High-Performance Networking Unleashed

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Selecting the OS to Meet Your Needs

by David Welk

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of three major network operating systems (NOS) and to determine exactly how each of these platforms may fit into your high-performance network. I discuss three operating systems: Microsoft NT version 4, Novell NetWare, and UNIX/Linux.

In this chapter, I will talk about many of the real and often overlooked issues that exist in most organizations. The three major topics include the political agendas of senior management, the organization's culture, and the fiscal health of the company.

I will also discuss some real world examples of networks in small, medium, and large environments. In these discussions, I try to provide some insight into the use of network operating systems and the strengths and weaknesses of each. Detailed discussions will center around financial responsibility, investment protection, and future proofing.

Determining Your Needs

Before you can begin to analyze the information needs of your business, there are some organizational issues that you should consider. A company's senior management team will tend to set the organization's culture and they also have responsibility for the current fiscal trend of the business. These factors along with the current state of your network, which typically is the responsibility of your Information Systems (IS) group, are some of the elements that determine the business needs. A good understanding of available solutions, when matched with a strong understanding of the business' requirements, will help to define the appropriate high-performance network operating system solutions. Later in this chapter, a more in-depth explanation should fully address these sticky issues.

Where Do I Start?

The first step in trying to determine the needs of the business, is to analyze and understand just how the organization goes about doing business. Understanding the day-to-day operations of selling and buying products and services, as well as supporting mundane tasks like storing, shipping, and scheduling, is an important aspect of this process. Analyzing which people within the organization have access to the various kinds of information already available is also extremely important.

Is the required information entirely within the organization's control or are there some external connectivity requirements? In many situations, there are services being provided by second and third-party organizations. These organizations contract for access to certain areas of information. A significant part of the contractual agreements dictate which organization is responsible for establishing and maintaining connectivity. Security becomes very important when opening an environment to external access.

Is there a need to access external information databases and competitive companies' Web information? The easiest way to accomplish this has often been to allow modem access from individual desktops. The industry has taken note that there are unscrupulous individuals with the knowledge and capability to invade private networks through a single modem connection. This has lead to a dramatic increase in chassis-based, integrated remote access equipment. Security solutions have been rolling along hand-in-hand with the advancing remote access solutions, as the user community expands. The increase in telecommuting and Web browsing have also been instrumental in this increase in the dial-up community. Another very important issue is to develop an understanding of how your organization manages the various connectivity requirements and their related costs.

For the most part, the larger organizations have already determined the answers to these questions. Usually, improving support for existing business applications and the occasional implementation of a new business application drives these groups through their daily routines. In medium and smaller organizations, a business application typically comes along to force the migration initially to networking and then on to high-performance networking. These applications usually come with some advice from a consultant on how to host them. Investing the time necessary to research hardware platforms enables you to isolate the little things that help productivity improvements. There may also be recommendations on the type of infrastructure required to make the chosen hardware and software work effectively.


NOTE:
Of course, all of this advice comes with a corresponding price tag. The evaluation of this price tag to determine your return on investment is necessary to ensure that a good business decision is being made.

After completing a reasonable amount of research and gathering most of the aforementioned information, you will have a good picture of your "environment." It is within the concept of this environment that you can begin to envision the need for high-performance networking and the relevant network operating systems to run the applications. In the past, if an information systems group decided to implement new technology for the sake of the new technology, the business eventually found some reason to use it. The Systems Department generally was responsible for the operating costs associated with this environment. Today, most corporations charge the individual business units for the use of the corporate network. The departments that fund any new projects are forced to do a careful analysis to guarantee suitable returns on their investment. Unfortunately, the business units might then not be forced to adhere to the prevailing corporate standards, if any exist. Such lack of adherence to standards creates a difficult job for centralized systems management people and is a strong argument for the local information systems group to have budget control.

Management Requirements

Management's requirements for the Information Systems people typically have three parts: individual political agendas, the culture of the organization, and the quality of recent revenues. In organizations where money is tight, IS personnel are often transferred to other departments, or the slow replacement of former employees causes understaffing. In these same organizations, there is constant struggle over available investment money. With systems in place that seem to be doing an adequate job, the Information Systems group tends to get the short end of the budget stick.

Of course, there are always technically savvy individuals who reach the higher ranks and push for technical advantages such as a high-performance network. Those individuals may have difficulty driving changes within the organization, depending upon their individual abilities to sell technology to non-technical senior management. Organizations that historically have been conservative also tend to follow the tested and safe trends of network computing.

On the other hand, the leading-edge organizations are always testing and evaluating the latest and greatest hardware and software systems. The culture of these organizations dictates that they employ leading-edge capabilities throughout the organization. These companies tend to get and keep much of the brightest talent in the industry and often have tremendous funding for System's budgets.

Culture

I use the term "culture" in this chapter to refer to the way a company interacts with itself and with its customers and suppliers. Your company's culture can directly affect the type of network infrastructure and operating systems that your organization deploys.

In growing companies that are comfortable with taking risks, you typically find leading-edge networking technology, such as switching and high-speed connectivity. In older, more bureaucratic corporations, you are likely to see an array of various systems and aging software. Typically, older systems supporting only one function sit alongside newer platforms that can perform multiple functions for the business. IS groups spend countless hours trying to shift an application away from or working to delete these single-function pieces of equipment. In between these technological extremes are most of the rest of today's companies.

In the majority of companies, the concept of centralized management information systems, which is a legacy of mainframe environments, has been severely strained with the advent of the desktop personal computer (PC). Staffs have become larger and have fanned out to support high node-count and geographically dispersed networks. Previously, an administrator was able to do most of the work required to manage the network from a centralized console. Although not completely eliminated, IS staffs have been minimizing the usage of this management capability.

It is also not unusual to have at least a few PC-challenged senior managers who are typically averse to high risk, and therefore inclined to provide limited IS investment capital. For the most part, these IS groups are able to do just enough with their limited resources to get by each and every day. Systems have no strategic impact on these organizations' productivity or on improving development time to market a new product.

Political Issues

The job of figuring out networking project sponsors is usually not very hard. In today's typical corporations, there are very few senior-level executives who have spent any time within a desktop computing group. These few PC literate, project sponsors know a business cannot get along without high-performance network computing. Generally, there are one or at most a small group of executives who regularly use personal computers and believe in the capabilities of remote connectivity and high-performance networking. Learning who these senior managers are and working to satisfy their individual requirements is important to growing a systems department. These allies will fight to help you implement needed high-performance technology.

Business Trends

You need to measure the profitability of your organization by using the tools provided by corporate accounting. If your company is doing well financially, you'll have greater freedom to evaluate leading-edge technological improvements. Organizations that are doing well have probably already taken risks along the way and have found that doing so has paid off for them. The Information Systems people are strategically relevant in such a company.

In organizations that are exhibiting fiscal weakness, holding the line on costs and capital expenditures is routine. The requirement to support outdated systems, which often reside alongside newer equipment, with limited staff is increasing. Many times there is a high rate of turnover in the IS department. The problem of training new people combined with the loss of key knowledge, limits what any technical group can do to be effective. Such an organization will typically be very slow to implement any high-performance technology.

IS Personnel

A large part of the business community is in the process of thinning out Information Systems departments. Outsourcing of strategic pieces is becoming much more common. Turnover among technical employees has always been higher than in most other departments, often as the result of increasing salary offers on the free market. Technical personnel are prone to changing jobs anyway, so turnover within a slow-moving IS group is very common.

The good news for IS people is that there is a wealth of education and skill-enhancing information available. In many organizations, all it takes to receive advanced training is to show some inclination and a strong desire to learn. The overall attractiveness of the networking industry has brought larger amounts of new people into technical roles than have ever existed before. The amount of companies doing business in the industry, along with the networking industry itself, are growing at strong rates. Good, strong talent is always hard to find, so making yourself good at something is a means of job security.

Identifying Solutions

The theme of this book is high-performance networking, so as I initially discuss the following operating systems, I will slant the topics towards usage in a high-performance environment.

UNIX--Linux

This grandfather of network operating systems has several stepchildren and iterations. Versions continue to be updated and enhanced. Major manufacturers such as Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems offer customized versions of UNIX that work in conjunction with hardware workstations also developed by these companies. An ongoing question mark about UNIX continues to be whether and when it will be superseded by some PC-based operating systems. Microsoft and Intel are certainly working very hard to eliminate all competition, but there will always be room for multiple vendors who are able to bring strong products to market. There is an industry wide consensus that some "flavor" of UNIX will carry on indefinitely because of its tight linkage to the Internet.

UNIX operating systems were originally conceived and built to be robust and support networked equipment. This reason alone has allowed UNIX to survive many years as a niche solution. The UNIX operating systems' ability to support multiple tasks at the same time makes it a strong candidate for a high-performance network. The strong performance and portability of UNIX are additional reasons that it has been adapted to support the more powerful workstations. Examples of these more powerful computing stations are found in most engineering and research facilities.

Linux is the version of UNIX that has been adapted to run on the Intel processor. Much of the strength of UNIX has to be scaled down to run on this platform. As the Intel processors and their clones improve, you will begin to see strong Microsoft products that are almost as robust as UNIX, and infinitely easier to use.

Windows NT 4

Depending on your point of view, Windows NT 4 may be the end of UNIX as we know it or just another Microsoft operating system to control our lives. This third major version of the NT operating system comes in desktop and server variations. The big difference is the usage of the Windows 95 shell. There is a higher level of stability within this version of Windows also. A major focus for Microsoft is improvement of its support for external devices and enhanced Internet capabilities.

Although Microsoft has not labeled the newest version of DOS-based Windows as of press time, there is a renewed emphasis on Internet and intranet capabilities. Over time, the tight integration of these new capabilities will also be found in the updated versions of NT.

This is the network operating system that provides most of the same functionality as found in UNIX operating systems. Because it is not based on any underlying operating system and is in fact a multitasking environment, NT 4 has the capability of being extremely robust. It is important to remember that UNIX has been developed over almost thirty years, and NT is only a few years old. It will take time and experience for this operating system to become as strong as UNIX, but having the backing of corporate America may just speed that learning curve up dramatically.

NetWare

This market-leading network operating system is suffering from severe stagnation. By taking on more than they could handle a few years ago, Novell has lost considerable market momentum and mind share. Now that it has sold off its WordPerfect and Borland products, Novell's focus has returned to building a strong network operating system. Novell has always had good software, but the competition is getting better all the time.

Because the previous two network operating systems were true operating systems, NetWare still requires an underlying operating system. This was a conscious decision by Novell and may prove to be an insurmountable obstacle for Novell.

Novell's products are still very well represented within corporate America and have become integral to the network environments there. There are boatloads of thoroughly trained technical resources available that will continue to support and recommend these products.

The hardest perception for Novell to overcome will be that its products must be somewhat inferior to Microsoft's and others because it is losing market share. It still makes a highly reliable environment that can literally run for years. I would consider that high performance. Over the last year, Novell has been trying to adapt to the intranet craze. Its network operating system is perfectly suited to this kind of environment and is beginning to show itself in the marketplace. The advent and complete acceptance of browser technology is also finding Novell chasing the market a little bit.

Financial Responsibility

What are the cost elements associated with each of these operating systems? What are the costs associated with the required hardware to make these systems run effectively? What are some of the tools you can use to determine adequate returns on investment? What are some of the other financial factors to consider when evaluating a project's feasibility?

The simplest method of determining return on investment (ROI) is to use the "payback method"--totaling all the relevant costs to implement new technology and comparing that figure to the recurring savings. This calculation will reveal the amount of time necessary to recoup setup costs. Keeping this time factor under two years is usually good enough for the finance people. The technology industry does not wait around for ROI, and counting on realizing savings over a period longer than two years may be a risky business practice.

There are other factors to consider. Is the system a requirement for our business to function? Analyzing ROI in this situation does not really matter. At times some project sponsored by a powerful manager may not make sense financially. This high risk tactic either leaves the manager labeled a visionary or gets him fired.

Investment Protection

How do we as an organization go about protecting the investment we have already made in networking products? What do we need to think about as we plan our networking strategy? The answers to these questions are improving all the time as the manufacturers begin to build products that have extendible life cycles. Using chassis slots and interface ports that accept differing technologies allows network managers to upgrade their hardware when needed. Having flash-ROM capabilities allows network engineers to upgrade operating code as new features and fixes come along.

Existing Infrastructure

What kind of infrastructure already exists? The analysis here pertains to the topology or physical media in place. Depending on the primary host computer, there might be Ethernet, Token Ring, or FDDI technologies in place. How well does each of these aspects meld into a high-performance environment? What do the next generations of switched technology expect to be able to do with the existing equipment?

Determining the Best Solution

In today's high-performance networking environments, switching technology is the preferred method of transporting data. Even long-time routed environments are starting to evaluate and implement switching technology. Improving the concept of fast bridging has lead switches to become mainstream technology today. This technology creates direct connections between communicating devices. This is important because it allows the network to service the next bits of data without having to wait for previous information to be processed. The ability of switching technology to scale up and add incremental bandwidth has been a blessing for network managers.

Another excellent feature is switching's ease of use. Few, if any, configuration and programming skills are required. Switches can literally be plug-and-play devices. Of course, like any effective high-performance networking component, there will need to be some advanced setup and configuration. As the technology advances and the price points continue to improve, functionality will increase, which will require high-level skill sets.

Layer 3 switching or fast routing will need to go through the same acceptance period that layer 2 switches recently endured. There are already competing technologies and methods for accomplishing layer 3 switching. This area of high-performance networking has yet to be truly tested and will bring a certain amount of pain with it. The concepts behind this method of transporting data are strong. The obvious requirement here again will be a high level of technical skill to properly configure and manage these devices.

What desktop operating systems work the best within a switched environment? My analysis section basically identified Microsoft Windows in the 95 or the NT form, or some consolidation of these two iterations, as logical selections. OS/2 already makes a strong multitasking operating system that works well in a switched environment. This feature gives an advantage to IBM in the server environment. The future of OS/2 as a desktop solution seems to be nearing the end of its life cycle.

The server side of your environment is the lucrative end of this marketplace. The hardware is typically high-end and very expensive. The costs associated with server operating systems and the appropriate licensing is significant also. All of the aforementioned operating systems have a role here. I will discuss that role and try to isolate the strengths and weaknesses of each in a high-speed networking environment.

Small Environments--Fewer Than 100 Users

The ease of use of the Windows environment makes this selection almost a no-brainer. Running Windows 95 on desktops as soon as possible as a replacement for Windows 3.1 is the state of the market today. On the server side, the options are Windows NT, Novell NetWare, UNIX, or OS/2. Microsoft might have an advantage here because of the similarity between its desktop and server operating systems. Analyzing the type of network usage is important in this environment, too. Novell does a very good job of supporting file and print services. These are the primary requirements for the majority of small network users. Microsoft NT has its advantages in an environment that loads and runs applications from a central server. UNIX does a fine job of both print and file support, as well as application sharing. Unfortunately this robust, IP-based operating system has its roots in the scientific community and is quite difficult to master.

The costs for licensing and supporting these environments is important to look at also. What kind of staff is in place to support these servers after they have been initially installed? Regular maintenance is required by certified technicians on all of these platforms.

Medium Environments

In medium environments, which I will define as greater than one hundred users and less than one thousand users, Windows 95 makes sense as the desktop operating system. It is more difficult for these organizations to update their entire user community and they have been slow to adopt Windows 95. The improvements over existing Windows 3.1 desktops make the pain associated with this major Systems change worthwhile.

From the server side, the picture gets more hazy. The quantity and quality of Systems personnel often dictates software decisions in these organizations. Novell still has the largest segment of the server market and is valiantly trying to reestablish itself in the Internet/intranet industry. Support for Novell-based systems is everywhere and usually good skills can be acquired for a reasonable cost.

Certainly, there will be specific applications that will dictate what types of operating systems are run. A good example of this would be OS/2 and its early support for the Lotus Notes environment. Much of this support is now slipping to Microsoft NT, and OS/2 must quickly become something very dramatic to change this phenomenon.

Microsoft's premier network operating system, NT 4, is being linked more closely to many mission-critical applications being rolled out in leading organizations. By providing integrated support for Novell and other internetworking protocols, this network operating system's graphically based ease of use is winning over customers.

The network operating system that has been around the longest probably does not enjoy its greatest success in the medium-level organizations. UNIX still requires highly paid support personnel and is closely tied to the Internet and scientific community. Certainly, these emerging organizations are approaching the Internet at a faster rate, but they are now able to do it with other more user friendly network operating systems.

Large Environments

The large environment, which I will define as greater than one thousand users, is typically spread out over some geographical area. In fact, in today's age of global communications, the environment may encompass several continents.

There is usually no easy answer to establishing a high-performance network within these environments. Certainly there is no single network operating system that will provide all the features and functions necessary to do business effectively today. Also, the combination of existing networks, typically Novell, as well as new applications, typically Microsoft-based, have caused a mixture of platforms for the network group to support.

In most of the networks that I have been involved with, printer and file services have been running under NetWare forever. The job is being accomplished adequately, so there has been no major push to change it. As new powerful applications are coming out, you will see a lot of platforms dependent on Microsoft NT.

From the network management perspective, most software platforms are being ported to Windows NT. The inherent weaknesses of DOS-based operating systems within a networked environment, along with the improved ease of use, are speeding NT to the forefront of application development.

Another large factor in Microsoft's favor is the integrated support for network protocols. Instead of following Novell down the proprietary protocol path, Microsoft has developed interfaces that work with Novell and TCP/IP. This integrated support further simplifies the use of this operating system. As the world approaches perfection and one network protocol, Microsoft is properly positioned to support it.

Of course Microsoft NT is not perfect. There are probably many of us who have had to support NetBios-based protocols within a network. As soon as the utilization begins to escalate, the performance in these environments degrades. This was never an issue in the early networks. As switching technology improves overall bandwidth, new bottlenecks are appearing that are exposing the weaknesses of network design and infrastructures.

The bottom line of this discussion is that supporting multiple protocols is here and will be for a long time. Choose the network operating system that has the features that are necessary for you to do business. If it becomes necessary to hire staff trained in multiple categories, so be it! There is no longer a good reason to follow one vendor down the path to glory. Find the products that fit your environment the tightest and effectively provide the kind of support necessary to do business. It is okay to mix and match; most large organizations are already doing it. This puts the burden back on the manufacturer to comply with standards and interoperate. In the end, this will be good for all of our environments no matter the size of the user community.

Summary

This chapter provided you with the necessary tools for selecting the right operating system (OS) to meet the business needs of your organization. All organizations have varying needs, and the right solution is often a combination of operating systems. Where appropriate, this chapter addressed and discussed the links of the operating system to high-speed networking. The first section of this chapter suggested some ways of determining the business needs of your organization. The second section contained brief discussions about the operating systems and their performance in various high-speed environments. A more detailed discussion of each of these operating systems made up the remainder of this chapter. I also integrated several management issues that affect the determination of the right OS for the job. Finally, I described some detailed solutions implementing the aforementioned operating systems.

As stated earlier, many of these solutions, especially in larger environments, consist of a combination of several operating systems. The end goal of this analysis is to find the right operating system or systems for the job. This chapter tries to take as many factors as possible into consideration.


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