Banyan Systems Inc, Westborough, Massachusetts has, as reported briefly, upgraded its Vines network operating system to version 4.11. It has also added partial SNMP management, improved wide area support and introduced a new set of management utilities. The version number’s 0.01 increment brings with it support for AT&T’s StarServer E symmetric multiprocessing server, better support for Compaq’s Intelligent Array Disk Systems and support for diskless workstations. In addition the network operating system supports a few more types of local network adaptor board and StreetTalk Directory assistance has been tidied up. Banyan’s approach to the Simple Network Management Protocol is to add a gateway that enables third party management stations to monitor Vines activity. Conventional Vines management software is used within the network, but one Vines server plays host to the SNMP agent, which can pass statistics including such as CPU utilisation and packet throughputs to a standard SNMP management station. The has not implemented the parts of the SNMP ‘SET’ verb however, in an attempt to keep Vines secure. All reconfiguration, therefore has to be done through the standard Banyan utilities. On the wide area front, the company has incorporated CCITT X29-compliant dial-in over X25 networks so that remote clients can use the server. Finally ‘Vines’ assistant is a new, combined utility which provides statistics on such aspects of the operation as file system capacity, server configuration and routing tables. It also handles some administration tasks, including mailbox clean-up, access rights list search and replace and group object inventory.
