SQL Server Magazine

As Windows NT becomes more prevalent in the data center, users are demanding connectivity solutions between NT and other client/server OSs. UNIX, AS/400, VMS, and other non-Windows OSs must share files with NT-based systems, and NFS provides the connection. NFS might not be the fastest or most secure solution for file sharing, but it's available on almost all platforms, including UNIX and Linux. In addition, you can use WebNFS from browsers and Java applications instead of FTP or HTTP to transfer files. In our increasingly Web-centric world, using a combination of NFS and WebNFS when you need to make files accessible to the widest possible audience makes sense.

Three types of NFS products are available for NT—servers, clients, and gateways. UNIX and other non-Windows OSs use NFS servers for NT to mount shares and access resources on an NT server. NFS clients let Windows computers access NFS servers. NFS clients also support all basic I/O operations, such as reading, writing, and setting file attributes, across multiple server platforms. NFS gateways let Windows clients access NFS servers on non-Windows OSs. Windows clients don't need to connect to the NFS server, so they don't require client software on their Windows desktops. You can set up NFS gateways on an NT server to access the NFS server, which lets Windows clients use resources on the NFS server. NFS gateways convert Windows clients' file-access requests to NFS calls to the NFS server and return the results to the Windows client.

We focus on using NFS products to access NT servers from non-Windows OSs, so we examine only NFS servers for NT and consider each product's ease of integration, functionality, usability, and manageability. We compare six NFS servers that run on NT—Hummingbird Communications' NFS Maestro Server 6.1.1, NetManage's InterDrive Server 2.0, Microsoft's Windows NT Services for UNIX 1.0a, Intergraph's DiskShare 4.01, Frontier Technologies' SuperNFS, and Xlink Technology's Omni-NFS Server.

We installed each product on single- and dual-processor servers with multiple NICs running NT Server 4.0 Service Pack 5 (SP5). Our test clients included a Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC 5 workstation running Solaris 7, a Dell Precision WorkStation 410 running Solaris 7 for Intel, and a variety of UNIX and Linux clients on a local network. The UNIX and Linux clients used Network Information System (NIS), and the Solaris clients used NIS+.

NFS Maestro Server 6.1.1
The documentation for NFS Maestro Server is excellent and provides for a straightforward setup. You insert the CD-ROM into your drive, click Install Maestro Server, and follow the prompts. Alternatively, you can run the msetup.exe (not setup.exe, as is common with Windows applications) program from the CD-ROM. NFS Maestro Server is the only product in our review that doesn't require you to reboot when the installation completes.

In addition to the NFS server, the NFS Maestro Server package includes a SOCKS client, an Inetd daemon, NIS, and several useful utilities, so you don't need to install other packages to gain the functionality that these services provide. You use the Inetd daemon to start and stop common daemons, such as bootp, telnetd, ftpd, fingerd, tftpd, lpd, timed, tnamed, and Xstartd.

NFS Maestro Server has two Control Panel applets for administration— Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) Inetd for line printer daemon and other services, and HCL NFS Server for the NFS server. Some of the other products we reviewed add services or protocols to the Control Panel Network applet, but NFS Maestro Server doesn't. NFS Maestro Server provides the Hummingbird Inetd, Hummingbird NFS Server, and Hummingbird Port Mapper services and works with other port mappers. We noticed one minor problem with the HCL Inetd applet. If you don't start the HCL Inetd service and you double-click the HCL Inetd icon, you get a warning message that the service didn't start. If you start the HCL Inetd service and double-click the icon, nothing seems to happen. We had to reboot the computer to start common daemons.

The product offers several options for mapping usernames across UNIX and NT through password and group files or through NIS. You can also select between UNIX and NT styles for permissions. At first glance, the dialog boxes in the HCL NFS Server Control Panel applet are a bit confusing. For example, when you configure the NFS Maestro Server system, the Exported File Systems tab in the HCL NFS Server Control Panel applet includes an Insert button at the bottom of the dialog box, which Screen 1, page 115, shows. You use this button to add directories to the uppermost list box. Typical Windows applications would probably place the button closer to the list box that the button acts on. In the same dialog box, after you select the check box to restrict to specific hosts, you can't clear the check box to enable the access. You must delete all the entries, then clear the check box. You need to read the NFS Maestro Server documentation carefully to avoid these types of problems, but after you set up the product properly, it works almost seamlessly.

WebNFS initially gave us a problem. Although we could see the filenames in exported directories, we couldn't use a UNIX systems browser to read or download the files. After a few minutes, we were able use a Solaris browser to access the files with no changes in permissions or files. The NFS Maestro Server service takes about 1 to 2 minutes before letting you access a resource. We contacted the vendor, who mentioned that this delay is a bug that the company fixed in the 6.2.2 release, which should be available by the publication date of this review.

Printing with NFS Maestro Server is a breeze. You use standard NT mechanisms (e.g., Start, Settings, Printers, Add Printer) to configure printers and export the printers to NFS clients. We easily printed to HP printers from Solaris and Linux machines. However, in our test environment, we noticed a slight delay between when you set up the printer on the NFS Maestro Server system and when NFS clients could access the printer.

The dialog boxes for administering and monitoring NFS Maestro Server are cluttered and might be confusing to the novice user (but are still a major improvement over previous versions). If you have an enterprise environment with several NFS servers, you might want to manage all servers from one system. Unfortunately, NFS Maestro Server's administration tools currently can't perform this function. We also found a 1- to 2-minute delay before we could access an exported directory or printer from clients. The vendor claims that it fixed this problem in the 6.2.2 release. With the exception of these two problems, NFS Maestro Server is easy to maintain and configure.

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