As opposed to hiring and training administrators to manage multiple server operating systems, customers are moving to multipurpose server operating systems to reduce their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Therefore, throughout this technical comparison, the three operating systems Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server, Microsoft Windows NT® Server 4.0, and Novell NetWare 5.0 are evaluated based on their ability to provide a solid integrated infrastructure for file and print sharing, directory and management, Internet, and distributed application services for the enterprise customer.
Windows 2000 Server
Windows 2000 Server provides an integrated, comprehensive and easy-to-use solution. Windows 2000 Server, like Windows NT Server 4.0, has been designed from the ground up as an integrated multipurpose operating system. As opposed to combining un-integrated services, Windows 2000 Server provides complete integration between its services resulting in easier management and lower TCO. For instance, once authenticated to the directory, users don't need to re-authenticate themselves to access other applications and services.
File and Print Sharing Services. The file and printer sharing implementation in Windows 2000 Server provides customers with an advanced solution, offering a distributed file system, Internet printing, content indexing, dynamic volume management, and Plug-and-Play support.
Networking and Communications Services. Networking infrastructure is complete and manageable—it offers true dynamic configuration, integrated dial-up and VPN with support for the latest IETF VPN protocol suite, telephony, and a Quality of Service (QoS) solution to guarantee bandwidth and network availability.
Application Services. Windows 2000 Server provides customers with a scalable solution in terms of CPU and memory support. The combination of Clustering Services, component load balancing, and the Windows Load Balancing Service provides customers with a comprehensive availability/load-balancing solution to further increase system scalability and reliability. Windows 2000 Server and COM+ provide a flexible and robust platform upon which to build distributed applications. Finally, integrated Terminal Services provides customers with a comprehensive thin-client solution.
Internet Services. The Windows 2000 Internet services feature-set is also a complete solution, offering numerous unrivaled Internet services management, publishing, streaming media, and performance enhancement capabilities.
Management & Infrastructure Services. The Active DirectoryTM service in Windows 2000 Server is built completely around Internet-standards and offers extensibility and scalability. This makes it a solution upon which to build enterprise-level directory-enabled applications. Microsoft Management Console (MMC) provides customers with a single customizable interface for managing networking services and applications. The combination of IntelliMirrorTM management technologies, Windows Installer, and Group Policy Services easily provides a comprehensive solution for software distribution and desktop management. Security support in Windows 20000 Server provides support for Kerberos, smart card authentication, fully integrated public key infrastructure, and file system encryption services.
Windows NT Server 4.0
Windows NT Server provides many of the same services found in Windows 2000 Server, however it lacks an extensible, hierarchical directory. Although the directory in Windows NT Server 4.0 provides organizations with a centralized directory for managing users and groups and single logon services, it is less comprehensive than the feature-set in either Active Directory or Novell Directory Services (NDS).
File and Print Sharing Services . File and printer sharing support is robust, although its feature-set cannot compare favorably with either Windows 2000 Server or NetWare 5.0. On the other
hand, Windows NT Server 4.0 surpasses NetWare 5.0 running on the NetWare File System (NWFS) in several capacities, such as offering fewer file system limitations, integrated namespace support, data striping, and data striping with parity.
Networking and Communications Services . Although
not as comprehensive as Windows 2000 Server, networking support is still
far better than NetWare 5.0—offering several unmatched capabilities such as integrated
dial-up access and VPN support.
Application Services. Application support is outstanding, providing numerous capabilities such as message queuing, clustering and load balancing, and a thin-client solution in the form of the Terminal Server Edition of Windows NT Server. Distributed component support is also superior - the combination of COM and Transaction Server offers many capabilities not found in NetWare 5. Furthermore, with the addition of Active Server Pages (ASP), the power of COM and Transaction Server-based applications can be extended to the Web.
Internet Services. The Internet services found in Windows NT Server 4.0 are far superior to NetWare 5.0, offering load balancing, content management, and protocol support including SMTP and NNTP that is simply unrivaled.
Management and Infrastructure Services. Management services in Windows NT Server provide easy-to-use graphical tools, MMC management for key services, and the Zero Administration Kit to control desktops. However, none of the software distribution or Group Policy capabilities found in Windows 2000 Server has equivalents on Windows NT Server 4.0.
NetWare 5.0
Finally, Novell NetWare 5.0 provides the services in the major customer deployment scenarios, however as this document describes in detail, NetWare 5.0 falls short in providing customers with an integrated solution. Many of the services are simply provided as add-ons and lack common installation, management interfaces, and security infrastructure. Because of the lack of an integrated architecture, NetWare 5.0 is very difficult to use and administer at times. Furthermore, NetWare 5.0 lacks many of the features, such as clustering, load balancing, VPN support, distributed file system, dynamic volume management, and others that provide customers with better availability and lower TCO. Even Novell's strongest feature—NDS—fails to deliver the infrastructure to provide support beyond basic user management needed for directory-enabled applications.
File and Print Sharing Services. File and print services are extremely robust, but functionality limitations in Novell Storage Services and client and device compatibility issues with Novell Distributed Print Services negates the usefulness and all of the benefits for many customers.
Networking and Communications Services. Native TCP/IP support is provided, but client compatibility will be an issue for many existing environments. Hot Plug PCI support is innovative, but its lack of hardware support makes it out of the reach of many customers. Although a routing and remote access solution is provided, it simply cannot match the advanced feature-sets found in the Microsoft solutions such as integrated VPN support or connection sharing.
Application Services. NetWare 5.0 provides services to develop Java/CORBA applications. However, its lack of availability/load balancing services, message queuing services, support for other languages for CORBA applications, comprehensive distributed component functionality, such as integrated transactions, and no solution for thin-clients make it a relatively limited choice.
Internet Services. The Internet services implementation found in NetWare 5.0 provides organizations with the basic HTTP and FTP services required to host Internet and Intranet sites. However, it lacks true operating system integration, a comprehensive Web application framework, and support for many key features and standard protocols found in the Microsoft products such as comprehensive multi-site hosting, WebDAV, SMTP, and NNTP.
Management and Infrastructure Services. Although it boasts an extremely impressive feature-set, NDS is beset by scalability or latency issues and a general lack of support for Internet-standards, making it not as appropriate a choice for the enterprise as Windows 2000 Server. The GUI administration tools in NetWare 5.0 are adequate, offering in some ways better integration than Windows NT Server 4.0. However, it still cannot compare to the MMC in Windows 2000 Server. The included Z.E.N.works Starter Pack provides a good software distribution solution—offering some capabilities not found in Windows NT 4.0—but it lacks many of the desktop management features, such as user data management, found in Windows 2000 Server.
