IBM Corp yesterday responded to Microsoft Corp’s Windows for Workgroups with a new set of local network products designed to exploit the power of OS/2 2.0. The key product is release 3.0 of OS/2 LAN Server which comes in Entry and Advanced versions, both of which include quality improvements, support for installation of requesters and servers in a remote and unattended manner; peer services to give a requester file on one micro on the network printer and serial device access to another requester on the same network; the facility to share directories, one printer queue, and one communication device queue with other users on the network; support for up to 1,000 requesters per server on a single network using the Network Transport Services/2 enhanced multi-adaptor support; and performance enhancements in OS/2, MS-DOS and Windows. The Network Transport Services/2 provides programming interfaces such as NetBIOS, IEEE 802.2, and NDIS necessary for OS/2 2.0 network enablement; provides transport protocols and network adaptor software to run network applications; enables NetWare Requestor application support providing access to NetWare Servers through the NDIS interface; supports MS-DOS applications written to the NetBIOS and IEEE 802.2 interfaces on OS/2 2.0 so that they can share an adaptor with other MS-DOS and OS/2 applications. Users not needing to do server administrator tasks can load the full-screen interface from a Server, thus conserving approximately 2.5Mb disk space on the requester machine. The Macintosh is now also supported as a client. OS/2 LAN Server 3.0 Advanced adds support for the 80386 High-Performance File System; improved disk fault tolerance with mirroring and duplexing; Asymmetric Multi-Processor enabling on the IBM PS/2 Server 295 and local security. The new IBM LANfocus Start/2 1.0 program provides for configuring OS/2 micros and servers with little to no end-user involvement, and conforms to SystemView Integration Level 2. It helps to drive remote installation by generating install procedure files for processing by the Network Transport Services/2 product. NetView Distribution Manager and NetView Distribution Manager/2 provide for wide area network distribution in an SNA network. A new IBM System Performance Monitor/2 Version 2.0 provides an integrated set of performance data collecting, recording, graphing, reporting and analysing functions that enable performance management of OS/2 2.0 critical system resources on IBM and non-IBM hardware. Performance management enabling is also extended to OS/2 16-bit and 32-bit applications executing under OS/2 2.0 via a supported applications programming interface. It also supports remote data collection from IBM OS/2 LAN Servers and Requesters. NetWare from IBM now includes network management products to enhance and expand the functionality of NetWare: NetWare Services Manager for OS/2 is an integrated network management system that enables network supervisors to manage multivendor networks. It automates resource management, reduces downtime and maximises network performance. It automatically identifies all devices on the network, displays them in a graphical map, monitors the entire network and notifies the network supervisor when problems occur, retaining the information in a central database. IBM plans to offer Novell’s version of the NetWare Services Manager for OS/2 and says it will interoperate with the IBM LANfocus Management/2 Family of products for NetWare 3.11 and 4.0 users. OS/2 LAN Server 3.0 Entry costs $800; the Advanced version is $2,300, both on November 20. OS/2 LAN Server for Macintosh Version 1.0 is $1,000. IBM System Performance Monitor/2 Version 2.0 is $500. Both arrive January 29.
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