NDS vs ADS

[Parcival21]

Hi there,

I have a problem in deciding between the use of novell directory services vs active directory services (MS).
I have a WAN line and I need to share documents over this WAN-Line with a file server.
THe sharing of file is kind of slow with ADS.(Need about 10 seconds to copy a 20 MB WORD document over a WAN line with round trip delay of 13 [ms]. I heard that ADS uses cifs as protocol for transporting data over a WAN-Line and that this causes some problems because of Window sizes etc..
THe question is whether NDS can be faster in the transportation of that data. I did first tests to see if novell can be faster but in fact it was even more slowly.
But I'm quite sure that a lot of optimisation can still be done there. Does anybody know whether these tests might be worth the effort I spend in them?

Bye,
busche

 

[bytehd]

There are 7 layers in the wonderful world of transferring
files. (OSI layer)

MS does many of them badly.

NDS is far superior than AD for WAN links because
of all the tuning parameters..........


the way NDS replicates the directory and sends updates
with the varying level of priorities....

MS is still catching up in that regard...

There are not 12 tools for managing NDS.
Just Console One and the server console commands.

just google NDS "janitor" or "skulker" to see what I mean.



George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[iolair]

I'm not sure that a Directory Service would have any bearing on the speed of a file transfer. I would think it would be the connection speed, the speed of the client machine, and the speed of the server. Having said that, AD has to keep up with every file on the server, whereas NDS actually "calculates" the rights and attributes of every file on the fly, reducing all that overhead that AD has to deal with.

Iolair MacWalter

 

[lgarner]

I agree. NDS is far superior to AD if you have a choice, but really won't impact your file transfer speed.

What's your WAN bandwidth? 20MB in 10 seconds is 2 megabytes per second, or 16 megabits per second, not counting overhead and other traffic. That sounds pretty good to me.

 

[marvhuffaker]

Well..

I'm going to answer this from a different angle.. Besides all of the other things that make AD look like crap compared to NDS, there is one thing that can have significant effect on WAN links..

NDS can be partitioned and filtered so that minimal WAN traffic is caused by NDS synchronization. So theoretically, more bandwidth would be available for file transfers etc. Less bandwidth is spent on Synchs.

Any server running AD keeps an entire copy of AD on it. Changes are propogated to all other AD servers. This causes a lot more overhead than NDS, especially on WAN links. This is an even bigger problem in large WAN environments. So again, in theory, a file transfer could be slowed down by excessive AD syncs.

Maybe yours is just a single site to site link and this won't make a difference..




Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[bytehd]

AD syncs the entire repository?

jeez


George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[terry712]

depends on the level of your forest

the size of the db is considerably bigger than the equivalent nds db.
the first time a server is added then yes it will sync the whole lot - although in 2003 you can do a system state resore

2000 ad - yes syncs the lot
2003 ad - only syncs the attribute when changed

there is a lot of syncing etc between the GC's and verification of global group caching etc

when you say you are having difficuly desiding between ad and nds - are you meaning you are struggling on the directory choice or are you struggling on the server platform choice

 

[bytehd]

yes, because you can get NDS on NT/2000.
Linux not far away..
also I was never, will never be satisfied with the linux
file system...way slow (reiser4 vs NSS)


George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[Parcival21]

First of all thank's for all your input. Haven't had internet access on this weekend so I couldn't check your answers earlier.
I think I haven't been precisely enough so I will now provide some more information.
Let's say we took over all the servers from another department that has its place about 300 kilometers away from ours. We are know hosting these servers. Bandwidth is no problem(100Mbit/s). We have more bandwidth than we are using right now. For the department the 10 second delay is new so they are not quite happy with it. Now we are searching for a way to gain some more seconds. Somebody read that with using AD and NDS you would have an entirely differnt protocoll stack from NDS and that problems that might occur with ADS(somebody told me that ADS might have problems with tcp acknowledges etc., cifs as the protocol to send the files is not optimized for WAN lines) might be better off with NDS but I'm not an NDS expert and tests with it that I did came to no good results.
I undestood from your answers that NDS would reduce the used bandwidth but can there be effects that make file transfer faster with NDS than with DS?. The tests were done over a simulator so they are not affected by other traffic.

Thank's, busche

 

[bytehd]

A directory does not transfer files.

What is the 10 second delay?

my client's 65,000 mile round trip satellite connection
is faster than that.

George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[Parcival21]

Sorry for causing misunderstandings but English is not my first language. The WAN delay is about 13ms but it takes about 10 to 15 seconds to copy a WORD file of 20 MB and it takes even more time to open it directly over the file server.
You said a directory does not transfer files. But if I have a novell client connected to a nds server doe the directory server not choose the protocoll stack with which the files are exchanged.
To compare: If I copy the file in my LAN it takes about 3 seconds +/-1. So it takes me 7 or more seconds longer to transfer a file over a line that only creates a delay of 13 ms. Same bandwidth.
My idea was to use NDS to decrease this time. It didn't work but that might be my fault because I have no experiences in working with Novell. I tested a server designed for a LAN. My aim is to get an answer on the question whether it would be worth the effort to spend a lot more time in this idea(Designing a novell test server, tuning the server etc.)
bye, busche

 

[bytehd]

<i>But if I have a novell client connected to a nds server doe the directory server not choose the protocoll stack with which the files are exchanged.</i>

Nope.

George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[marvhuffaker]

The novell server just happens to be running NDS, but it doesn't control the protocol used to transfer files. That is handled by file server and client workstation. (it's not like a Windows server where AD is an added on service. All Novell servers run NDS.)

Typically, with the newest Novell clients, the workstation will try an IP connection first, then an IPX connection. But it depends on how you configured it during installation.

You mention CIFS.. CIFS is for when you don't have the Novell client and want to use the native Windows client. You wouldn't generally use both.

There are many ways to tweak a server to improve file transfer performance. I'm assuming that since you have no experience with NetWare that you have a default installation. It's also possible that you have misconfigured your client and/or server simply because you don't understand the architecture. I'm not saying this to put you down, it's just that i see a lot of misconfigured networks and I get used to having to fix them.




Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[bytehd]

simply put:
to transfer a file you need a file transfer protocol.
It may be SMB, NCP, FTP, PCAnywhere, RDS, BitTorrent.

The directory makes things like multiple servers and
hundreds or thousands of users, printers, queues, files
rights, easier to organize and search.

File transfers and a Directory are not directly related.

always nice to see mark chime in.....

George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[Parcival21]

Okay I see now that I really did mess things up.
Is it right that CIFS is a protocol to transfer data from the windows client.
Is it also right that SMB might be chosen as a protocol to transfer data from a client to a fileserver?
Could it be an alternative to choose SMB to transfer data from the novell client to the fileserver?
Could the transport with the transfer protocol SMB be faster than the transfer with the transfer protocol CIFS?
Thanks again for all your input,
busche

 

[LawnBoy]

According to my Ethereal captures, a pc using the Novell client to fetch a file from a Novell server over IP is definitely using the NCP protocol on port 524. The same goes for server-to-server (provided both are Novell on IP).

So yes, you could see different transfer efficiencies between AD and NDS because of the different DEFAULT tranfer protocols the systems prefer. AD likes cifs, NDS likes ncp.