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Comparing Microsoft Windows NT Server and Windows 2000 with Novell NetWare 5
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Contents
Chapter 1
Comparison Overview
With Novell's release
of NetWare Version 5.0, Microsoft is asked frequently to compare
Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server to Novell NetWare Version
5.0. Microsoft believes that customers are no longer looking for
single or limited-purpose server operating systems—they require a
server operating system that can play a multi-purpose role. For
reasons outlined in this white paper, Microsoft believes that
Windows NT® Server will meet the customer requirements of a
multi-purpose operating system today, and in the future.
The
choice
of a server operating system that an organization will live with
for years is not based merely on the functionality of a particular
version of a product. It is a strategic long-term decision
driven by the demands the organization has for a platform on
which to build solutions for their business problems. And the demands
that organizations place on server operating systems are
expanding rapidly. From basic file and printer sharing, these have
grown to include communications, Internet, management, and
large-scale distributed applications. These increasingly diverse
demands require that the server operating system of choice be a
multi-purpose platform capable of providing a comprehensive and
integrated set of services while excelling in each individual
role.
Microsoft and Novell have fundamentally different
approaches to delivering server operating systems. Microsoft Windows
2000 Server was designed from the beginning as a multi-purpose
platform with a proven robust foundation and has evolved to offer a
rich set of Web, communications, and applications services. Novell
NetWare was designed when customers needed a network operating
system whose primary purpose was to provide shared access to
resources such as files and printers. NetWare was not architected
with a robust foundation capable of enabling a multi-purpose
platform. This is borne out by the fact that few customers use
NetWare as an application server for demanding functions such as
transaction processing database or ERP applications or to serve
large scale Internet sites. Few server applications are designed to
run on NetWare and software vendors such as Lotus have announced
that they are discontinuing development of server applications for
NetWare due to lack of customer demand.
NetWare 5 does offer new functionality to NetWare users such
as native TCP/IP support and kernel improvements. However, these
features have been part of Windows 2000 Server from the start.
NetWare 5 does not include many other features that Windows NT
Server 4.0 offers today, nor the enhanced functionality that Windows
2000 Server will deliver. In some cases, NetWare 5 requires
expensive add-on products to match some of the capabilities of
Windows NT Server 4.0.
Customers who are making a strategic decision on a server
platform should compare the functionality of NetWare 5 with the same
features available today in Windows NT Server 4.0 and those now in
testing in Windows 2000 Server. As you will see in the following
section and the detailed features analysis that follows, Windows NT
Server 4.0 is built on a better architected foundation and offers
more comprehensive integrated functionality than NetWare 5.0 today.
And in the future Windows 2000 Server will deliver even greater
enhancements.
In comparing NetWare 5 features to features in Windows NT Server
4.0 and Windows 2000 Server, Novell cites the following areas of
improvement in NetWare 5:
 | Networking
Services
| Storage Services
| Printer Services
| Manageability
| Operating Systems Kernel
| Application Services
| Web Services |
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The sections below compare the
new features of NetWare 5 to features in Windows NT Server 4.0, and features
in Windows 2000 Server.
NetWare
5 adds native TCP/IP support, DHCP and DNS, but is still missing
key communications services such as encrypted VPN services, Quality
of Service standards, and others.
Windows NT Server has offered native TCP/IP
and DHCP support since its first release in 1993 and version 4.0
added a DNS service integrated with WINS. Contrary to Novell's
statements, the Windows NT Server TCP/IP implementation does not
employ encapsulation of any kind. In addition, Novell is providing
Compatibility Mode to support the many non-NCP services that depend
upon SAP and IPX. NetWare continues to tunnel these.
Windows NT Server 4.0 also offers
comprehensive built-in remote access, virtual private networking
(VPN), phonebook management, RADIUS client and server, routing and
telephony services. Some of these services are not included with
NetWare 5, and must be purchased integrated at an additional cost to
the customer.
Windows 2000 Server adds enhanced VPN
support via IP Security (IPSec) and L2TP support, network Quality of
Service (QoS) control, Dynamic DNS, native ATM and gigabit Ethernet
support, enhanced routing, and improved telephony services. Many key
network services are integrated with Active Directory for policy
management and central control.
NetWare
5 adds a 64-bit file system with larger maximum volume size (8
terabytes) & number of files, yet is still missing dynamic
volume management, hierarchical storage management, indexing, and
other services. In addition, with NetWare Storage Services (NSS),
many services such as file compression, disk striping,
disk-mirroring duplexing, and others are missing.
Windows NT Server has offered a 64-bit file
system supporting volumes of thousands of terabytes since its
introduction in 1993.
Windows NT Server 4.0 also offers support
for disk striping, file compression, and built-in software RAID
(striping and mirroring) support, while NetWare only offers
mirroring.
Windows 2000 Server adds hierarchical
storage management, dynamic volume management, disk defragmentation,
encrypting file system, content indexing and searching, distributed
link tracking, and sparse file support. NetWare 5.0 offers none of
these features.
NetWare 5
adds auto-download & installation of printer drivers on
clients, "Plug & Print" for installation of network
printers.
Windows NT Server has offered "Point
& Print" auto download and installation of printer drivers
to Windows 3.x, Windows 9x, as well as Windows NT clients and
offers simple installation of network printers.
Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition
also offers high-availability print services via server clustering,
which NetWare does not currently offer.
Windows 2000 Server adds support for the
Internet Printing Protocol and browser access to print servers,
while NetWare 5.0 offers none of these features.
Directory
Services
NetWare
5 offers some improvements to NDS, yet still does not address
the requirements for enterprise directory services. These include
poor scalability which forces administrators in large organizations
to create and manage many partitions; limited support for on
industry standards such as LDAP and DNS locating services, lack of
built-in cross-directory synchronization support and limited support
from leading networking infrastructure and application vendors.
These limitations prevent applications from leveraging NDS
effectively. For example, even Novell's own GroupWise e-mail product
employs its own separate directory rather than using NDS.
Windows NT Server 4.0 provides centralized management, security and single
user logon services. Over 600 server applications are integrated
with the Windows NT Server Directory Service today.
Windows 2000 Server with Active Directory,
as well as third party tools, will meet the requirements of a
multi-purpose directory service better than NDS:
| Scalability
without complexity—Active Directory scales to millions of
objects per partition and uses indexing technology and advanced
replication techniques to speed performance; NDS requires 100's
of partitions to scale to equivalent sizes and uses flat files
to store data, slowing retrievals.
| Built around
Internet standards—Active Directory provides full LDAP
support and a DNS-based name space; NDS offers limited LDAP
compliance and does not support DNS as a way to name directory
objects.
| Integrated,
flexible security model—Active Directory supports multiple
authentication protocols such as Kerberos, X. 509 certificates
and smart cards, and security groups can span partitions
efficiently; NDS has no support for Kerberos or smart cards as
authentication protocols and Novell does not recommend that
groups span between partitions.
| Built-in
synchronization support—Active Directory provides
LDAP-based directory synchronization interfaces for propagating
changes to Active Directory to other directories; NDS provides
very limited synchronization support.
| Support from
leading infrastructure and application vendors—Leading vendors such as
SAP, Baan, J. D. Edwards, Cisco (and many more) are integrating their
products with Active Directory; Novell lacks this broad level of support
which will limit the TCO benefits that NDS can deliver. |
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Desktop
and Application Management
NetWare 5 Novell claims that NetWare 5
provides organizations with workstation management (WM) and
application distribution. However, NetWare 5 does not provide a
hardware independent application deployment solution; a solution for
automatically synchronizing user data with the network for secure
and offline usage; a hardware independent machine replacement
solution; and remote operating system installation. In addition,
NetWare requires addition objects to be added to the directory to
manage user and desktop configurations.
Windows NT Server 4.0 through built-in
system policy and user profile functionality provides centralized
management and storage of computer and operating system settings and
user data. In addition, administrators are able to lock down the
system so users are not able to perform certain tasks defined by the
administrator. Systems Management Server adds sophisticated software
distribution, inventory, monitoring, and helpdesk
functionality.
Windows 2000 Server through IntelliMirror
goes beyond the basic services provided in NetWare 5 by adding group
policy management that doesn't require an additional burden on the
directory; automatic data synchronization; hardware independent
software deployment and maintenance.
NetWare 5 adds virtual memory, pre-emptive
multitasking, memory protection, symmetric multi-processing.
However, applications (NLMs) must be re-written to take advantage of
many of these fundamental features. In addition, NetWare is only
capable of supporting up to 4GB of RAM and currently provides no
clustering support.
Windows NT Server was designed from the
start with complete support for virtual memory, pre-emptive
multitasking, memory protection, and symmetric multi-processing.
Application developers do not need to do anything special to enable
these features in their applications. Windows NT Server SMP
scalability has been proven in numerous benchmarks.
Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition
also offers 4 gigabyte memory tuning which enables applications to
access up to 3 GB of memory, and high-availability applications
services via server clustering. NetWare 5 does not currently offer
these features.
Windows 2000 Server adds support Enterprise
Memory Architecture providing applications with access to up to 64
GB of memory, job object for management of complex workloads on SMP
servers.
NetWare
5 adds a Java VM, Java Beans, and CORBA support. However, these
services are pieced together and are not integrated. In addition,
very few server applications are written in Java due to poor
performance and limited application services. How many databases or
messaging systems are build using Java or CORBA? Furthermore, Novell
has left out some of the most important pieces for building reliable
component-based applications that scale. These include: support for
distributed transactions, message queuing, universal data access,
Web application integration, etc. Therefore developers are left with
the burden of writing code to make up for the lack of these
fundamental application services in NetWare 5.
Windows NT Server provides a comprehensive
set of services for building reliable and scalable server
applications.
| Win32®—The Win32 APIs are a robust set of APIs that have been used to
develop enterprise level server applications, and are the basis
of Windows NT Server's success as an applications platform.
Applications such as SQL Server, Oracle, Exchange, Lotus Notes,
SAP, Baan, and others use these APIs.
| Component
Application Services—Windows NT Server has offered a
comprehensive set of services for building component-based
applications on the server for years. This started with the
Component Object Model in 1993. Thousands of applications have
been built for Windows NT Server using COM, including many of
the Microsoft applications and various parts of Windows NT
Server itself. | |
Windows NT Server 4.0 provides the
key services required to build reliable component-based applications
that scale. With the addition of DCOM, Microsoft Transaction Server
(MTS), Active Server Pages, and Microsoft Message Queuing Server
(MSMQ), developers have the fundamental services they needed for
rapidly building the next generation of Web-based and distributed
applications.
Windows 2000 Server adds enhanced component
services with support for load balancing and improved
performance.
NetWare 5 continues
to bundle the NetScape FastTrack web server. FastTrack is a basic
web server that is missing key features such as content indexing and
searching, strong (128-bit) security, support for the latest
Internet standards such as WebDAV and Digest Authentication, support
for extending server applications to the web.
Windows NT Server has offered comprehensive
web services since February of 1996 based on the latest Internet
standards.
Windows NT Server 4.0 offers the most
comprehensive set of services for developing Web applications,
hosting multiple Web sites, content indexing, analysis tools,
transaction support, flexible management, latest Internet standards
support. One of the most significant advantages of the Web services
in Windows NT Server 4.0 is Active Server Pages (ASP). ASP provides
the framework for extending COM-based applications to the Web. In
addition, organizations can also use scripting to develop and deploy
highly dynamic Web sites and provide connectivity to just about any
type of data.
Windows 2000 Server adds process accounting
and CPU throttling, distributed authoring and versioning, digest
authentication. NetWare 5/FastTrack offers none of these
features.
Other Important Server Operating System Services |
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Streaming Media Support
NetWare 5 provides no streaming
media services. In addition there are not third party services
available.
Windows NT Server 4.0 has provided
streaming media services since December of 1996 when NetShow was
first introduced. Various improvements have been made to provide
organizations to share rich multimedia content in the form of audio,
illustrated audio, and full motion video.
Windows 2000 Server integrates NetShow
media services and provides powerful multimedia-based content across
the network.
Terminal Services
NetWare
5 provides no terminal services. In addition there are not third
party services available.
Windows NT Server 4.0 Terminal Edition
provides organizations with the ability to run 32-bit Windows
applications on the server. This allows organizations with non
32-bit Widows systems, such as Windows 3. 1, UNIX, and Mac, to take
full advantage of the latest 32-bit Windows applications.
Windows 2000 Server will provide terminal
services for running 32-bit Windows applications on the server as a
core Windows NT Server service.
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