Novell Servef 4.11 (dos program)

[Neo81]

G'day


I look after a product for the company that I work for at the moment, it is a Dos based accounting/invoicing type program that we have running around queensland. The site that we have running Novell are either 4.11 or 5.1 and are all 10/100 networks using 10/100 switches and hubs, with about 5-10 clients hanging off the server. The problem that we are getting really bad performance out of the server and a really slow network, I am fairly new to Novell, I know how to basicly setup a server but don't know what mods to add performance wise... Can somebody recomend anything that I can do to increase speed within these networks e.g add another network card, cache sttings, or anyt other type of settings or related Web pages.


Thanks for you time

Later
NEo81 >:O>

p.s i yam wee tar did. i yam sofa king wee tar did. i yam sofa king fik.

 

[TheLad]

Which server is giving the bad performance? Is it the NetWare 4.11 or the 5.1 server? I presume the 4.11 server since you have posted in the NetWare 4 forum but could you confirm please? -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
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[salserocito]

Take a look at the Console Monitor. If its not already running, type LOAD MONITOR at the Console prompt.

Check your CACHE BUFFERS percentage...
* Select SYSTEM RESOURCES (NetWare v5.1) or RESOURCE UTILIZATION (NetWare v4.11) from the AVAILABLE OPTIONS menu.
* Look at the CACHE BUFFERS percentage... What is the %?

Depending on your answer...

* 65% and up - Healthy Server
* 50% - 60% - Decent health, but could use more RAM.
* 35% - 50% - Slow and sluggish performance, definitely add memory, and soon!
* Below 35% - Server could halt or crash at any time because of inadequate available resource, definitely needs alot more RAM than it presently has!

Also, take a look at your LAN Statistics...

* Look at NO ECB COUNT AVAILABLE. Is there a large number here? Having a large number for this statistic means the your Packet Receive Buffers are set too low.

You can modify the MINIMUM and MAXIMUM PACKET RECEIVE BUFFERS in SERVER PARAMETERS/COMMUNICATIONS under the AVAILABLE OPTIONS menu.

Good Luck.

 

[Neo81]

Hey,


Is there any patches that I can install on the windows based workstations (with client of course) to speed up the time that it takes to look/copy information to the server or will it be all the settings on the server that I will have to tweak to get it working faster, ok the situation is that we have a update to our program that we run of the novell server (comes on cd) we load it from a workstation up to the server and on windows based networks it takes aprox 20 seconds on the novell server's 4.11 and 5.1 it takes anywhere from 1 hours to 2 hours and the server utilization sits on about 80-100% but the server is not working that hard, I think it has to do with the cache buffers or packet sizes over the network, are there any patches or tweaks that I can use on the server or workstations to get this process running quicker ?????

Thanks


Later
NEo81 >:O>

 

[salserocito]

On the NetWare File Server, what kind of NIC are you using? Could the NIC be connected to the network at 10Mbit instead of 100Mbit?

Also what kind of File Server hardware are we referring to? There are considerations like hard disk speed, hard disk controller (SCSI or IDE), Processor speed, etc...

Make sure that you have plenty of Packet Receive Buffers available, and make sure that the File Server has plenty of available Cache Buffers.

Both of the above Buffer settings have a direct relationship to how much memory you have in your Server!

Otherwise, what versions of the NetWare Client are you running and on what OS? What version of NetWare and Supoort Pack?

Good Luck!

 

[Neo81]

ok we have about 9 sites with either novell 4.11 or 5/5.1 using PIII 1ghz, SCSI 7200rmp HDD, at least 256meg SDRam and 10/100 network cards, these server are feeding into duel speed switches and all the workstations have 10/100 network cards in them, they are D-Link 10/100 network cards... the actual program runs fine over the network it is just when we try and update the program, it un arj's about 50 meg off the cd across the network and to the directory of the dos program.... there are no other computers accessing the network while this proccess is going on......


Later
NEo81 >:O>

 

[TheLad]

Are your servers set to auto-negotiate the speed? If so, DON'T! This can cause the problems you see.

Load up INETCFG on the console, select BOARDS, select your board and force the server to ... (if your port is a 100mb one) say 100Mb Half-Duplex for now. Escape and save changes. On the NetWare 5.x servers you can get away with doing a Reinitialize System without it affecting the server. On NeTWare 4.x, you're probably better doing a reboot.

Also, we had an issue when we migrated from 4.11 to 5.1 whereby the 4.11 server was set at 10Mb Full Duplex (10Mb port) and when the server was migrated to 5.1 the performance decreased dramatically. When the server was set to 10Mb Half-Duplex, all was ok again. -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
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