Re: Informix on NT platform - Impact of 100 to 400+ Users

"Rob Culhane" <gsdrtc1@worldnet.att.net> wrote: :We are considering implementing an Informix Online Rel 7 server in an NT :4 way SMP environment. We are concerned about the viability of initially :starting with 100+ users and growing to possibly 400+ users. Looking for :other people's experiences including maximum users on NT before :degradation? :Questions regarding impact of combining startup warehouse with OLTP :applications on same platform also exist. I am at a loss to understand why people want to experiment with large, possibly mission critical, database oriented systems on NT while there are alternatives that are known to work more or less without a flaw, and most likely with much less trouble. I am refering to using Unix instead as the database platform. Testing and running small installations is another issue. I do intend to try that soon myself. Sometimes this is done from a motivation that GUI end user tools running under MS Windows (95 or NT) are easier to connect to a database running on Windows NT. Nothing is further from the truth. Other times it's motivated from easier management of the whole setup using Windows NT on the server. This is also not true, although a Unix server does require some Unix knowledge. It's however likely that if you get external expertise involved in the initial construction and setup you can run even such an instalation with some limits to the Unix knowledge of your internal people. Secondly the management issues involved with NT on such a large installation are largely unknown, so it will require both more effort and larger likelyhood of a total miss with NT. This kind of system is run of the mill on Unix however, so that's guaranteed to work. All the above is of course totaly independent of what database system you select to use. Whatever the experiences of others may be, this large a database configuaration is largly new teritory for Windows NT. Although Compaq and others have announced 8 way machines there is still a sharp limit to the growth of machine resources using NT. It's still unclear how well it scales if you find you need a more powefull machine. With Unix this is known not to be a problem. You can scale as far as you need. Regarding running a data warehouse and OLTP on the same machine I would be very carefull. Of course you can start experimenting on the same machine, but if it's ever going to grow to any substantial size (database and number of users) you must expect to run it on a separate machine whatever OS you use. Nils.Myklebust@idg.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company The Informix FAQ is at http://www.iiug.org