Re: [WinMac] Basic server information

Richard Laycock(rlaycock[at]earthlink.net)
Wed, 16 Dec 1998 07:58:13 -0800

>
>My questions, is NT the way to go? How expert do you have to be to maintain
>this/set it up or will we have to buy this expertise in? or training? Would
>a Mac server be a realistic alternative? Can it do the job i describe? If
>the server is NT should we start replacing the Mac's with PC's? We are
>moving towards more of the graphics/illustration work being done by
>suppliers so other than the need to be able to import their work from MAC's
>to PC's and the mac user preferences i'm not sure we really need two
>platforms.
>
>
>look forward to your comments
>
>david dobedoe
>david@dobedoe.demon.co.uk
>http://www.dobedoe.demon.co.uk
>

Greeting David,

I run a small (26 station) LAN of mainly PCs and a couple Macs. We're
migrating to a true server from a Peer - Peer for the first of the year.
I've opted for Netware 5.0. It's gotten great reviews; it's Y2K ready;
it's reasonably priced and secure. As of now I've booted it and got it up
on 4 stations to get all the configs set before distributing the client to
all.

I'm very impressed. It's got lots of features; database server (Oracle,
nice), remote & net access, encryption, security and the ZEN Admin and NDS
directory features are the best in the business.

Prosoft is doing the Mac client for Novell. They have a beta (works very
well) version available now and the finished version will be out in early
'99. It's IPX so it won't share all the features of NW5 yet but it works
very well and for the first time it's a very Mac interface.

Besides my own research on NT since I run a Wingate proxy on our network I
subscribe to their list. I get to read lots of discussions regarding NT
RAS. Believe me NT is no way bullet proof or simple. NT is old. NT5 was due
last year. The RRAS features on 4.* require numerous patches NTSP* (I
believe it's up to 4!). Plus when NT5 (2000) comes out next summer or fall
you'll HAVE to upgrade at MS's price to assure(?) Y2K compliance.

That's too risky. NT5 is now at 35 million lines of code. Netware is 8 - 10
million. The big iron Unix servers run 7 - 8 million. In my opinion there's
no way to put out a bullet proof server with 35 - 40 million lines of code!
No admin worth his pay will install a new server NOS 3 months before Y2K.

My advice would be to go Big Red.

                                Richard L.

                                       Richard Laycock

                                             rlaycock@earthlink.net

                                                    El Cajon, CA

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