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

To: HardMoney who wrote (23675)	8/30/1998 10:21:00 PM
From: David O'Berry	Respond to of 42771

Actually Wolf Mountain was revolutionary two brainshares ago. This product was complete and they actually had multiple servers running an application. They then slowly dropped servers off the cluster and the app simply put a greater load on the remaining servers. From a redundancy and scalability perspective this technology was a masterful stroke. When it derailed the word was that it was due to internal issues not because the technology did not work. The real scope of this technology comes into to focus when you look at the Beowulf class machine created about 2-3 months ago using a cluster of cheap boxes clustered together with Linux. Look at the cost of a four to eight processor box versus a four to eight dual pentium cluster configuration. You will get near linear scaling with good cluster tech versus a much less efficient SMP box. Clusters will be cheaper and the redundancy is much better. It amazed me when this technology all of the sudden dropped off the map. I am sure if Schmidt could go get one back it would be this one. Thanks, David O'Berry doberry@mindspring.com

To: HardMoney who wrote (23675)	8/30/1998 10:27:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Hello Frank, Actually the Wolf Mountian research eventually created a set of technologies exploring the area of true clustering on commodity PC hardware. There was a demonstration of these technologies at Novell's Brainshare developer conference over a year ago. All of this was done as standard research to be able to see implementation of technology for further investigation in how they could be productized. Soon after the demonstration was when the situation developed with a couple of the engineers on the team. If you are interested in where these technologies are starting to show up you can go to novell.com on the Novell site. The following is a generic description of "clustering" and is not intended to be representitive of the specific Wolf Mountain project. Clustering is more than disk sharing, it is also CPU sharing. A really good book is "In Search of Clusters" by a very impressive scientist from IBM (I'm drawing a blank on his name right now). With true clustering, you would have the ability to connect many multi-processor machines (chassis) with a high-speed "fabric" network, and also connect each of these machines to the network. To the users, this cluster appears as a "single system image" meaning that it looks like one computer to the users. In reality the users, and services, and application services are distributed over the various chassis and if one chassis fails, the rest of the machines take over that load and continue operation. These systems will often offer transparent disk access also ... the ability for disks to be "mounted" by any chassis in the cluster. This is usually controlled by the way disks are connected to the chassis - shared access or replicated data. The problem, as usual, is that Microsoft has "polluted" the word clustering with their Wolf Pack project. (Actually they polluted the word Pack, since I don't think that two wolves make a pack!) What Microsoft created with Wolf Pack is not even equivilent NetWare SFT-III which Novell has been shipping for years. I think that even the Standby Server solution (on the web page) that we are selling today gives more capability than the Microsoft attempt. In true clusters there is also a difference between "cluster-aware" software and standard software. Much research has gone into this area. To make the most of the cluster, most applications and services have to be rewritten to be "cluster-aware". This means rewriting the software so that it makes cluster-specific API calls to be aware of how many chassis are running the service or app. It is difficult to make the cluster transparent to most existing software. Because of this, most of today's solutions are not "true" clusters, but are "high availability" solutions. This means that the service runs on only one chassis in the cluster, and if that chassis fails it is re-invoked on another chassis. Sorry ... more detail than most people probably wanted ... but it is a facinating area of technology! We as an industry are probably getting closer to true clustering on commodity hardware, but not quite there ... Scott C. Lemon

To: HardMoney who wrote (23675)	8/31/1998 7:18:00 AM
From: EPS	Respond to of 42771

Thanks Frank, David, Scott. Now back to my crusade: from NYT ==================================================================== August 31, 1998 U.S. May Seek to Expand Evidence in Microsoft Case By STEVE LOHR The government and 20 states suing Microsoft Corp. are planning to ask a federal judge to admit new evidence in their major antitrust case against the software maker, according to a person close to the investigation. The request could be made as early as Monday when the Justice Department and states are scheduled to reply to a Microsoft motion requesting that Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson reject or pare back the case. The Seattle Times reported Sunday that the new accusations would be made Monday. But the person close to the investigation said that the government and states had not yet reached final agreement on what fresh evidence to include, and that they would discuss the matter Monday morning. The move to bolster the antitrust case comes as federal and state investigators deposing Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, decided that they needed an unexpected third day to interrogate him. The Gates deposition, taken in private, began on Thursday and Friday. The third session is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday at the Microsoft corporate campus, outside Seattle, where the first two sessions were held. In his videotaped testimony, Gates, according to a person who was informed of Gates' replies, has hewed to the company's line throughout the case, denying any wrongdoing in its pursuit of the market for software used to browse the Internet -- the main focus of the case against Microsoft. Specifically, this person said, Gates denied any knowledge of attempts to persuade or force Netscape Communications Corp., an Internet pioneer, to divide the market for browsing software. The government and states contend that Microsoft proposed a collusion pact, which was rejected by Netscape, during two meetings in June 1995. Recently, federal and state investigators have been pursuing allegations against Microsoft beyond those in the antitrust case they filed last May. Broadly, the investigators are inquiring whether Microsoft used its market muscle to try to limit competition in segments of the emerging market for Internet software. In that investigation, the government and states have been examining Microsoft's dealings with several companies including Intel, Apple Computer and Real Networks. The investigators are looking for evidence that Microsoft might have prodded these companies into curbing their own work on Internet-related software, or tried to get them to limit support for Netscape, Microsoft's main rival in Internet software. Under the law, the government and states can include new evidence in their case, but only if the fresh evidence meshes closely with charges already in the complaint. "Putting new evidence that fits into the established framework of the case is not unusual at all," one person close to the case said. "The purpose of the discovery process is to find new evidence." Jackson must make a determination on what new evidence can be permitted before the trial, which is scheduled to begin on Sept. 23. Microsoft advisers say the effort to put additional evidence into the case shortly before the trial shows that the government and states are desperately scrambling to strengthen their case. "The Justice Department and the states are casting around, trying to figure out what they are going to do with their case," said Charles Rule, a partner of Covington & Burling in Washington and a former senior official in the Justice Department, who is an adviser to Microsoft. "They seem to be arguing that Netscape somehow fits into this larger tableau that they are trying to paint." search.nytimes.com