February 12, 1996
CD-ROM server software
Keep the hits coming
Sharing CD-ROMs on a network is tricky, but they're the preferred medium for software and data. These software packages help users gain access to a company's greatest data hits faster than any disc jockey could.
You would think that something so simple, so digitally pure as a CD-ROM would play well on today's LAN, but mixing the two is like trying to blend opera and disco. CD-ROMs don't always hit the high notes when it comes to networking, and sharing them across the enterprise will take some effort before the two technologies can truly sing duets.
If the network operating system (NOS) vendors did their jobs properly, there would be no need for this comparison. Sharing CD-ROMs should be no different from sharing traditional media. But CD-ROM server software provides graphical user interfaces to simplify mounting, unmounting, mapping CD-ROMs to network volumes, and substituting understandable 20-character CD-ROM aliases for cryptic names, and it can also outperform NOSes. A solution using NetWare 4.1's built-in CD-ROM-sharing features performed poorly against some of these products in this comparison. It could also take a huge chunk of cash out of your wallet. You can either pay when you have to add memory for each NetWare user who attaches to a server that's doing double duty as a file/print and CD-ROM server, or pay for an additional NetWare user license for each user who attaches to a dedicated NetWare CD-ROM server. Several products in this comparison offer a less expensive solution.
Lee Hauser is a network analyst with Williams, Kastner & Gibbs, a law firm in Seattle. He uses Micro Design International Inc.'s SCSI Express on a NetWare network with 28 different CD-ROMs on-line.
"We have a large number of people who need access to the same CDs, so networked CDs are a very important technology for us," Hauser says.
To some degree, software vendors' site licensing policies reduce the cost advantage of sharing CD-ROMs: Customers would prefer flat rates for unlimited numbers of users but must settle for concurrent licenses. But with the prices dropping fast on recordable units, CD-ROMs make perfect sense for archiving your own files on a network. (Of course, getting your users to admit that any of their files are seldom used might take more than just a technical argument.)
Bob Matsuoka is associate director of the New Laboratory for Teaching and Learning at the Dalton School, a private school in New York. He keeps about a dozen different CD-ROMs on his NetWare network and has archived a great deal of data on his own CD-ROMs.
"We press our own CDs and then make the data available on the network," Matsuoka says. "It is very cost-effective. CD ROMs are still important for access to archival and reference materials." Finally, more software now comes on CD-ROMs. The days of flipping floppies to install software -- especially software that tops 30MB or so -- are just about over. Having the software on a networked CD-ROM is convenient.
"Our users are being swamped with new releases of software and increased demands on their productivity," says Nick Witherspoon at Katz, Abosch, Windesheim, Gershman & Freedman, P.A., an accounting firm in Baltimore. He raves about his Microtest Inc. DiscPort products and uses a variety of tax and business applications on his networked CD-ROMs.
THE X FILES. Before you get involved in this area, be prepared to spend some time studying the literature and learning almost an entirely new language. Take your basic CD-ROM drive that now comes almost by default with every new PC: You need to first learn what the speed of the drive is and whether the drive has a SCSI or IDE attachment. (Your CD-ROM drive's speed may be 2X, 4X, 6X, or higher: The X refers to a 150KBps transfer rate, so a 4X drive delivers data at 600KBps.)
Next, you should decide whether this drive will remain on an individual desktop or move to a more central -- and accessible -- location. The drive could be attached to the back of (or inside) your network server, or it could be placed on the network wire directly, similar to the way a print server is attached. You can also have multiple drive mechanisms bundled together in what is called a "tower" or have multiple CD-ROMs stacked inside a jukebox. The choice depends on your workgroup habits and applications. (Also please see: CD-ROM server software: a gold plated solution)
"We don't use jukeboxes; we like having all of our CDs on-line all the time," Hauser says.
What makes things more complex is that the basic CD-ROM is not so basic anymore. In addition to standard CD-ROMs, there are now CD-Recordable (CD-R) media, which allow a single write operation to the disc and can be played in standard CD-ROM drives.
Meridian Data Inc. is the first to offer a product that supports CD-R on NetWare. And there are magneto-optical media that allow multiple writes and can't fit in CD-ROM drives.
DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE. Then there is the software configuration: Do you want each networked CD-ROM to appear as a separate network volume and a separate drive mapping? Or do you want a common "mount point," in which multiple CD-ROMs show up as subdirectories under a single drive mapping? Software can also set up automatic macros so that a single mouse-click can load the appropriate executables and configuration together, making CD-ROM applications more usable. And your enterprise might have a mixed bag of platforms and want to run a variety of Windows, Macintosh, OS/2, and Unix CD-ROMs from the same server, or have multiple users access the same CD-ROM.
"Ease of mapping the drive on the fly is very important," Witherspoon says. The trick is to be able to set up applications that require multiple CDs and still have drive mappings left over for your other networked applications. "One of our favorite products is Folio Views, but it doesn't have a good method of dynamically mapping network drives," Hauser says. "We had to write our own batch files to make this work."
Networks are always changing, and nowhere is this seen better than with easy-to-swap media such as CD-ROMs.
"Windows is still a big headache when it comes to switching CDs," Matsuoka says. "The Mac is much easier: We just create aliases to volumes and place them in a specific location on our network. It is simple enough for first-graders to use -- literally!"
PICK THE RIGHT SOFTWARE. When we first began testing these devices, we looked at both hardware and software alternatives and quickly discovered that the hardware was largely the same in terms of performance and configuration. The more important issues boiled down to software choices, and that's what our product comparison focused on.
We were disappointed that we didn't see more cross-platform support than we did: None supported any Unix clients, and even Macintosh client support was paltry. We were also disappointed that months after the Windows 95 rollout, all but one product's Win95 client were running in 16-bit compatibility mode. Native Win95 support is in order.
But this need for cross-platform support is precisely why these products may live on, even when the NOSes improve. Several NOS vendors, particularly Microsoft Corp., continue to have their own desktop operating system agendas, which keep them from fully supporting rival desktop operating systems.
Our five-way CD-ROM server software comparison produced a clear winner and loser, with a 2-point range separating the two, and three contestants bunched in the middle. The winner had the handicap of a high price, and the loser was among the least expensive -- so maybe, in this product category anyway, you get what you pay for.
With the exception of Meridian's CD Net for NetWare, these products were overly complicated for what they were designed to do. These products need to mature some and develop simplified user interfaces. CD Net, on the other hand, suffered from being a bit too simple.
The essential idea behind a CD-ROM server is to map a local drive to either one CD-ROM volume or a number of volumes, and then provide speedy access to users. The winner, Microtest Inc.'s CD-Now 2.11 for NetWare, has what it takes. It offered an outstandingly easy setup for both server and clients. CD-Now won two of our three speed tests, and only CD-Now could map Macintosh clients to our CD-ROM drives without an add-on. The user interface was a bit confusing, but we liked elements of it, such as drag-and-drop drive mapping. At $2,495, however, CD-Now was pricey.
Meridian Data Inc.'s CD Net 1.0 for NetWare and SciNet Inc.'s SciNet CD-Manager 3.01, two very different products, tied for second place. Where CD Net has recently been reborn as a NetWare Loadable Module, CD-Manager remains based on a DOS application. Perhaps for that reason, CD-Manager was the faster of the two products, while CD Net was slowest in one test and quite slow in two others. Both installed fairly cleanly and offered average cross-platform capabilities. Security was solid, but both products had flaws in this area. CD Net only allows access by groups, instead of by individual users. CD-Manager forces you to use NetWare 3.12's Syscon utility to administer groups. Also, CD Net might be a strong solution for smaller networks with simpler needs.
Logicraft Information Systems Inc.'s LanCD 3.2 won one of our speed tests but posted average or below-average times on the other tests. With its own homegrown administration and security, LanCD has the disadvantage of not being capable of tapping into network operating system security such as NetWare provides, with the added hassle of requiring administrators to install a client component on all workstations in order to allow users to map drives.
Micro Design International Inc.'s SCSI Express 2.5 for NetWare was slowest in two of three tests, and the drawbacks didn't stop there. Setup matched a familiar NetWare user's tale of having to tweak configuration files before we could perform the installation successfully. Cross-platform support was ordinary, and SE-View, the client user interface, has a bit of a learning curve. SCSI Express was also the only product that couldn't handle more than eight assigned trustees per network volume. The only outstanding feature of SCSI Express was its extended telephone support hours.
The Score
- CD-Now 2.11 for NetWare -- 7.0
- CD Net 1.0 for NetWare -- 5.9
- SciNet CD-Manager 3.01 -- 5.9
- LanCD 3.2 -- 5.7
- SCSI Express 2.5 for NetWare -- 5.0
Contributors
Introduction by David Strom - Contributing Editor
Test development by Brooks Talley - Test Developer
Tested by Andy Nelson - Technical Analyst and Brooks Talley
Edited by Scott Mace - Senior Editor and Steve Jefferson - Assistant Editor
Questions or comments about this comparison? Please send E-mail to Brooks Talley at brooks_talley@infoworld.com.
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Copyright © 1996 by InfoWorld Publishing Company
