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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rusty Johnson who wrote (30458)	2/20/2000 9:38:00 AM
From: Spartex	Respond to of 42771

More detailed and unbiased view of the AD security hole: By the Register: Posted 16/02/2000 12:27pm by Graham Lea Test lab 'proves' both cases in Novell vs. MS directory wars Microsoft has made another attempt at beating Novell in the directory game, but has tripped itself up again in the process. This time Microsoft chose a Utah testing house called KeyLabs that Novell had used in the past, and asked it to carry out some tests so that Microsoft could have third party verification. Novell corporate strategist Brad Anderson told The Register that he thought it probable that Microsoft had found some non-real-world cases in its labs where NDS eDirectory (as NDS 8 is now called) could be beaten by Active Directory, and then asked KeyLabs to verify the tests independently. Novell was incensed, and also commissioned KeyLabs to run some real-world tests that, perhaps not surprisingly, show NDS performance in a very different light. While Microsoft referred to KeyLabs as a "Novell Authorised Testing Site" in its release, Novell countered that KeyLabs was a "registered Microsoft Certified Solutions Partner". You get the picture. Credit is due to KeyLabs for mentioning in its report commissioned by Microsoft that SSL security was switched off for its tests, and that IIS was not installed (increasing performance of course) - something that Microsoft forgot to mention in its release. Microsoft made a big issue of 96 scenarios being tried, but they were hardly realistic ones. The Novell tests, with more realistic configurations, included security and some searches not attempted by Microsoft for reasons that will become clear in a moment. An important issue not mentioned in the tests is that Active Directory only works with Windows 2000 (and not even NT), whereas NDS is happy with Solaris, NetWare, NT, Windows 2000 (and Tru64 this summer). There is something of a problem with Linux and NDS, since client connectivity with SAMBA does not yet support NDS authentication, but we digress. With multi-faceted, simultaneous searches, KeyLabs found NDS outperformed Active Directory by 250 percent on average. But worse was to come. Microsoft did not do any LDAP "contains" searches (completing a search across a sub-tree after a few characters are typed) when it defined the tests that KeyLabs was to run. Microsoft evidently knew that if more than one client workstation were used, Active Directory would not return any results at all: so much for Windows 2000's reliability. Where Active Directory was able to produce results with one workstation, NDS was 1250 times faster (yes, that is "times", and not "per cent"). Another example of Active Directory's inability to perform was seen in a mixed search test, where NDS returned results in 100 percent of cases, but AD failed to return results in 715 out of 6,000 cases - so that one in eight searches with Active Directory failed. Another scalability test showed that in a scenario with 10,000 searches - 100 clients performing 100 searches - NDS produced 250 results/second, but Active Directory failed to produce a single result after 60 seconds. Two different and important issues arise from these tests. The first is concerned with the ethical problems that are posed when a test organisation appears to bend both ways in endorsing test results from clients with horns locked. However scrupulously they perform their work - and there is no suggestion that KeyLabs did otherwise - such organisations are effectively muzzled by their clients from making any useful comments. Instead, we find the absurd situation of Matt Mace, director of quality at KeyLabs, being quoted by Microsoft as saying: "In each of the 96 LDAP-based tests we performed, Active Directory running on Windows 2000 Server exceeded the performance on Novell's NDS Version 8 running NetWare 5.1". But just three days later, he was quoted by Novell as saying that "In each of the LDAP-based tests we performed, using simultaneous different search types, Novell's NDS exceeded the performance of Active Directory running on the Windows 2000 Server." Mace had not returned our call inviting comment at press time. It seems that benchmark testing, which has been used in the industry since the days when big iron was compared, has not resolved the problems that were manifest nearly forty years ago. The other issue concerns the truthfulness of marketing messages. Yes, it is marketing, and of course there will be hype, but facts are supposed to be facts. Novell has been a little too quiet about its multiprocessing capability, promised for the next iteration of NetWare, and how this might affect present performance. Microsoft has been making excessive claims about the performance, scalability and reliability of Windows 2000. Yesterday, CIO Jim Yost of the Ford Motor Co told the Windows 2000 meeting in San Francisco that "Windows 2000 was chosen [by Ford] for both its scalability and reliability". He's not the only one who needs to dig deeper than the hype. ++++++++++++++++++++++ Sorry I don't have the link. Got this from RB post. I would appreciate thoughts on the NDS connectivity issue with Linux, and SAMBA client. TIA, QuadK

To: Rusty Johnson who wrote (30458)	2/20/2000 7:33:00 PM
From: Rusty Johnson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

More from SmartMoney ... Is Intel Doing an End-Run Around Microsoft? By Danny Hakim smartmoney.com Q&A: A Leading Venture Capitalist on Intel's Linux Strategy By Danny Hakim smartmoney.com

To: Rusty Johnson who wrote (30458)	2/22/2000 3:02:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Respond to of 42771

Helloo Rusty, > Windows 2000: A Cloudy View I nice set of the usual articles ... clearly they are consistent with most analysis ... - Windows 2000 will have some problems ... - Adoption as a replacement for UNIX servers will be limited ... - Migrating servers from NT to 2000 will be slow ... All of this is as expected. But from personal experience, I have to say that Windows 2000 will continue to dominate the "desktops" of the world, and will grow in strength on laptops. As of last night I found the first computer which contained some drivers which are incompatible with Windows 2000 ... and so it prevented my upgrading. (Canon has not updated their software for the MultiPASS C-3500 to work with Windows 2000, and Diamond doesn't seem to have drivers for the SpeedStart a50 ... I'm working on both! ;-) All of this "news" is almost funny to me ... there are some inevitable trends in the industry to me ... and they will continue. One of these is that there is a huge installed base of Windows, and it will continue to be huge. There is also a growing market of Linux platforms, but they are not yet at a level where my parents, or my nieces and nephew, could use it ... the applications that they are running are all written for Windows. There is also a major difference between "workstations" and "servers" ... and by shear counting, the big numbers are in workstations. Microsoft, IMHO will continue to hold a dominant position in this space until something better comes along ... I use a variety of inputs to form my opinions ... and in two different get togethers this weekend, including one with some former UNIX advocates, all I heard is good things about Windows 2000. It was also funny catching the news.com article on Windows 2000 being hawked in Moscow subways ... amazing the way it will spread ... ;-) news.cnet.com It's kinda wild to be alive in these times ... who would have imagined that we are already at the point that has often been depicted in various science-fiction movies and books ... people selling computer operating systems on the streets before the software is even available to the public. Is this yet another way that Microsoft understands it can build the user base? ;-) > Best of luck. I personally don't believe in "luck" ... and I don't think that Microsoft does either! ;-) Scott C. Lemon