ssw@cica.cica.indiana.edu (Steve Wallace) (05/29/90)
I'm interested in exploring Novell's NetWare use in a campus wide distributed file system (5,000 - 10,000 PCs, 3000 - 5000 Macs). This file system would be used to distribute institutional data and services. Has anyone done anything this large with NetWare? Thanks, Steven Wallace Indiana University wallaces@ucs.indiana.edu
chapman@acf4.NYU.EDU (Gary W. Chapman) (05/30/90)
I am not convinced that NetWare (even NetWare 386) in its current
incarnations (using PC-class servers) scales anywhere near well enough
to support the numbers you are speaking of. For one thing, NetWare
utilities are very poor for handling GROUPS of users... many changes
must be made on a user-by-user basis with the existing utilities.
A major concern also is the size of binderies. It is not clear to me
at what point you get performance degradations based on bindery size -
since it's going to be at least partially a function of server power -
but I have heard rough estimates in the past... e.g. watch out with
> 1000 accounts.
Another thing that is, for me, a major problem is the extremely loose
coupling of multiple servers on a net. Once forthcoming network manage-
ment utilities are release, things should improve somewhat in this regard.
Finally, it is certainly the case that many sites have internets with
dozens and dozens of servers; I believe Novell itself has zillions of
servers for its internal network. What you want may be doable, then,
depending upon specific its specific design. I think you are well advised
to seek sites that are currently operating at this scale.KGJHH@ASUACAD.BITNET (Jim Howard) (05/30/90)
I was at a recent Banyan Users group meeting, and talked to people from Compaq who had a Banyan network with 350 file servers and 9500 users (dont know if that was individual StreeTalk users or workstations). That's pretty close to the 10,000 limit. Banyan indicated their design goal for Vines V4.0 was 400 servers and 100,000 user-id's.