SCO UnixWare

This week, we scope out SCO’s latest version of UnixWare. We tested UnixWare 7.1.4 with both new management components and added open source applications  to compare it with Linux and Apple OS/X operating systems we’ve tested recently.

The results: UnixWare did well in our Web connectivity and performance tests, but wasn’t as advanced as its Linux rivals in terms of its GUI and hardware discovery facilities.

We installed the Enterprise Edition of UnixWare on four different server platforms. Installation options are plentiful. Two popular versions of Apache are available – 1.3 and 2.0.49. We tested the latter of the Apache Web services (including Apache Tomcat). Other open source applications are available, such as Samba 3.0.3, which provides connectivity to Windows directory services. Also available is SCO’s older Advanced File and Print Services that support pre-Windows 2000, DOS-based Windows clients.

Four levels of security are available, ranging from basic to “above C2” (a government certification for certain types of security hardening and password functionality). Instructions state that increasing the security level above that chosen at installation is not possible.

We used Internet Security Systems’  Security Scanner 7.0 to find vulnerabilities in UnixWare when it was running in both C2 and “above C2” modes. Both selections passed muster with no vulnerabilities found.

SCOAdmin is an X-Windows-based management interface that administrates server characteristics (hardware and network) and user accounts and OpenLDAP settings. SCOAdmin uses a tree-like menu system, and we found administration simple, if superficial, as some applications (such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol  setup) lack needed options such as DHCP forward referencing.

This is the first time we’ve run our Spirent Communications WebAvalanche tests on a dual CPU Compaq DL-360G3. While we can’t make a direct apples-to-apples correlation between SCO’s results and past operating system tests run on four-way machines, we can deem UnixWare a strong performer overall.

For example, in our transactions-per-second test, which manipulates static pages, UnixWare completed 704 transaction/sec on average, which is 75% faster than the dual-PowerPC CPU Mac Xserve running OS/X 10.3. The best numbers and worst numbers on a four-CPU platform were 1,204 and 994, respectively.

The maximum number of open TCP connections UnixWare could sustain was 54,208, which is higher than the previously tested Apple combination. This began to approach all other operating systems running on four-way machines that tally open TCP connection rates between 68,000 and 87,000 maximum open TCP connections.

In our maximum TCP connections per second test, UnixWare could maintain 972 connections to Apple’s 616, but fell down by comparison to SuSE Linux and Windows 2003 Enterprise Server on the four-CPU platform. The implication here is that Apache runs quickly on UnixWare and the network subsystem can sustain many option connections but doesn’t connect and release connections quite as quickly as the competition.

For the full report, go to https://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2004/071204unixwarerev.html