Summary: Lan Manager -> SS1000

From: Helen C. O'Boyle (helen@nomad.urich.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 07 1993 - 10:58:49 CDT


A while back, I posted a message I no longer have a copy of (rrrrr,
short expire times, small disks, etc. ;-), about alternatives for
doing LAN Manager service from an SS1000 to PC's.

In addition to the one we had already found (LM Server by Syntax),
there's also a new package, LM/U (by Unipress), which is a port of
the actual Microsoft LAN Manager for UNIX code to the Sun. I spoke
with Unipress, and it seems that the SunOS version will be out for
beta Real Soon Now, and that the Solaris 2.x version will follow
some time after that (probably within a couple months). There may
also be a LanMan "compatible" Unix SMB server product being sold
by Performance Technologies, but I didn't call them in the course
of this investigation.

The major functional tradeoffs appear to be:
        LM Server: Not a "complete" port of LAN Manager server.
                    Will run over OSI or TCP/IP.
                    Uses UNIX user ID/password to validate users.

        LM/U: Complete "official" port of MS LAN Manager server.
                    Will run over TCP/IP but NOT over OSI.
                    Allows logons to be validated by a domain logon
                        controller, not requiring the user to logon
                        to each different server (2nd hand info).

For further information on LMU, one can contact Unipress at their
toll-free number (800-222-0550), or send an email inquiry to Dwight
Krossa at Microsoft (dwightk@microsoft.com) who's the LMU product manager.
Performance Technologies can be reached at (512-366-0123). I don't
have the Syntax number available at the moment.

Syntax sent out a demo of LM Server (complete with manuals that look more
technical than usual file server manuals, for detail-oriented people ;-).
Unipress sent out a nice glossy on LM/U, and they tell me they have
over 100 sites eagerly awaiting the product. I'm not sure that EITHER
will be running on the SS1000 soon, though -- both seem to be targeted
toward the Sparc 10 (not optimal, but what in life is optimal? ;-).

The following people had helpful comments about products to try,
their experiences with LanMan performance in general, and specific
experience with the LM Server and LM/U products:
      bob@comlab.gtri.gatech.edu (Bob Baggerman)
      hpd@akgua.att.com
      les@chinet.com (Leslie Mikesell)
      paul@sqltech.DIALix.oz.au (Paul Templeman)
      Don Hickey <hickdon@statcan.ca>

The following comment might be useful to anyone who's considering moving
file service to the Sun as a way of boosting file service performance.
In our case, the site is considering moving a major app to the Sun, and
wants to stay as much "single vendor" site as they can, to minimize
finger-pointing support techs, thus the interest in moving to a Sun rather
than a bigger NCR box. ;-) But here's a bunch of other things to try
which might help someone wring a bit more performance out of an
existing 3B2 or 486 setup:

Les Mikesell writes, about moving file service to Suns to increase
performance:
> I thought NCR platforms would scale to whatever you need. Is there
> really some other reason for doing this? (Like an offer of
> serious discounts from Sun)? The 3B2's might be a little slow but
> with the 486's the network should be the bottleneck if you
> have sufficient memory and fast SCSI drives. The next bottleneck
> should be the drive speed. Going to faster drives or RAID would
> probably get you more than a faster CPU as far as lanman file
> serving goes.

[ Side note: the WD7000 SCSI controllers in some of the machines don't
help matters, and I don't think there are any reasonably-priced
alternatives (ie, last someone there checked, the NCR and/or AT&T
UNIXes in use didn't support Adaptec controllers). ]

NOW, for the "user testimonials" on the products themselves:

Paul Templeman writes, regarding LM Server:
> Yes I've used it with some success. The nice part of the product is
> that they support multiple protcols - not just TCP/IP. At last look
> they had OSI, TCP/IP, and NetBEUI. One of the problems I had
> with the product initially was speed of network writes. This was
> due to a number of reasons - but mostly due to the fact we were
> (1) using TCP/IP, (2) using 8-bit cards on the PC's, and (3) using
> a under-configured Sun IPC as the server. Configured with the
> right server, using 16 bit ethernet cards and using either NetNEUI or
> their OSI stack I can't see you'll have a problem. Syntax have been
> around for a long time in this product area and were at one stage
> going to be Microsoft's Open Lan Manager porting centre ... but
> you know Microsoft :-). Feel free to mail should you have any more
> queries .

Don Hickey writes, regarding LM/U and its ancestor, LM/X:
> So your looking for a new lan/server. We went thru a similar exercise
> some time
> ago and perhaps you can benefit from our investigation. Early in 1993 we
> investigated moving from our 3Com server (running lanman 2.0) to another box.
> We have a large investment in Sun equipment so we evaluated LMserver by
> Syntax. At that time we found that LMserver could not replace our current
> server
> without losing some LanManager capabilities. We looked further and found that
> HP has a product called LM/X. It uses the standard Microsoft LM client
> software
> and has "most" of the features of LanManager 2.1. To that end we
> purchased an
> HP720 and have as many as 130 concurrent users with no problems.
>
> Since that time HP has moved to what is now the mainstream and is selling
> something called LM/U. LM/U sounds more like what you need. It runs on a
> variety of hardware platforms (Sun included) and the company (Unipress) is an
> offical Microsoft OEM. LM/U is a true Lanmanager 2.2 compliant product. You
> don't mention what protocol you are running in your network (NetBeui,
> NBP...) but
> LM/U supports NetBeui and TCP/IP. I cannot comment from experience on LM/U
> but we do plan to upgrade to it from LM/X. I suggest you contact the
> company at
> 1-800-222-0550 or 1-908-287-2100 for more info.

Thanks to everyone who responded, for your comments.

-- 
* Helen *



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