When we agreed to upgrade from our Data General MV AOS/VS System, it was done with the understanding that MC would run on a Windows NT server and be slow but have acceptable performance for two branches. We were told from MC that the response time over a WAN, while perhaps slow, would be acceptable. We have found, however, that in daily processing from screen to screen, performance is not acceptable to us. We have had our WAN provider monitor the circuit during the middle of the day when traffic is at its worst. There was no significant depreciation in response time.

Question 1: What is the significance of the memory on the server? When I have checked the percentage in use on the NT server, it is constantly below 20%, regardless of when I check. It was my understanding that as people logged on to MC, a certain amount of memory would be allocated on the server for each individual. This does not appear to be the case.

Question 2: Is this version of MC a client/server version? It was my understanding that all processing was to be done on the server and only the screens would be passed back to the PC. Is this correct? Based on what I have witnessed, the processing is done at the PC level. If this is true, it would account for the slow response time.

I am being questioned about this on a regular basis. We need to have some kind of resolution that is acceptable to the department involved. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Background information: The WAN is set up with a 512K circuit coming into our main office. This serves as a pip for our connection to our software service provider and our branch offices. (The network was set up by the software service provider.) We have a 128K circuit into our two main branches in Texas and Wisconsin.

Solution

Fast T-1 connections.

Answers to the Questions

NT is an extreme memory hog as it will use memory or cache to disk as much as it possibly can. When MC first installed NT in its office, we started with P200 with 64MB. We found that performance was very bad with only 64MB on the server to the point it was not usable to MC. We first thought we installed it incorrectly and consulted with NT experts and our Web site provider since he uses NT. We learned that we did install it correctly; however, we did not have enough memory for NT function. When we upgraded to 128MB, performance improved many times over. We have since upgraded to 256MB on our NT server and it is now performing very well for us.

You will notice this when you go to shut down the server; it will take a matter of minutes to write the contents of memory to disk. This is the reason you never want to turn off the server or hit the reset button until it tells you. Of course, never run NT without a battery backup.

All of the testing we have done with NT, and our customers on NT are either running NT on a LAN or NT WAN over a T1 circuit. To test the differences with slower network connections (like 128K or 512K), take a directory (like mcadata or mcaobj or any other directory containing a few thousand files and having 20+ MB of disk spaced used) and copy it with Windows Explorer from the network to a PC in the branch(s) in question and time it. Then perform this same process on a workstation connected to the LAN where the server is located and time it. What is the difference performing the exact function? This test does have value because it is using NT only. This process is not accessing MC at all but proving that NT is not "super speedy" or even very fast at moving files across a network. The MC system on the NT server, if you are running ICOBOL's icnetd as a process on the NT server, is a client/server process. The records in the individual files are looked up, retrieved on the server, and just the network packets containing the records you requested are sent. Unlike Novell, where network packets of the entire file are passed until the records are found. Since it is a network and not an MV or UNIX box, the actual processing of the records, calculations, sorting, etc., is performed on the workstation, as most client/server apps will run. (If you were to do all processing on the server, it would not even run for anyone else for file services or print services. This is where UNIX has the real advantage and performance shines.) Our testing on NT LANs with T1 networks proves to be almost as fast as a UNIX system. (UNIX is our fastest system to run on. Specific numbers on this can be given if necessary.)

I was never contacted with the questions you have indicated below, as I would have explained WAN vs. LAN on a non-T1 circuit. This is not a problem with the ICOBOL and MC products, but a problem with how Windows NT handles files throughput on a network. If you have the system set up on workstations at the main branch where the server is, try running there and you will see the considerable difference in performance.

Please contact us with specific issues to help on decisions about systems and WAN speeds.