🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan20.235719.21204@freenet.carleton.ca> aa533@Freenet.carleton.ca (John Pidcock) writes:

 >> 
 >> For a user base of about 120 PCs and 50 Unix WorkStations
 >> and X-Terminals, would it be advisable to consider a UNIX
 >> platform to run LAN Manager to serve the PC audience.
 
The UNIX platform for Lan Manager is fine.  The reason to choose to
run the UNIX version of Lan Manager (IMHO) is for the comfort of the
administrator, and availability of hardware.  If the Lan Manager adminstrator
feels most comfortable working in a UNIX environment, then asking that person
to run a PC based LAN may be asking for problems with motivation, interest 
level, etc. for the adminstrator.  As I discuss below, performance is NOT
a significant factor.  If you have an older workstation available that is not
being heavily utilized (because it is slower), and you can get Lan Manager
for UNIX for that workstation's processor and OS, then no additional money
will need to be spent to acquire a platform (you still need disk space, 
printers, and plotters).

 >> If I chose an Intel-based platform for the LAN Manager, would
 >> something like a dual processor Compaq SystemPro running OS/2
 >> with (say) 16 MB of memory be adequate?
 
I am running Lan Manager 2.0 on an Intel 386-16MHZ platform.  There are
about 100 PCs in my organization and the others outside my area that want or
need access to my server swell the user accounts list to about 150.  The 
server has 10MB of RAM with 2.9GB of disks to manage.  With session timeout
set to 2 hours, a typical day will see 40-50 active simultaneous sessions,
30-60 open files, with server response time running sub 20ms.  Swapfile size 
is initialized in CONFIG.SYS to 1MB, and it does not grow.  Based on this,
I would say that a SystemPro may be overkill, i.e. too much money.  Something
like an AST 486SE may be more appropriate.  16MB RAM will be fine, in a pinch,
12MB would do. 

In my environment, the UNIX workstations are more of a threat to the server 
than the number of PCs that it has to service.  The UNIX workstations can and 
regularly do chew up so much network bandwidth that PCs and servers cannot
get a packet onto Ethernet.  We have a similar number of UNIX boxes on our
network (compared to you).  Based on our experiences, a sub-net for the UNIX
world (with a router) would be advisable to keep network through-put up for 
both classes of users.

 >> Is it possible to run LAN Manager on the latest release of OS2
 >> or would I have to use OS/2 1.3?  
 >> 

Lan Manager ships with a revised edition of OS/2 1.3.  Another poster has
suggested ways to get Lan Manager running under OS/2 2.0 (i.e. install OS/2
1.3, install Lan Manager, detach Lan Manager using its Setup program, install
OS/2 2.0, attach Lan Manager), but I have not tried this, so I cannot verify
that it will work.

--
Regards,
Robert Gammon
(713)-274-3299       (voice)
(713)-274-2324       (fax)