phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) (03/19/91)
I just tried the real Sun PC-NFS 3.5 (non-beta, I am told), since some people couldn't believe that my comments had any validity if I had only read press releases and magazine articles. As a side note, it is really amazing how far some people will go to defend a product like Sun's PC-NFS, instead of joining with me to ask Sun to fix it. Why would you prefer to attack someone who's telling you about ways to make your life easier? It's not like I don't know HOW to use telnet or rsh to check the line printer status. I can do it, but I know that with Novell, I don't have to. Anyway, I installed the upgrade and tried it on two different machines. Sun PC-NFS behaves exactly as I expected from their press releases. If you are a person who really wanted a Sun and got stuck with a PC, you might like Sun PC-NFS. If you are using a PC because you want to, you'll probably find Sun PC-NFS harder to use than Novell. -- The Macintosh makes it easy to do sloppy work.
ben@val.com (Ben Thornton) (03/22/91)
phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: >As a side note, it is really amazing how far some people will >go to defend a product like Sun's PC-NFS, instead of joining >with me to ask Sun to fix it. Why would you prefer to attack >someone who's telling you about ways to make your life easier? My life IS easier. It would be a good deal less easy if I were on Novell, believe me. My network PC clients *must* use the Sun as a server. That is a requirement set forth by application software. I would turn the tables around and ask why Novell doesn't yet allow me to work with a Sun server? -- Ben Thornton packet: wd5hls@wd5hls.ampr.org Video Associates Internet: ben@val.com Austin, TX uucp: ...!cs.utexas.edu!val!ben What's the moral of the story?
cadsi@ccad.uiowa.edu (CADSI) (03/27/91)
From article <1991Mar21.185147.1920@val.com>, by ben@val.com (Ben Thornton): > phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: > >>As a side note, it is really amazing how far some people will >>go to defend a product like Sun's PC-NFS, instead of joining >>with me to ask Sun to fix it. Why would you prefer to attack >>someone who's telling you about ways to make your life easier? > My life IS easier. It would be a good deal less easy if I were on > Novell, believe me. My network PC clients *must* use the Sun as a > server. That is a requirement set forth by application software. > I would turn the tables around and ask why Novell doesn't yet allow > me to work with a Sun server? One last comment, I promised I would stay out, but I forgot something. If NOVELL is used, an entire machine is engulfed in serving the network. If PC-NFS is used, UNIX, being the ultimate multitasker at this time (IMHO) serves the network as just part of its work. While it does this, other users (note plural) can use the SUN (In my case SGI 4D) for regular work. No bother to the network. This is a Great advantage in that cycles are not lost to doing nothing, Which is what I saw a NOVELL server doing. BTW, that also means the NOVEL server software is pretty good, the network I use generally has about 33% CPU load or lower. Good and BAD. 67% CPU is free, but not useable. Even in Windows, this doesn't help, since the server runs NOVELL software ONLY. |----------------------------------------------------------------------------| |Tom Hite | The views expressed by me | |Manager, Product development | are mine, not necessarily | |CADSI (Computer Aided Design Software Inc. | the views of CADSI. | |----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) (03/28/91)
ben@val.com (Ben Thornton) writes: |phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: |>As a side note, it is really amazing how far some people will |>go to defend a product like Sun's PC-NFS, instead of joining |>with me to ask Sun to fix it. Why would you prefer to attack |>someone who's telling you about ways to make your life easier? | |My life IS easier. It would be a good deal less easy if I were on |Novell, believe me. My network PC clients *must* use the Sun as a I never told you to run Novell. If you would stop being so defensive, and read what I wrote, you might benefit. At this point, I figure that's about as likely as the cow jumping over the moon. What a classic example of a Unix bigot. Won't even read. -- US Supreme Court: confessions extracted under torture are admissible.
lstowell@pyrnova.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell) (03/28/91)
In article <1991Mar27.151927.30754@ccad.uiowa.edu> cadsi@ccad.uiowa.edu (CADSI) writes: > >One last comment, I promised I would stay out, but I forgot something. >If NOVELL is used, an entire machine is engulfed in serving the network. >If PC-NFS is used, UNIX, being the ultimate multitasker at this time (IMHO) >serves the network as just part of its work. Well, if you run Portable Netware on the server, it too can be doing other useful work while servicing Netware clients (assuming a Unix O/S or other multitasker on the server)
cadsi@ccad.uiowa.edu (CADSI) (03/28/91)
From article <149853@pyramid.pyramid.com>, by lstowell@pyrnova.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell): > In article <1991Mar27.151927.30754@ccad.uiowa.edu> cadsi@ccad.uiowa.edu (CADSI) writes: >> >>One last comment, I promised I would stay out, but I forgot something. >>If NOVELL is used, an entire machine is engulfed in serving the network. >>If PC-NFS is used, UNIX, being the ultimate multitasker at this time (IMHO) >>serves the network as just part of its work. > > Well, if you run Portable Netware on the server, it too can be > doing other useful work while servicing Netware clients > (assuming a Unix O/S or other multitasker on the server) WHICH UNIX???? (bsd, sysv, hp-ux, irix, unicos, etc). I checked this out with my net manager. It seems you are right. statement retracted. Can you do that on a net??? heh, heh... But the story I got was that this 'portable' server is not so portable, but then, based on the resources I allocated for porting the SUN pcnfsd.c to the SGI, neither is it. |----------------------------------------------------------------------------| |Tom Hite | The views expressed by me | |Manager, Product development | are mine, not necessarily | |CADSI (Computer Aided Design Software Inc. | the views of CADSI. | |----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
cd5340@mars.njit.edu (David Charlap) (03/28/91)
In article <1991Mar27.151927.30754@ccad.uiowa.edu> cadsi@ccad.uiowa.edu (CADSI) writes: >BTW, that also means the NOVEL server software is pretty >good, the network I use generally has about 33% CPU load or lower. Good >and BAD. 67% CPU is free, but not useable. > >Even in Windows, this doesn't help, since the server runs NOVELL >software ONLY. Not necessarilly. In school, before we upgraded NetWare, the server was non-dedicated. A user could log-on to it. We later made the server dedicated, though, because a user whose program crashed would take the server with it. Actually, the server would remain up after the crash, but when the user pressed <ctrl><alt><del> to reboot his terminal, the server would reset. We also couldn't boot the server from its own hard disk this way. We needed netware boot floppies. Not very good. Dedicating the server takes away this problem. Of course, a user being logged in at the server would slow down everyone's network access. And the server station was much slower. It was cheaper to buy another 386-PC than to leave the server non-dedicated. If PC's cost as much as SUNs, I'd say there is a point to the wasted processing power, but they're not. Not using 67% of a 386 isn't a big deal, not using 67% of a SUN 4/??? is a very big (and expensive) deal. -- David Charlap "Invention is the mother of necessity" cd5340@mars.njit.edu "Necessity is a mother" Operators are standing by "mother!" - Daffy Duck
aronb@gkcl.ists.ca (Aron Burns) (03/29/91)
In article <1991Mar28.083152.1455@njitgw.njit.edu> cd5340@mars.njit.edu (David Charlap) writes: [...] >network access. And the server station was much slower. It was cheaper >to buy another 386-PC than to leave the server non-dedicated. If PC's >cost as much as SUNs, I'd say there is a point to the wasted processing >power, but they're not. Not using 67% of a 386 isn't a big deal, not >using 67% of a SUN 4/??? is a very big (and expensive) deal. We recently paid about 30% less for a Sun IPC than we would have paid for a comparably configured Compaq SystemPro. Even going to a Compaq 486 DeskPro would have cost more. The Sun gave us an inexpensive, well supported server which will also act as a TCP/IP and SNA gateway, allow for cheap and easy remote administration via a modem, and support some remote applications via terminals. Aaron Burns "Nothing I say on the net is binding aronb@gkcl.ists.ca to our corporation" Toronto, Ontario "Life is a forge, and the purest metal (416)392-4310 comes from the hottest fire"
tb@Materna.DE (Torsten Beyer) (04/02/91)
cd5340@mars.njit.edu (David Charlap) writes: >to buy another 386-PC than to leave the server non-dedicated. If PC's >cost as much as SUNs, I'd say there is a point to the wasted processing >power, but they're not. Not using 67% of a 386 isn't a big deal, not >using 67% of a SUN 4/??? is a very big (and expensive) deal. Compare an SLC with harddisk to a similar equipped 386 machine. Where's the difference ? At least here in Germany i can get an SLC with 600 Mb and streamer for around 15000,- DM (~7500 $) which is close to what I'd pay for a similar PC. On the other hand CPU power doesn't count. If you have an NFS-Server with n MIPS and a second one with x*n MIPS you won't see an x time increase in performance on the fast machine. The only thing that counts is disk i/o speed. So unless you do real computing on the server, why spend a lot of bucks for a fast (in terms of CPU power) server like a Sun-4. Better buy a slower (and cheaper) one and spend your money for fast (and many) disk drives. ciao -Torsten -- Torsten Beyer e-mail : tb@Materna.DE Dr. Materna GmbH VOX : +49 231 5599 225 Vosskuhle 37 FAX : +49 231 5599 100 D-4600 Dortmund 1, West Germany