Server Platforms -- Taking Sides
By Lenny Liebmann
If you haven't already made the move, you'll soon have to bet your enterprise
network on Intel-based PC servers running Windows NT from Microsoft
(www.microsoft.com), or servers packed with some Unix variant.
In interviews with companies that recently made this critical decision,
InternetWeek discovered one common theme: Managers understand they'll
be living with the server platform they select for several years-sometimes a
decade or more. That's a scary proposition in this turbo-charged, Net-crazed
era, where technology changes every day.
We've zoomed in on two user profiles to demonstrate how differences in the
overall business environment led to different conclusions. For Promus Hotel
Corp., Memphis, Tenn., deploying NT to several widely dispersed facilities
nationwide made sense, particularly since the hotels lack on-site technicians
and most everyone can handle Windows these days. The need to run multiple
sessions of a CPU-intensive application led Toronto-based Bayer Inc., to
select a dual-processor Unix solution from Sun Microsystems
(www.sun.com)
And although we present two clear-cut cases, we understand that real-world
decisions have more shades of gray.
Promus Builds 'Manager-In-A-Box' With NT
The idea of trusting your company's most critical systems to PC servers
running Windows NT makes a lot of people nervous-including those who
actually bet their network on Microsoft.
"We were very nervous," says Les Kornberg, director of strategic
architecture at Promus Hotel Corp. (www.promus-hotel.com), the Memphis,
Tenn.-based hotel chain with $64.7 million in 1996 net income.
Kornberg is part of a team that manages information technology for nearly
900 properties nationally and internationally, including the Embassy Suites and
Hampton Inn hotel chains. "The mission-critical business applications that run
on servers are the heart and guts of the business, so you only want to make a
change this big every 15 years or so."
Back in 1994, when Promus was deciding to go with NT or Unix for its
next-generation platform, the viability of using Microsoft's then brand-new
operating system for mission-critical business apps, such as Promus' property
management system was questionable.
"We didn't want to be bleeding edge, but we did want to achieve leadership
in our industry," he says. "When we projected out where the technology was
going in the long term, we came to the conclusion that NT was where we
wanted to be."
Easy Management
The biggest factor in favor of NT in Kornberg's eyes was simplified
management. Promus, like most hotel operators, runs hotels scattered across
the country. And, like most other hoteliers, it experiences a high turnover in
nontechnical personnel who have to operate the systems. NT's graphic
features, combined with the powerful inventory, remote control and software
distribution capabilities of Microsoft's Systems Management Server made
good business sense.
"I don't think I'd feel very good right now if I had 900 Unix systems scattered
around the country with no [qualified technical people] out there to manage
them," says Kornberg.
VSAT Connection
Promus frachisees are linked to the company's Memphis headquarters over a
VSAT network managed by Germantown, Md.-based Hughes Network
Systems Inc. (www.hns.com). The network delivers a
512-kilobit-per-second downlink from Memphis to the franchises and a
56-Kbps uplink in the other direction. The hotel's systems are designed to
continue operating, even if the WAN connection fails.
To distribute software over the VSAT network, Kornberg uses Starburst
Multicast Sender from Starburst Communications Corp., Concord, Mass.,
(www.starburstcom.com)
The Starburst software enhances SMS' software distribution feature by
reducing overall network traffic, decreasing the processing load on the
sending server and minimizing the total time it takes to update remote
corporate systems.
"With the satellite network you get latency, and it doesn't handle lots of
'chatter' very well," he says. "So, you want to make sure you send nice clean
messages and that you send as few of them as you can."
Another big factor in Promus' move to NT was easy integration with
commercial software. "We can do a lot more with off-the-shelf-software with
NT," Kornberg says.
Of course, by using NT his shop can integrate other Microsoft products, too.
In addition to SMS and NT Server, Promus is implementing SQL Server and
evaluating Exchange and Intranet Information Server.
The company also uses Microsoft's Visual C++ and Visual Basic on the
development side. "It all fits together," Kornberg says. "There's a tight
relationship between the development tools and the overall production
environment."
Kornberg and Vicki Joyner, director of hotel information systems say the
product interrelationship is critical as Promus keeps pushing out new
components of an ambitious, all-inclusive integrated property management
system.
The new system, which may become a model for the hotel industry, will run
tasks such as check-in, check-out, front-office accounting, as well as execute
and manage guest charges.
"As we expand into tertiary markets, we have to open hotels without access
to the same experienced staff we can get in primary markets," he says.
"So our goal is to create a sort of 'hotel-manager-in-a-box' that can give
those less-experienced people a 'red light' or a 'green light' as the case may
be," Kornberg adds.
Server Specs
The server hardware configuration at each hotel is an IBM Pentium Pro
server with 200-megahertz processors, 72 to 96 megabytes of RAM and up
to 10 gigabytes of disk storage.
The large hard drive requirement stems from the company's need to store
several months of business activity records on the server, along with other
applications, such as revenue analysis and decision-support tools. Kornberg
also stores workstation disk images on the server for disaster recovery.
"Every time I turn around, we need another 10 to 20 megabytes of hard drive
space," Kornberg says. "And since drive capacity is relatively cheap, there's
no reason to skimp."
An SMP Future
Although Promus is not currently implementing symmetrical multiprocessing,
all of its servers have an extra processor slot on board. "With the way we're
growing around here, the day is going to come when SMP will be a
necessity," he says.
Kornberg had only two negative experiences with his NT rollout. One was
the extensive re-tooling and re-training the migration required. The other was
the universally frustrating lag between Microsoft's technology announcements
and the actual delivery of products.
Of course, when you consider that Promus was migrating from servers that
ran on MS-DOS 3.3, Kornberg really isn't complaining.
"I love where they're going with the whole product line," Kornberg says. "I
just wish they would deliver new features quicker.
"But overall the move to Windows NT puts us in the TCP/IP world, which
positions us to explore corporate intranets, Internet E-mail and a
browser-based client. We're also looking at setting up a 56-Kbps modem
pool for remote access."
TOOL BOX
Promus' NT Configuration:
Server OS: Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
Server hardware: IBM Pentium Pros with 200-megahertz processors, 72-96
megabytes of RAM and 10-gigabyte hard drives
Management utilities: Microsoft Systems Management Server, Multicast
Sender, Starburst Communications
Network: Hughes VSAT satellite network
pplications: Microsoft BackOffice and in-house apps developed with
Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 and C++
--
Unix Remedies Bayer's Network Headache
You can't say Jeff Wessinger didn't give Windows NT a fair chance.
Last summer, the manager of business systems development at
Toronto-based Bayer Inc.'s health care division gave Microsoft an
opportunity to support the company's automated sales program.
To give you a sense of the clear shot Microsoft had with Bayer
(www.mb.sympatico.ca/contents/Health/BAYER/BCdn.htm), a unit of the
$48.6 billion Germany-based Bayer Group, Wessinger ran the remote dial-up
sales application on a server loaned to his company for free by Data General
Corp. (www.dg.com), Westborough, Mass.
The server was great, particularly since it sported four 200-megahertz Intel
Pentium Pro processors, but Wessinger says NT just couldn't cut it.
"No matter how we tried to tune it, Windows NT couldn't handle more than
two 'synchs' at once," he explains.
Out of Synch
The "synchs" Wessinger refers to are synchronizations of the server database
with the new data sent in via dial-up by field reps from their notebooks when
they log in-usually at the end of the day.
The application, called Mpower '96, lets reps send only the changes-called
"difs"-they entered on their local databases since the last update. At the same
time, Mpower updates their personal notebooks with any new data that's
been forwarded to the central server. The app was written in Delphi, a
development tool from Borland International Inc. (www.borland.com), Scotts
Valley, Calif.
What's the Dif?
The dif transfer is a two-step process: "Find Changes'' and "Apply Changes.''
The two steps run once each on the client and the server. The Find Changes
process on the server is the most resource-intensive. It requires a full scan of
the 300-megabyte database to produce its dif file. Checking all that corporate
data for changes consumes a stadium full of CPU cycles.
When the trial took place, Bayer had about 160 reps in the field. Because the
company only had an eight-port modem pool, Bayer's techs thought they
didn't have to worry about a massive number of dial-in sessions, adding
undue pressure on the server.
They were wrong. The Windows NT/Intel configuration simply didn't scale
across the network. "It took 5 to 10 minutes when only one process was
running,'' explains Wessinger.
When multiple callers connected with the system, that time frame skyrocketed
to almost one hour. Sometimes, the telephone system would even hang up
and the processes couldn't be completed. "We eventually had to set things up
so that when a third caller dialed in, we just had them wait until somebody
else finished," recalls Wessinger.
That temporary solution was unacceptable. The field reps count on the
Mpower databases to do their jobs. For example, unlike the United States,
where information about physicians' prescription-writing preferences is largely
unavailable to pharmaceutical companies, such data is readily accessible to
vendors in Canada. Accurate information on new physicians or new residents
at hospitals keeps Bayer's reps competitive.
Another big consideration was that more than 90 percent of dif processing
time is on the server side, a point that ruled out upgrading the reps'
machines-Toshiba laptops with 90-Mhz Intel Pentium chips running Windows
95.
One big point: Wessinger recognizes that at the time of the trial, he was using
Windows NT 3.51, and that Microsoft has made significant progress with NT
Server 4.0, the latest version of the operating system.
"From what I understand, they're doing a better job of taking advantage of
multiple processors," he says. "But 3.51 was what they were touting at the
time, and it didn't make the grade."
The Unix Choice
After running tests between Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics Inc.
machines with Oracle7 and Borland's Interbase, Wessinger opted for Sun's
dual-processor UltraSparc workstation with Oracle7. The Sun computer runs
over Solaris and is licensed for 20 simultaneous users.
Although it was somewhat more expensive than the Interbase configuration,
Wessinger says Oracle (www.oracle.com) delivers the query optimization
features Bayer's system requires.
Since implementing the Sun/Oracle solution, Bayer's field sales force has
increased to more than 220 reps. The company is planning to replace its
eight-port modem pool with remote access service from CompuServe that
aggregates dial-in sessions over a single router port-effectively eliminating the
limitation of eight simultaneous sessions.
Wessinger says the system is running fine. "If a process takes 30 seconds with
one user, it takes about 35 seconds with two," Wessinger claims. "In fact,
we're finding we can run up to eight sessions at a time. It's running so well, we
really don't have much call to go in there and fool around with it at all."
SUMMARY
A Tough Choice
Bayer's Jeff Wessinger priced three configurations before opting for Sun.
Each configuration included a price with Oracle7 and a quote with Interbase.
NT Solution:
Data General Aviion with four Intel Pentium 100-megahertz processors, 256
megabytes of RAM, 4-gigabyte fast/wide SCSI internal drive, and
12-gigabyte fast/wide SCSI external drive running NT Server 3.51: $74,750
Cost with Interbase: $75,500
Cost with Oracle: $95,050
SGI Unix Solution:
Silicon Graphics Inc. Challenge with four 200-megahertz RISC processors, 1
gigabyte of RAM, 12-gigabyte fast/wide SCSI drive running Irix 5.3:
$65,000
Cost with Interbase: $75,000
Cost with Oracle: $103,250
Sun Unix Solution: SunUltraSparc2 with dual 167-megahertz MIPS
processors, 256 megabytes of RAM, 4-gigabyte fast/wide internal drive and
16-gigabyte fast/wide SCSI external disk array running Solaris 5.51: $59,800
Cost with Interbase: $69,800
Cost with Oracle: $98,050
TOOL BOX
Bayer's Unix System:
Server OS: Sun Solaris
Server hardware: Sun UltraSparc 2 with dual 167-megahertz MIPS
processors, 256 megabytes of RAM, 4-gigabyte fast/wide SCSI internal
drive, and 16-gigabyte fast/wide SCSI external disk
Communications utilities: XcelleNet Inc.'s RemoteWare, Syware Inc.'s
Datasync
Remote Access: RemoteWare, XcelleNet Inc.
Applications: Mpower '96 sales force automation app (developed in-house),
plus E-mail and electronic software distribution
Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc.
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