Windows 2000 Server vs. Novell 4.11

[catseye]

Man, what is the deal with win2k? I run an Access based custom app, and we used to use Netware 4.11 on a Pentium Pro 200 for file serving. We switched to a dual P3 550, Raid 1 Dell server running Win2K as a file server and its maybe 4 times slower. Is win2K junk?

 

[Xanathar]

Novell is designed as a file and print server, with 4.X and 5.X they started supporting apps and basically their app support sucks. <groupwise, Webserver, etc> NT was designed from the ground as an app server, and as such falls short of novell in file sharing and printing sevices, but destroys them in database, email, etc. <As there will be unix advocates later chiming in... Unix in my opinion is in between for file sharing, <but a pain for 9X workstations> and if properly configugured is better then NT for apps, but only if configured properly.>

The dell install of 2k is junk. I recomend wipe it and start fresh. If the drives are IDE, and your doing database <accesss> you should of gone scsi. Also make sure your using a hardware raid config and not software <i have seen dell servers shipped with hardware raid cards and 3 drives, then not even using the card, using software raid> Make sure everything is properly configured. Also, did you get enough memory? 2k on its own runs at about 80 megs with no apps or services, depending on how big your database is expect to use 192 to start fresh, then add in the same amount of memory as the indexes are planned to be, so if you have a 20 meg index for the database, use 256 ram, 50 meg, 256 ram also, but any higher get more memory.

 

[catseye]

Thanks, Xanathar, I really appreciate the hints you have given me. I'll start looking where you left off. BTW, the machine has 512 Megs, so I doubt memory is the problem.

 

[catseye]

One more question, X. You say that the dell install is junk. Aside from software raid, could you be more specific? I tried web searching with no results. It will be very difficult to convince the owner to take the server down without something specific to point to other than poor performance. Thanks again.

 

[Xanathar]

Double check all of the settings basically, see how much memory is being used <simple task manager> check the drivers <especially the network card and scsi.ide card> If your running IDE you alreadsy messed up for a database server.... Try doing normal benching on the server, like copying files to and from the server <mainly what the access is doing> the problem might be the network card, collisions, anything. Are you running Ip security? if so, turn it off. Simple admin tasking you should run throu looking at the setup.