Kudos to NetWare 3.12

[marvhuffaker]

Just wanted to relay an amazing NetWare 3.12 story. I just spoke with a gentleman who has a NetWare 3.12 server that crashed. It apparently started having a hardware video problem, as the screen was all garbled, etc.

So he shut the server down without downing it properly (he was unable to get the server to respond, plus he couldn't see anything anyway).. Well, when the server came back up, the volume wouldn't mount. Okay, that's not relevant here, a vrepair should fix that..

But the gentleman gave me a history of this server, it's a 486/33Mhz system with a single hard drive that was installed in 1995. The last time any maintenance was done on the system was before 2000 rolled over when they installed the Y2K patches. The server has been running without incident since then.

So to reiterate, this server has ran from before December 1999 through July 2003. That's at least 3 1/2 years solid with no downtime.

Nice Job Novell!!! Show me a M$ server that has run flawlessly for that long and I'm buying lunch.

Marvin

Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[Psychoid]

Heck, show me a MS server that runs for 31/2 DAYS without a reboot and I'd be amazed.

And....
Don't even get me started on security.... I've spent all of the last two days at this client applying the RPC vulnerability fix to over 100 W2K servers....

------------
Bill
Consultant / Network Engineer
CNE, CCNA

 

[AJ1982]

Completely agree, some years ago when I was doing a work experience placement I saw a Novell 3/4 server which had uptime of around 600 days (Wonder if it still runs), but you are right, it does go to show how bloody good a product Novell is over Microsoft.

Ive got two old PC's, one with 2003, one with Novell6, I know the 2003 one will be restarted more than its novell equivalent.

Damm Microshaft.

Great feedback though mate, good to see more people share the love of netware I do.

 

[JockMullin]

Hi, Marvin.

Hear hear.

I still maintain 3 Novell 3.12 systems and your experience is typical. I tell my customers to reboot once a year whether they need to or not, just so we know it will still
work.

Novell 3.12 is a great OS if all you need is file and print sharing. The newer versions have added lots of bells and whistles, but the basic OS is still very reliable.

M$oft's sales job on Windows is only slightly less amazing than the way Novell obediently stepped aside and let them take over. Complacency gets you nowhere.

Jock

 

[summoner]

Too bad Novell didn't support IP back then or else I'd probably still run NW3. Upgrading to NW5 and then 6 was a step in the right direction anyway...many more toys to play with. Otherwise I agree...very stable and reliable. I've seen servers running on 486 processors and 16 megs of ram support many many more clients than an equivalent NT server could.

 

[cgraynes]

Yep -- I didn't realize just how good NW3.12 was. I patched NW3.1 to NW3.12 for Y2k. Took 2-1/2 days of downloads and patches and tinkering to get it right. Once installed -- it never crashed. Typical uptimes were in the 180 day range since Dec 1999. Our shop usually had two or three long power outages a year and since no one in the shop had the forethought to kill the server before the UPS died, the server was hammered at least twice a year. It never had a problem rebooting.

We're now using NW6 -- it's stable, but I'm concerned about file corruption. We're running FoxPro DOS2.6 and Visual Foxpro apps. Without explanation, we've lost indexes. But, that's another story.

Micro$aft should figure out how to make ANY version of Windoz as stable as NW3.12.

Chris