SR> = Steve Rooney <[log in to unmask]> SR> Thanks to those of you who have replied to query: if you were to SR> install a museum-wide LAN, would you go with Windows NT or Windows SR> 3.x on Novell? I'm currently running a mixed-environment network, with Unix machines (HP 9000 Series 800 servers) running WordPerfect 5.1, WordPerfect Office 3.1, and uniVerse (a PICK database) and NetWare 3.12 and 4.1 servers. We use WordPerfect Office 4.0a for electronic mail _and_ scheduling, with migration to GroupWise apparently authorized but on hold. User workstations are HP Vectra PCs (some i486s, mostly Pentiums) running DOS and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with Novell's VLM client software. We have about two hundred users. This network is very functional for our current needs, and easily adaptable for future plans. It has also been quite stable since a major redesign at the end of 1994, even with the rapid expansion of a subsidiary organization (soon to spawn off on its own). My manager is very interested in NT, but the costs of running such a system are exceedingly high when compared to the costs of running NetWare (during one interview I was told that what could be done for approximately $5,000 on a NetWare network would cost $12,000 on an NT network). Note that NT's requirements for a really usable system are much higher than those for DOS/Windows/Novell or OS/2 -- we're looking at Pentium PCs with 24Mb of RAM as a minimal configuration. Yes, Microsoft has very tightly integrated products and great sales figures. But it's also a much less open system than either NetWare or Unix can provide. Another truism I've heard about NT is "It works great, as long as you don't want it to talk to anything else." What you've been told about performance bottlenecks is also very true. NT servers provide adequate performance up to around 50-60 users, after which performance decreases rapidly. Just looking at the NT network model (from their manuals), it seems clear to me that NT is intended for workgroups of about this size or smaller, which means multiple NT servers for larger organizations. [While NetWare servers can generally handle the load quite well -- we have four servers in our San Francisco office, one 3.12 server providing support for the majority of our users, one 4.1 server providing support for our Macintosh-heavy departments (the CMA publishes a magazine, a medical journal, and numerous newsletters and other publications). One tiny server runs Novell's SAA gateway product (for connecting to an AS/400), and another is a backup for the 4.1 server's NDS tree (until a decision is made on whether or not to upgrade to 4.1 enterprise-wide). We also have a single small NetWare 3.12 server in our Sacramento office (the offices are connected over a WAN link, allowing them access to the Unix-based database application as well as electronic mail and file transfers).] You might also want to consider going with Unix and running a Windows- emulation application. HP is now selling Unix-based servers which let your X terminals (or workstations running X server software) behave like Windows machines, with all of the files staying safe on the server. Other vendors have similar products (Sun has WABI, but I'm not sure they have a solution quite like HP's available). I heard Larry Ellison's (Oracle) speech to the Cleveland City Club the other night, and his case for the "Network Computer" seems quite strong. The NC seems to me to be, boiled down, basically a newfangled X terminal, with the addition of some local storage to allow non-networked functionality for short periods of time. Despite the rapid increase of NT servers on the Internet, Unix is still the original and most popular platform for Internet applications. Many products are developed first for Unix, and there are lots of public domain/shareware applications available for downloading, compiling, and installation. The throughput issue is also one you should take into account if you're considering using NT as an Internet server platform. Transaction processing is the term used to describe the processing of database access requests in a client-server environment. In a small organization, that might not seem as important as it might in a large one, but if you were to add database searches of some sort to your Web page, you could suddenly gain lots of users and strong transaction processing performance would become more important. (See http://www.tpc.org.) Besides getting opinions from folks on various lists, you might seriously consider hiring some consultants or a systems integrator to look closely at the sorts of things you do now and talk to you about the sorts of things you might want to do in the future. Whether you go with Unix, NetWare, NT, or some other solution, you're going to be making a large investment, and every bit of information you can get to make the best decision for your organization helps. Disclaimer: I've been pretty unimpressed with Windows NT in particular, and with Microsoft in general. Our NetWare servers are, by and large, very much equal to the demands placed on them, and have been easy to connect to any platform we've had need for (in addition to NetWare's IPX/SPX protocols, we're running TCP/IP (for the Unix systems), EtherTalk (for the Macintoshes) and SAA (for the finance department's AS/400, which is slated to be replaced by either a Unix or NT application). Please do not imagine that I am speaking for the California Medical Association. I just work there, and I often violently disagree with my manager's opinions on network and systems issues. (I'm also _very_ interested in getting back into a museum or other educational setting: please e-mail me if you could help me with that.) Apologies for the tech-talk. Claire +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ C.M. Connelly Network Systems Coordinator [log in to unmask] California Medical Association +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+