/reply applications, which are great for the SPX interface and applications but not particularly flattering for streams. >Under a production environment, sure, other processes are running. But >when people (including Novell) benchmark PWN, I'm sure that they don't >have unneeded processes running at the time. The environment has overhead for anticipated processes, whether any other processes are running or not. In particular, NetWare itself will normally be a process and subject to normal process latencies. >I know they have an Internet connection, >maybe nobody there has access to Netnews. Novell is a distributed company. Some sites have netnews access. Some sites don't know what netnews is. I believe the Portable NetWare group does have netnews access, as it happens, but i doubt they follow this group very closely. >Considering the amount of >traffic in this group that relates to NetWare, I would think Novell >would be interested in this group. Actually, the amount of NetWare traffic in this group has just recently gone up. Previously is was mostly for hardware discussions. To me this indicates that it's time for a specific NetWare news group. don provan donp@novell.com
bryan_cardoza@npd.novell.com (11/10/90)
In article <2320@excelan.COM> donp@novell.com (don provan) writes: >In article <1990Nov1.192549.11283@Eyring.COM> ron@Eyring.COM (Ron Holt) writes: >>Most of the information I have on Netware comes from the many people I >>know at Novell (I live in Provo, Utah - Novell's headquarters). In >>particular, my comment on STREAMs comes from an informal presentation >>given by the director of the PNW group to a CS class at BYU. > >One thing to keep in mind is that when someone from Novell's Provo >engineering group looks at streams, they are probably comparing it to >the standard NetWare SPX interface. Another thing to keep in mind is that not all of the people working at Novell NPD in Provo have come out of the PC world. Currently, over half of the people assigned to the Portable NetWare project have come from hardware companies where they worked with Unix. (As has been indicated, that wasn't true when the project started.) Most of the people Ron Holt knows at Novell used to work for him at a small manufacturer of m68k- and m88k-based Unix and Pick/Unix systems. Regarding Novell participation in Usenet Newsgroups, as far as the NetWare Products Division is concerned (i.e. Provo, UT), very few people outside of the Portable NetWare group have access to netnews. Additionally, company policy is very strict concerning the release of information. The comments which Mr. Provan has made regarding what people in Provo know or don't know could put his job in jeopardy. If any of the Portable NetWare vendors would like to interract with me directly regarding any or all of the performance issues which have been mentioned (STREAMs scheduling/implementation details, etc.), I would be glad to talk to them. We have eachother's phone numbers and e-mail addresses. What they do with the information is their business, as long as they do not violate non-disclosure agreements with Novell. -- Bryan Cardoza <Bryan_Cardoza@NPD.Novell.COM> Software Engineer Novell, Inc. Telephone: (801) 429-3149 Provo, UT Fax: (801) 429-3500
ron@Eyring.COM (Ron Holt) (11/16/90)
In article <2320@excelan.COM> donp@novell.com (don provan) writes: > >Actually, the amount of NetWare traffic in this group has just >recently gone up. Previously is was mostly for hardware discussions. >To me this indicates that it's time for a specific NetWare news group. > The following was posted two weeks ago. Does anybody know what happened to the creation of comp.sys.novell? Ron > Article 52 of news.announce.newgroups: > >From: manoj@ca.UCAR.EDU (manoj @ Prod Mktg) > Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups > Subject: votes are in for comp.sys.novell > Message-ID: <2252@excelan.COM> > Date: 30 Oct 90 07:15:02 GMT > Sender: lear@turbo.bio.net > Organization: Novell, San Jose CA. > Approved: lear@turbo.bio.net > > > The voting for comp.sys.novell is over. The votes are in.. > > The results are: > > YES: 211 > NO: 50 > > The new group passes. I'll let Eliot handle the addgroup (thanks, Eliot). -- Ron Holt ron@Eyring.COM uunet!lanai!ron Eyring Inc. +1 801-375-2434 x434