How we did it

How we tested Novell NetWare 6.5.

We tested NetWare 6.5 on a Gigabit Ethernet and 100Base-TX network consisting of eight servers (Gateway 955 1U, HP/Compaq DL-360 [2], DL-380, Compaq DL580, and three whitebox servers [ASUS motherboards]) with various Windows, Linux and Apple OS/X clients.

Web performance tests were performed on the HP/Compaq DL580 using Spirent Communication’s WebAvalanche test appliance running identical scripts from previous network operating system tests. The first test emulates static Web page downloads and the number of transactions that can be sustained by Apache Web server on NetWare per second. The second test involved the number of sustained Port 80 Web server connections per second. It emulated the number of aggregate users per second that can be handled by a single network interface card – in this case, a Compaq PCI 10/100/1000M bit/sec NIC until no more can be handled and more than 5% errors are shown. The third test showed the maximum number of connections that can be achieved per second to a Web server page.

Storage and storage-area network testing was completed using an LSI Logic 2FC board connected to a Brocade Silkworm FC switch and a JMR just a bunch of disks array, all in turn connected to the Compaq DL580 (four-1.8-GHz CPU with 4G bytes DRAM and three Gigabit Ethernet NICs). We were able to create storage pools consisting of various combinations of filing systems (NetWare, Common Internet File System and Apple File System) easily. RAID combinations and drive-spanning volumes also were easily created and shared.

We tested Virtual Office and eDirectory services by importing a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol schema and database successfully into eDirectory. We created several virtual teams, explored printing, discussions (chat/instant messaging), and extensively worked with the iFolder personal storage synchronization facility on our lab notebooks (Apple and HP/Compaq). There were no errors even on large synchronized directory infrastructures.

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