Sun Breaks Through Stormy Network Clouds

I put Sun's claims of 300 percent performance improvements on file writes to the test. I measured the amount of time elapsed from the time the first byte was written to a file to the time that the file was closed. Data consisted of a 1-MB array of sequential integers, which was repeatedly written to disk to achieve the desired file size. Testing was done on a Sun Ultra 30 with 384 MB of RAM with a Seagate Fast Wide SCSI disk attached to the integrated SCSI bus. Tests showed that for file sizes between 1 MB and 64 MB, Solaris 2.6 achieved file system throughput improvements of at least 222 percent and up to 295 percent on the same hardware running Solaris 2.5.1.

Solstice TotalNET Solstice TotalNET Advanced Server provides access to a common file system through the Server Message Block (SMB), NetWare and AppleShare protocols. Shadow directories and files maintain extended attributes for AppleTalk and OS/2 NetBIOS clients. They support long file names, and for clients that do not support long file names, files appear in a format that the client can use. This name mapping is similar to that found in DOS applications running under Windows95.

Because of these features, TotalNET hides the fact that the server is running anything other than Windows NT, NetWare or MacOS. TotalNET does not seem to be designed to truly integrate Unix file systems with PC network file systems. While the shadow files used for holding extended attributes are not visible to users of SMB, NetWare or AppleShare protocols, they are visible on the server. Furthermore, the use of Unix commands, such as rm, chown and cp, will result in files with incorrect or nonexistent extended attributes. TotalNET provides tools that rebuild proper shadow files and versions of more common commands, which perform the Unix file attribute change and the extended attribute changes.

Solstice Mail Server When coupled with sendmail, the IMAP4 (Internet Mail Access Protocol version 4) and POP3 servers from Solstice Internet Mail Server provide all of the necessary server capabilities for mail services to an intranet, which can be populated with PCs running off-the-shelf Internet mail clients.

My tests indicate that Solaris 2.6 is a much more capable mail server platform than previous versions. In the lab, four workstations flooded sendmail with messages destined for 10,000 random users. I arranged file systems so that the mail queue was on the same disk as the operating system, and the mail spool was striped across two, 2-GB Fast Wide SCSI drives. When running Solaris 2.5.1, the Ultra SPARC 30 received only 225 messages per minute. After 15 minutes, the server had accepted 3,375 messages, but 258 remained in the mail queue. The same server running Solaris 2.6 accepted and delivered about 270 messages per minute, leaving none in the mail queue at the end of a 15-minute run. During this test, 12 workstations were unsuccessful in generating anything more than somewhat sluggish mail performance in a mail bomb attack. Under Solaris 2.5.1, two workstations were quite effective at raising the load on the server significantly enough to cause sendmail to reject connection attempts.

Sun WebServer Because the Web is an important part of many corporate intranets, Sun includes Sun WebServer 1.0 with Solaris Server for Intranets. It fits well with the other components of Solaris Server for Intranets, thanks to its intuitive Web-based configuration interface and versatile documentation that helps administrators fully configure or fine-tune the Web server. Current Solaris licensees can install and use Sun WebServer by downloading it from www.sun.com/solaris/webserver.

Taken as a whole, Solaris Server for Intranets provides a suite of Internet and intranet standards-based server products that are reliable, perform well and operate with each other. These factors, coupled with a price of $1,290 (25 percent less than Windows NT with similar configuration) and Solaris ' remote administration capabilities, make Solaris Server for Intranets a sound choice for the corporate intranet.

Michael Gerdts is a Unix Systems Administrator for the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He can be reached at gerdts@cae.wisc.edu.

Exchange Continues to Take Shape
By Nancy Cox
NetPro's DS Expert: Is Your NDS Tree Healthy?
By James E. Drews
Taking Inventory With NetSuite Professional Audit
By Jeremy Impson

Updated November 10, 1997

Featured Webcasts

Valley View, Live!

InformationWeek Valley View captures the spirit of technology innovation around Silicon Valley and beyond, giving IT viewers insight into the creations and strategies of the hottest tech companies around.

The May 23rd episode features interviews and demos with: