I would be interested to see a NetWare 6.5 server with NSS compete against these figures, after all if you are talking file and print performance you are talking NetWare and we all know it.
As a sys admin I've stood at windows consoles waiting for file attribute information to be stamped, I've sworn at *nix for it's poor administration of file system rights but (with the odd exception in the 5.x days of NSS) I've not complained about NetWare.
Novell has always had a team of dedicated programmers working on the file system and speed has always been a main concern with NetWare (in some cases far too much so) - you don't need Client32 anymore and my own benchmarking with CIFS in NetWare 6.5 shows considerable improvment over Win2k or 2k3.
Put simply, NetWare as a file share platform in a large environment cannot be beaten. In a small environment I'd wonder why you'd even be interested in performance differences as you'd never see the effect.
It should also be noted that NetWare 6.5 now gives 5 licenses for free.
If you are going to talk about Printing I'd suggest that you look at iPrint, using the IPP protocol over HTTP you can bring up a floor-map based map of your printers for your users to click on to install on their desktops.
Your average NetWare server can handle over one THOUSAND printers, novell actually states that 2000 is the limit: I've personally seen 1200 on one NetWare server.... someone show me a x86 *nix or M$ server that can have 2000 active printers please?
Then there is the administration... web based via iManager 2.0, it's a dream compared to the MMC.
Of course there are down sides to NetWare, it's not cheap (again, who cares we are talking performance and therefore large scale businesses that can afford it) and you have to get out of your comfort zone, however this whole discussion is based on 'horses for courses' and immature operating systems need not apply.
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I would be interested to see a NetWare 6.5 server with NSS compete against these figures, after all if you are talking file and print performance you are talking NetWare and we all know it. As a sys admin I've stood at windows consoles waiting for file attribute information to be stamped, I've sworn at *nix for it's poor administration of file system rights but (with the odd exception in the 5.x days of NSS) I've not complained about NetWare. Novell has always had a team of dedicated programmers working on the file system and speed has always been a main concern with NetWare (in some cases far too much so) - you don't need Client32 anymore and my own benchmarking with CIFS in NetWare 6.5 shows considerable improvment over Win2k or 2k3. Put simply, NetWare as a file share platform in a large environment cannot be beaten. In a small environment I'd wonder why you'd even be interested in performance differences as you'd never see the effect. It should also be noted that NetWare 6.5 now gives 5 licenses for free. If you are going to talk about Printing I'd suggest that you look at iPrint, using the IPP protocol over HTTP you can bring up a floor-map based map of your printers for your users to click on to install on their desktops. Your average NetWare server can handle over one THOUSAND printers, novell actually states that 2000 is the limit: I've personally seen 1200 on one NetWare server.... someone show me a x86 *nix or M$ server that can have 2000 active printers please? Then there is the administration... web based via iManager 2.0, it's a dream compared to the MMC. Of course there are down sides to NetWare, it's not cheap (again, who cares we are talking performance and therefore large scale businesses that can afford it) and you have to get out of your comfort zone, however this whole discussion is based on 'horses for courses' and immature operating systems need not apply.