Hello All,
I must summarise a seckond time as I have got some excellent replies. I thank everyone that replies. Please do not hesitate should you have somthing to add to the following
#1
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From: Stephen Schaefer - Imonics Consultant <sps@imonics.com>
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 11:07:51 -0400
To: Tony.Glavin@analog.com
Subject: Re: WABI Performance
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We've acquired WinDD from Tektronix, and like it a lot better. It
runs on an NT server, but turns the native graphics into a protocol
that gets translated to X11 on your Sun or your Tektronix X terminal.
The cost is that you'll need to administer an actual, high-end
Microsoft NT server, and pay the Tektronix licenses. In our
situation, we win that back in not having 100Mbyte in each user's home
directory for all the MicroSoft apps, and in being able to do global
maintenance on the apps, rather than have each individual do this
quarter's software update: NT shares them like a real (:-)) OS.
We intend to use a Compaq 4000, with 128Mbyte of RAM for 10
simultaneous users. For each next set of 10 simultaneous users, we
intend to add another pentium CPU (the 4000 will take up to 4) and
128Mbyte of RAM. Between licensing and hardware, we're looking at
around $500 per (simultaneous) seat.
We did our initial testing on a no-name pentium clone machine with
64Mbyte of memory. Performance was much, much better than WABI up to
about 5 simultaneous users. On ethernet, it was being there. Over a
14400 bps PPP link, it was overall the same as local WABI on a
SparcStation 5, although in that environment, each was a little
quicker than the other in some operations. Things got dicey as the
simultaneous WinDD users approached 10. This was a beta test/eval
license, and we've had some availability troubles due to license
expirations. And of course the network has to be up... Nothing we're
not confident will be fixed by a real licensed version (which we
eagerly await).
- Stephen
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#2
Yes, I've a comment to WABI: if you plan to have more than one user
using it on one SPARC-CPU consider to install Solaris on an Intel platform;
I've found that two Word applications running on a SS-20-71 under WABI
make the machine useless for any other tasks.
A 80486/66 PC running Solaris 2.3 can easely handel up to 10 clients.
-- Wolfgang Wetz, Systems Engineer, IS 6.3 (Unix Systems Services) *** CIBA, R-1055.130A, P.O.Box, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland *** E-mail: wwtz@chbs.ciba.com - Phone: +4161 697 54 25 - Fax: +4161 697 87 72 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 We currently have Solaris 2.4 for x86 and WABI 2.0 on an Osborne Pentium 90MHz with 32MB of RAM. We are currently running Microsoft Windows 3.11, Word 2.0c and Excel 5.0.We are then using the Pentium/Solaris server to run Wabi, and using the X Windows feature to display the Microsoft Windows environment back on the Suns.
We formerly had WABI running on a SPARCstation 10 Model 30 with 32MB of RAM. Our experience was that performance dropped quickly as the number of users increased. Even with only one or two users, performance was probably comparable to a mid-range 80386 - not real good.
We then increased the SPARC 10's memory to 64MB. This helped, but performance was still nothing special.
WABI running on the Pentium is much better. Performance is more akin to each user having an 80486 PC on their desk, and we can allow more simultaneous users without the same degradation of performance. (We are currently allowing up to six simultaneous users, but perhaps could allow more. It's a bit early to tell yet.)
Having a central WABI server enables us to avoid the overhead of having to install multiple instances of the software applications. We just install Word and Excel (and any other apps in the WABI certified list) once on the Pentium WABI server, and then everyone can access them. This allows central admin of the apps.
Also we have set up specific wabi users. When someone wants to run WABI, they just run a script (called run_wabi) which rlogs them into the WABI server as one of the specially set up WABI users and then displays MS Windows back on their Sun. This allows us to avoid installing MS Windows 3.11 in every user's home directory.
So overall our experience with WABI 2.0 under Solaris 2.4 on an Intel platform is very good.
Regards
James Patton Unix Systems Administrator Main Roads Western Australia --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4 Tony - We currently run on Solarix X86 and X display to our SPARCs. Pretty satisfactory. We tried WABI on our LXes. They would handle MS Word and PowerPoint graphics, but were totally unable to keep up with PowerPoint text. The disadvantage of Xing of course is that we currently have too many boxes per segment so it can get painful if the PowerPoint page I am currently working on has a lot of objects - PowerPoint repaints each object when any object is moved so it can get ugly on slides with a lot of stuff on them...
On the WinDD comment below, links to the non-WABI parts work so it is possible to manage the non-WABI apps for all users from a single location. That said, however, we are considering moving to WinDD because of compatibility issues - We believe that SUN will have many more problems reengineering solutions than going with a native back end as the WinDD solution does.
John Marsh --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Again, Thanks for all the replies
Regards,
Tony Glavin.
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