Excerpted from Communications Week, April 29, 1996
More Proof That Windows NT Server Transfers Files Slower Than NetWare
The real reason we were having trouble was Microsoft Windows NT Server. We already uncovered that NT doesn't handle file and print serving as well as Novell NetWare, and during the course of our Pentium server lab tests, we quantified it with CommWeek's benchmarks. It appeared that Windows NT Server was four to five times slower running our benchmarks than an equivalent server running Novell NetWare 4.1 SMP. . . .
Right now, though, I think it's safe to say that NT Server doesn't compare favorably.
The most convincing event was almost an afterthought. After finally getting a decent video feed (it required the DPT controller that won last week's comparison) I wondered if I might be asking the server for too much. Before I put everything away, I set up a Novell NetWare server to feed the same video. Time constraints forced me to use an old Gateway 2000 EISA machine with a 486 CPU and 32 megabytes of RAM.
Although the NetWare server was much slower than the NT machine, both in terms of processor and system bus, it did share a similar SCSI controller, an older version of the DPT SmartCache aimed at EISA. It passed the video test with flying colors. We kept adding workstations until we ran out of video-capable lab stations and continued to get good video with minimal frame loss.
Now, we're not exactly comparing apples to apples here. The machines weren't even in the same class, for example. Likewise, the system buses were different, there were differences in memory, and the Gateway didn't have any AV-quality drives. So we can't consider this a definitive test, although we are certainly getting some strong indications that Windows NT isn't suited for the demands of high-performance file transfers.
These and our earlier results make it obvious that further study is necessary. Naturally, I'll tell you about it here. In the meantime, if you need performance in handling large files, you might want to wait a while before switching to Windows NT Server. Our preliminary indications show that it's dramatically slower than NetWare when performing those tasks. |
