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From: jel@tuura.UUCP (Jerry Lahti)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: "Netware-VMS help (performance)"
Message-ID: <749@tuura.UUCP>
Date: 13 Sep 90 07:05:00 GMT
References: <0093C96C.37F01BC0@b56vxg>
Organization: Nokia Data Systems Oy
Lines: 51

lasantha@%b56vxg (Lasantha) writes:
>	We are doing some testing with Netware-for-VMS to connect a PC lan
>running novell to our VAXcluster (2*6210).
>
>What we are discovering is that the PC's take much longer to load the 
>executables and do general file transfers off the VAX (file server). This is
>compared to a 386 based PC file server. (Its almost double the time when the 
>files start getting larger).

Unfortunately I have no real operational experience with Netware-for-VMS
but I evaluated it in a previous job. However, this was more than a year
ago so my info may be a bit outdated. I doubt that the basic system
architecture has changed much, though.

>	o Has anyone using netware for vms seen this behaviour?.
Yes, we saw it.

>	o Is this delay due to file conversion netware has to do?.
Probably not if the files have been copied to the Vax from a Netware
PC workstation: files created through the Netware shell are (were?)
stored as RMS stream files which means that they have the same 'record'
format as native PC-DOS files, i.e. no special format conversion step
is necessary. The conversion is needed only when accessing e.g. text
files (with variable length RMS records) created by VMS applications.

The basic reason is that the PC server software runs stand-alone as
a very tightly integrated part of a specialized operating system which 
was from the beginning designed for a high-performance LAN server and 
then extensively tuned. On the other hand, Netware for VMS runs as a 
more or less ordinary process on top of a general purpose operating 
system and also must compete for resources with other applications.
The obvious result is that the observed performace will be be
worse unless the Vax has a far more powerful CPU and much faster 
disks than the 386 PC server.

My conclusion was that Netware for VMS might provide rather
nice and transparent file access integration between DOS and VMS if
that is what you really need. However, if you want a LAN file and
print server  then a 386 PC server provides much more bang for the
buck. (Yes, we then bought a PC server although we still used a somewhat
cranky 11/750: FTP transfers offered after all an adequate level of
'file sharing' and upgrading the Vax to a sufficiently powerful one
would have been too expensive.)

Regards,

Jerry Lahti
Nokia Data Systems Oy, Workgroup Systems/LAN

Disclaimer:
 These are my personal opinions. Besides, the company sells LAN Manager.