Following last month’s unveiling of ‘the world’s fastest Java Virtual Machine,’ Novell, Inc. announced a similar breakthrough in Web Server performance claiming it smashed the speed record for single-processor Web servers measured by the industry-standard SPECweb96 benchmark.
Results of the benchmark demonstrate that Novell network server platforms serve more users more quickly and efficiently than significantly more expensive solutions based on UNIX and Microsoft Windows NT.
The record-breaking solution includes Novell’s intraNetWare 4.11 operating
system, BorderManager 2.1 with the FastCache Web server accelerator, and
Netscape Enterprise Server for NetWare running on a Compaq ProLiant 3000
with a single 300 MHZ Intel Pentium II processor.
Novell said its Intel processor-based SPECweb96 result of 1639 operations per second topped the performance of all single-processor Web servers submitted to date for SPECweb96 benchmarking, including leading UNIX and NT solutions based on the DEC Alpha, Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC, IBM PowerPC, SGI MIPS R10000, and Sun UltraSPARC architectures.
The single-processor Novell solution offers customers exceptional
price-performance value. For example, the record-breaking solution’s street price is approximately $19,000, while a slower dual-processor Sun
Ultra Enterprise 450 system sells for approximately $44,000.
SPECweb96 is the first benchmark for World Wide Web servers from the
Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC), a non-profit corporation whose membership is open to any organization willing to support its goals of a fair and useful set of metrics to differentiate candidate systems.
SPEC has grown to become one of the more successful performance
standardization bodies with more than 40 member companies. The Novell
benchmark can be accessed on the SPEC Web site.