Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!nic.csu.net!beach.csulb.edu!csus.edu!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!caen!hellgate.utah.edu!fcom.cc.utah.edu!npd.novell.com!newsun!keith From: keith@ca.excelan.com (Keith Brown) Newsgroups: comp.sys.novell Subject: Re: NFS Suppoart in NetWare Message-ID: <1991Feb21.234900.11916@novell.com> Date: 22 Feb 91 07:44:42 GMT Sender: news@novell.com ( Lines: 95 The News Manager) Nntp-Posting-Host: ca Reply-To: keith@ca.excelan.com (Keith Brown) Organization: Novell, Inc., San Jose, Califonia References: <6434@ncrwic.Wichita.NCR.COM> <1991Feb21.144302.18780@cimage.com> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 1991 23:49:00 GMT In article <1991Feb21.144302.18780@cimage.com> brian@dgsi.UUCP (Brian Kelley) writes: > >Would someone at Novell care to explain why this product costs $5000? >That's a lot of money for what is basically a a big TSR (which also happens >to be version 1.00000). Sure. I'll have to have a go at this without sounding too commercial though! Before I start, our first release of NetWare NFS is v1.1, NOT 1.00000. Anyway..... The NetWare NFS product that we've been developing here over the last couple of years or so is, in my personal words (not Novells), a screamer! When the pricing was done, we compared the product against UNIX based NFS servers. I'm an old UNIX hack myself, and still a big fan of UNIX in fact, however, clearly the UNIX OS design is geared toward making it a great interactive operating system, not a great file server. Unlike UNIX, the NetWare operating system design is highly optimised for providing "back end" transactional type network services to client systems. NetWare doesn't carry with it all the additional baggage that makes UNIX such a great interactive OS. NetWare does no swapping and paging to disk, it does not have to set up and tear down virtual machine environments for service processes, no unnecessary internal buffer copies are required to copy data between user and kernel space (Everything is kernel space in in NetWare OSs, consequently NetWare NFS transmits data directly from the disk cache to the network on client reads and shifts data directly from LSL (network) buffers to the disk cache on writes). Of particular importance to NFS is the speed at which NetWare can switch context between threads. NetWare achieves context switches in just a few microseconds. Put simply a NetWare context switch is nothing more than a save of processor registers, a chase down a data structure to find the next runable thread, and a reload of registers. Transactional protocols requiring disk IO, like NFS, generally mean lots of context switches have to take place at the server. What all this really adds up to is that, when judged as an NFS server alongside UNIX servers, NetWare NFS gives you a great deal more bang for the buck! Use the product on a cheap 386SX server platform and you've just purchased yourself the cheapest NFS server you'll find. Use the product on something a little more meaty, such as a SystemPro, a NetFrame or a Tricord and you have yourself an NFS server capable of pounding through in excess of 400 NFS operations a second. To add to this, all of NetWare v3.11s fault tolerent capabilities (disk mirroring, duplexing, UPS support, read after write verify etc...) are applicable to NetWare NFS (we inherited them from the OS for free :-). You'd have to part with some serious money to get these in a UNIX based NFS server platform, if you could find them at all. Aside from all of this, the files that are accesible to UNIX systems via NetWare NFS are also transparently accessible to DOS systems (free with the OS), Macintosh systems (bit more money) and OS/2 systems (tiny bit more money) concurrently. When was the last time you saw a UNIX system that could manage all of this straight out of the box? > The big initial hype of 3.0 was increased >connectivity and TCP/IP support. I think most of us thought that the $8K >price tag paid for that. I guess I was quite wrong. The entry price of NetWare v3.11 is now $3,495 (20 user). Updates and upgrades are even cheaper than this, but to answer your specific questions.... > >While the pricing for new copies of Netware 3.11 have been posted, I have >not seen any prices for upgrades. How much will 3.1 -> 3.11 upgrades be >if you've already used your 1 free upgrade (from 3.0 to 3.1)? If you buy any of the additional NLM sets (NetWare NFS, NetWare for Mac 3.0, NetWare FTAM or NetWare Communication Services) the upgrade from 3.1->3.11 is free. If you don't, the price depends upon your existing update/upgrade agreements with your reseller or us. > From what >I understand, buyers of 3.0 who registered were promised the Mac NLM when >it became available. Because the Mac NLM requires 3.11, I've been told that >3.11 will thrown in for free (and you choose how many users you require). And our promises are good. If you bought and registered NetWare 386 v3.0, NetWare for Mac v3.0 will be sent to you automatically and at no charge, complete with a NetWare v3.11 to run it on. NetWare 386 3.1 customers (who never owned 3.0) were never made this promise but if they purchase NetWare for Mac v3.0, they also get their OS upgrade for free. Keith - Keith Brown Phone: (408) 473 8308 Novell San Jose Development Centre Fax: (408) 433 0775 2180 Fortune Dr, San Jose, California 95131 Net: keith@novell.COM Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com