Forwarded From: "Betty G.O'Hearn" <bettyat_private> NT Warriors 11/7/98 9:04 AM Nov. 06, 1998 (InternetWeek - CMP via COMTEX) -- Given its relatively short life, the growth of Windows NT-last month renamed Windows 2000-for Web applications is already impressive. By some estimates, more than half of all companies already base their Web server strategies on NT, and version 4.0 is rapidly increasing its share of enterprise applications overall. Gartner Group expects the platform will increase its portfolio of standard enterprise business apps more than 60 percent by 2001. Nevertheless, IT managers choosing NT today still face significant trade-offs in terms of performance and stability compared to alternatives such as Unix and Novell's NetWare. Consider the slew of third-party companies offering "enhancements" to NT's directory, clustering, systems management and security features. Microsoft may point to these value-added vendors as proof of NT's popularity, but it's more likely these vendors have come to patch holes and buttress a platform that's still evolving its core functionality. To be sure, NT 5.0, repackaged as a three-tier server line under the Windows 2000 banner, will address many of the top concerns expressed by network managers. But the Windows 2000 server line is not expected to ship until mid-1999 at the earliest. For the time being, IT managers who opt for NT are dancing between the platform's price/performance advantages over Unix and NT's weaknesses. Those short-comings start with scalability. Today, a single NT server supports only about 25 percent of the users that a comparable Unix box can handle, and there are many fewer NT engineers out there to hire. As the two case studies presented here indicate, experiences with NT 4.0 can vary. At Brigham Young University, early hope that NT would offer a less expensive way to open the school's back-end apps to the Web is under review after a disappointing launch last month. Conversely, site creation and hosting company Judd's Online sees its front-to-back commitment to NT-and Microsoft applications-yielding positive results. The decisions are tough, but these users' experiences should help you weigh your own options. --Case Study-- At Brigham Young, NT Barely Makes Grade If Windows NT were a student at Brigham Young University, it might be averaging a "D" grade right now. Brigham Young last month tried and failed to move to an all-NT 4.0 server front end for its Web apps, which are accessed by about 50,000 students and 4,200 full-time faculty at the Provo, Utah, campus. The tests especially disappointed Brad Stone, director of development for BYU's information technology service. Stone had hoped running Windows NT on Intel servers would save BYU big bucks. "It came down to the cost question," Stone says. "We could put in dual-processor Pentiums running NT for $7,000 versus tens of thousands of dollars for a Unix box." Cost Cutting The NT tests were part of the university's ongoing policy of using technology to cut costs. About two months ago, BYU retired the IBM mainframe that ran its financial, registration and inventory systems and replaced it with a farm of Hewlett-Packard servers. Indeed, a future plan is to leverage NT for more of this back-end processing, using another set of NT servers running Web applications as the common front end. BYU's users access the campuswide intranet using an application called getAccess from software maker enCommerce Inc. Up until an October test, the logon app, along with Netscape's Web servers, ran on a mix of NT and Unix boxes. According to Stone, the mixed server configuration worked flawlessly for the past year on volumes of 300,000 to 350,000 logons daily. But it was not up to the task when only Windows NT servers were tested. The Windows NT boxes could not handle the load alone, Stone explains. "Our latest information is that the problem involves the number of threads Windows NT can handle." He believes the Unix machines, which can spawn a large number of simultaneous processes, would not have hit the same wall. Stone also had problems running e-mail servers over NT. "When we shifted these servers to NT, running full max on the latest hardware, we found we could handle only about half the traffic of the HP servers," Stone reports, noting that the situation was destined to get worse as e-mail traffic from BYU's 25,000 mail accounts continued to increase. "My faith in NT was shaken, diminished," says Stone, who originally advocated the use of Windows NT to upper management. Right now, the IT unit is revisiting the question of whether NT is a suitable Web server front end. Stone, for instance, is pressing hard to put e-mail services back on Unix boxes. Although every installation is unique-and BYU is still looking for the culprit responsible for its underwhelming experience with NT-a number of observers say NT is not up to speed for the enterprise when compared to Unix. "NT is two or three years behind Unix," says Chris LeTocq, an analyst with Dataquest. Seeking Alternatives Still, Stone has not entirely given up on Windows NT and is considering two alternatives. First, a Web load-balancing product called Cadence from Valence Research Inc. can be used. Microsoft acquired Valence earlier this year and intends to bundle the Cadence software into NT 5.0, which last month was renamed and repositioned under the Windows 2000 banner. Cadence, which will be included in Windows 2000 Server, would help span browser requests across a farm of NT servers. But Stone isn't exactly holding his breath. "We really can't work with beta code," he says, referring to NT 5.0's current status. Windows NT 5.0 Beta 2.0 is available now, and a Beta 3.0 of one of the Windows 2000 server products is expected in the first quarter of next year. Microsoft has not said when Windows 2000 will ship, arguing that the company needs feedback from users about the Beta 3.0 build. A Mixed Environment Stone's other possibility is to test the Windows NT configuration with Microsoft's bundled HTTP server for NT, the Internet Information Server. But this second solution-a vertical stack of Microsoft infrastructure and server applications-doesn't sit well with Stone, who says Brigham Young, like most other academic institutions, is a hotbed of heterogeneous computing activity. "We wouldn't have a chance mandating the use of a single vendor's products," Stone says. Meanwhile, Brigham Young's departments soon will be retesting the Windows NT configurations. And maybe this time NT-or rather Windows 2000 Server-will receive a passing grade. TOOL BOX Brigham Young University - Windows NT Platform: version 4.0 - Number of Windows NT Servers: 18 - Web Servers: 16 Netscape; 2 NetWare; 1 Novonix, the Netscape-on-NetWare server - Application Servers: 12 NetWare centrally, 90 campuswide - Development Tools for NT: Code Warrior, Perl and Java - Additional Software: Remotely Possible, a screen-sharing app from Computer Associates International Inc.; Disk Keeper, a disk defrag and maintenance tool for NT from Executive Software International Inc. --Case Study-- Windows Reflects Well On Judd's Online Business At site creation and hosting company Judd's Online, the commitment to Windows NT runs wide and deep-and it's getting the job done. By relying on NT and a full complement of Microsoft BackOffice apps and tools, Judd's has reduced complexity in its own shop and for its business clients, says Richard Warren, senior vice president of strategy, sales and marketing. A case in point is Judd's default Web server. The company started with early versions of Netscape's commerce and communications servers running on NT for its intranet, but ran into some performance issues. "It was our impression that Netscape's software was more an NT hack of a Unix application," Warren says. "It didn't operate as a genuine Windows service and was neither fish nor fowl in the NT environment." So, Warren moved to NT's Internet Information Server (IIS), which these days is connected to Microsoft BackOffice apps, notably Microsoft's SQL Server database. The company now has more than 20 NT servers, running on Compaq and Digital Equipment Alpha machines. "The real multiplier is [when you have] top-to-bottom integration," Warren says. "I can program in one paradigm and have it work all the way from the HTTP server to the most complex services in [Microsoft's] Site Server." Warren is such a true believer that he recommends staying away from the third-party products available today that beef up NT 4.0's directory, security and systems management. To him, the ancillary products introduce added complexity, particularly when Microsoft ships a patch or extension to the core operating system. Vertical integration via BackOffice simplifies deployment for Judd's Online's commercial accounts, which include the Martha Stewart online store and the 60,000-page site for the American Diabetes Association. Warren also disagrees with criticism that too much dependence on Microsoft narrows choices, such as forcing users to run Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to best experience the Active Server Pages generated by IIS. The Right Choice "If you design applications carefully and understand how to make the server software responsible to the user agent, there's no reason you can't live with and, frankly, reinforce the browser choice," Warren says. Warren admits his company's own intranet and work for clients is "very ActiveX-focused." But even here, the problem of providing cross-browser support is not insurmountable, and doesn't outweigh the benefits of using NT, he says. And he's not worried about about Windows NT's lack of scalability, often cited as one area where the operating system lags alternatives found in the IBM or Unix worlds. The scalability arguments raised by large Unix or IBM mainframe proponents miss the advantages of "the smaller, distributed, replicated processing that NT is so good at," he argues. Besides, multiple servers clustered to deliver scalability offer security because there's no single point of failure. For instance, Judd's Online uses Windows NT servers to manage a large tape storage subsystem, a 5.4 terabyte library for press-plate images. Scaling Ahead Warren is among the many network managers watching the rapid scaling of Intel and Alpha servers, which are climbing the performance curve with four-way, eight-way and 16-way configurations. For instance, he reports that the Martha Stewart online store, hosted by Judd business partner Digex Inc., originally began with six Windows NT servers but dropped one when it was found that five four-processor machines were more than adequately handling the load. NT's growth at Judd's, as elsewhere, has as much to do with economics as performance issues. "Our experience is that NT is 2-to-1 or even 3-to-1 cheaper," he says, comparing the unit price of Intel servers to Unix boxes. Still, Warren says Microsoft's delay of Windows 5.0-now Windows 2000 Server-has affected some products, if not his planning. "Site Server 3.0 was kind of retrofitted to [the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol] because Active Directory wasn't quite available," he says, adding that Site Server will probably run better once Windows 2000 and the Active Directory infrastructure are ready. Warren also expects to see more Windows 2000 items showing up as NT 4.0 add-ons, especially as the ship date for the final version of Windows 2000 moves further into the future. "They've been putting stuff from Windows 2000 into 4.0," Warren says. And he thinks this may indicate a welcome consolidation at the kernel level between the old Windows and Windows 2000. TOOL BOX Judd's Online - Windows NT Platform: mostly 4.0, some 3.51 for specialized press applications - Number of Windows NT Servers: more than 20 - Web Servers: Compaq for general-purpose services; DEC AlphaServers for SQL Server and digital prepress - Application Servers: NT Servers - Development Tools for NT: Visual Basic; Visual InterDev; InfoModeler for Object Role Modeling - Additional Software: specialized drivers to handle the 5.4-terabyte storage system for press-plate images By: Ellis Booker -o- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Repent Security Incorporated [www.repsec.com]
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