🚀 go-pugleaf

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Hi,
  We are trying to evaluate whether we should upgrade our Macintosh SE/30 CPUs
running AppleShare 3.0 either to a Novell server or to an Apple Workgroup
Server running AppleShare 4.1/4.2 primarily over ethernet. My responsibility
is primarily distributing courseware and applications to support student use
of computers, so security is not presently a significant issue, but reliablity
and access are. We need to reach both Windows and Macintosh clients (I already
have experience with the current AppleShare Windows client). I'd really like
to hear from anyone who has experience in both environments about:
  1) performance
  2) management issues (especially from the perspective of having few bodies
     to throw at problems)
  3) reliability (esp. failure rates)
  4) costs (objective -- hardware, licensing -- and subjective -- headaches)
  5) perceived future benefits/costs
and anything else you think is significant.

  For the record, the two servers I manage most closely are almost carefree.
One server needs attention about once every 6 months and the other about once
every 3 months, and after building-wide power failures (because the CPU boots
faster than one of the hard drives). Installation of software, etc., is
limited by disk space and network traffice in general, but they are old
systems and slow with monster applications like WordPerfect & MS Word/Excel.
My other servers run on older CPUs and are even more reliable, but slower, and
most problems with them prove to be campus/building wide network problems.

Paul DeBenedictis, Manager
Student Computing Services
SUNY Health Science Center at Syracuse
BENEDICT@VAX.CS.HSCSYR.EDU