Oct 09, 1996 Novell Replicates, Synchronizes Files
(10/03/96)
By Sharon Fisher, CommunicationsWeek
Now, if only Novell and Microsoft would work together better, users
would have a fully functional distributed file service, say analysts familiar with both companies' directions.
Novell announced this week the beta program for its Novell
Replication Services, which lets network administrators replicate files or groups of files to multiple NetWare servers.
The offering promises two advantages. First, it improves fault tolerance, in that multiple copies of a file are available should one server fail.
Second, it improves network performance because network
administrators can store commonly used files locally rather than require that users retrieve them across the network.
The software includes automatic synchronization so that changes made
in either the master server or the replicated servers are distributed
throughout the network, said John Kiger, director of marketing for
Novell's network services division.
"It's an onerous task to maintain a set of files to be consistent across a number of servers on your network, particularly when distributed across a wide-area network," Kiger said.
The product can replicate any kind of file, including software to be
distributed to users and material destined for Web servers, Kiger said.
"You can distribute information to Web servers around your distributed
enterprise network and provide for consistent content on all your
servers," he said.
Network administrators can specify how often replicated servers are to
be synchronized, as often as every minute, Kiger said. In terms of
performance, synchronization uses the same amount of bandwidth as
copying files manually, he said.
In the current version, the entire file is sent if it is changed at ll. But future versions will support "finer granularity within a single file," Kiger said. That will be an important update, said Neil MacDonald, senior research analyst at the Gartner Group Inc., a Stamford, Conn., consultancy. "If I only make a change in a name or a phone number, I don't want to send the whole file," he said. "It becomes an issue with files of gigabytes."
Replication Services is one component of Novell's Advanced File
Services, which is under development. "The missing part is the
distributed logical file system," MacDonald said.
Ironically, this is what Microsoft has said it will offer with its Distributed File System. "But Microsoft is currently missing the replication piece," MacDonald said. "Combine the two, and you'd have a decent distributed replicated file system."
As Novell Directory Services becomes available on other platforms--including Microsoft's Windows NT--Replication Services
will become available on those platforms as well, he said. How the two
services might work together once Replication Services becomes
available on Windows NT remains to be seen. "But for a first release, it seems like Novell wants to be very competitive with Microsoft, and
that they're still in the advanced file services business," MacDonald
said.
Another planned enhancement will include multicast, which lets a
network administrator distribute files to 20 servers by sending them
once, MacDonald said.
The beta software is available now on Novell's early access CD. The
company expects to ship final product in the first half of next year for an undisclosed price. It will work with all versions of NetWare 4.
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