Re: NT server, pro/con

In <3kig3qINN7ga@ringer.syd.dwt.CSIRO.AU> peter@prospect.anprod.csiro.au (Peter Wiley - Poultry) writes: >I am running NTAS 3.5 on a P90, 32Mb RAM and all SCSI peripherals from a PCI >SCSI adaptor. Should be equivalent to a SPARC 2 in performance. >It's not. About half at best is my estimate. I'm running Progress client-server >on both the NT box and the SPARC 2 so I'm comparing the same database with the >same data volume with the same user pool; only difference is which server they >connect to. >Informix might give different performance figures, of course, and this is a >sample size of 1 so extrapolation is nonsense. But this is my observation. >You also need to be aware that, in my *limited* experience with NT: >- there is no accessible equivalent of the rc2.d / rc3.d subdirectories and >files to automatically start the database servers at boot time. If such a thing >exists, I can't find it. (Obviously, *something* of this nature exists but >where they've hidden it is not in the supplied manuals or on-line help). NT provides the services facility in control panel. This allow the administrator to specify what services are to started automatically at boot up, and with what user level they will run. The DB vendor must install the db server as an NT service; if they don't then you're screwed. IMHO this is the db vendors responsibility MS has supplied the facility the db vendor must make use of it.... >- databases started by the administrator stop when the administrator logs out. Nope. Services will not receive an exit signal until: 1. the administrator manually stops the service 2. NT is shut down >- there is no analog of ps -ef (or ps aux) or kill. Yes there is. Process viewer provides similar information to ps (but in a graphical format); and Ctrl-Esc provides a kill capability through the {End Task} button. >- the system is not multiuser in the way SCO or any of the other unixes are. I >can't have multiple console logons as different people, for example. True. NT is designed a strictly a client-server platform; nut a multi-user platform. The philosophy riled me at first, but once you get a feel for the whole vision of the product, it's not so bad. >- no telnetd server. There is ftpd, however. That's true; ftpd fits in to the client server model; while telnetd is a network based implementation of a dumb terminal... not what I would call client server. MS really seems to be sticking to their guns on this strict client-server implementation; I have to admire their commitment to their vision... >Personally, I'm sticking with unix for at least another release of NT. Then I'll >have another look. I've made the leap; but yes, the next release of NT is going to be the one that kicks ass (3.5 is fine it just needed better driver support) Rennie Allen Electrical Engineering Dept. Pine Falls Paper Company 1 Mill Road, P.O. Box 10 Pine Falls, MB ROE 1M0 Phone (204)367-2311 Fax (204)367-4407 email: rgallen@mbnet.mb.ca