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HELIOS EtherShare compared with Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server

HELIOS EtherShare 3.1 - Highest-Performance Server for Macintosh clients

The UNIX based operating system provides an excellent, stable foundation for HELIOS products, with scalability from small up to enterprise server solutions. Running HELIOS products on UNIX provides excellent server solutions which have been proven on all major UNIX platforms.

Macintosh-based remote server administration with EtherShare Admin on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X can be done by any experienced Macintosh user.

HELIOS benefits with EtherShare 3.1 versus Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3)

Superior Printing System

HELIOS Find File performance

Server Fail Safety

Macintosh-based server administration

Advanced technologies for Macintosh clients

Optional features for prepress customers

Superior Printing System

	EtherShare 3.1	Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3)
Moving print jobs between printer queues	YES	NO
TCP/IP SLP spooling	YES	NO
TCP/IP SLP Mac OS 9 printer driver	YES	NO
TCP/IP SLP Mac OS X printer driver	YES	NO
UNIX command line spooling (lpr)	YES	NO
Balance queue spooling (Distribution of jobs to other available queues)	YES	NO
Custom spool directory per printer queue	YES	NO
Job pipelining to multiple printers	YES	NO

These are only a few unique EtherShare printing features, more details can be found here:

EtherShare benefits on Mac OS X

EtherShare product info

HELIOS 4th generation - What's new? EtherShare Base

EtherShare 3.1 print spooling outperforms Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3) printing up to almost 7 times!

Windows 2000 Server vs. EtherShare printing

The sample print job was a 30 MB PostScript job. Printing performance has been measured using HELIOS LanTest 3.1.

Used server configuration:

Windows Server: 2.4 GHz server system under Windows Server 2003 connected with Gigabit Ethernet. Printer queue was set to "Pause", i.e. spool only. Queue was published via AppleTalk-PAP.
UNIX server: 900 MHz server system under EtherShare 3.1 connected with Gigabit Ethernet. Printer queue was set to spool only. Printer queue was published via HELIOS TCP/IP SLP printer.

Used client configuration:

One Apple G4 (1 GHz) under Mac OS 9 connected with Gigabit Ethernet.
Printing to Windows has been done using AppleTalk-PAP. Printing to EtherShare has been done using the HELIOS TCP/IP SLP printer driver for Mac OS 9.

See PAP versus HELIOS TCP/IP SLP spooling performance (up to 3 times faster!)

HELIOS Find File performance

We tested the HELIOS Find File functionality with 120,000 files in a server volume. Whereas HELIOS Find File returned the find results in less than 4 seconds, the Windows Server 2003 needed about 400 seconds to deliver the search results:

HELIOS Find File delivers file searching results up to 100 times faster than Windows Server 2003!

Server Fail Safety

The following figure shows HELIOS' three levels of service reliability.
This unique safety feature is only available from HELIOS:


	EtherShare 3.1	Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3)
Server Process Reliability
Three levels of service reliability	YES	NO
Separate process per active Mac client	YES	NO
Separate process per active Win client	YES	NO
Separate process per active print job	YES	NO
Separate process per active spool job	YES	NO
Automatic process restart on failure	YES	NO

Server Process Security
AFP file security enforced by operating system	YES	NO
AFP Server failure will disconnect all users	NO	YES
Individual users can be monitored via tracing tools (e.g. "truss", "strace")	YES	NO

Macintosh-based server administration

Modern Mac OS X-based remote server administration for use by experienced Macintosh system administrators to manage daily tasks, e.g. setting up users, volumes, printers, managing log files, etc. See the screenshots below for typical settings applicable within EtherShare Admin:

EtherShare Admin "Server Settings" dialog window

EtherShare Admin "Volumes" dialog window

EtherShare Admin "Printers" (AppleTalk) dialog window

EtherShare Admin "Lists" menu

Advanced technologies for Macintosh clients

	EtherShare 3.1	Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3)
SLP server and services (similar to AppleTalk zones/names)	YES	NO
Support of AFP two way random passwords	YES	NO
Support of AFP DHX128 64-bytes passwords	YES	NO
Scripting via UNIX Desktop Tools (mv, chmod, touch, incl. desktop update)	YES	NO
Support of private home volumes	YES	NO
Volumes security for group members only	YES	NO
Volumes security via TCP/IP access lists	YES	NO
Service security via TCP/IP access lists for each service	YES	NO
HELIOS Time Server for OS 9 clients	YES	NO
Migration of server configuration to other servers ("var" folder)	YES	NO
Desktop rebuild tools (during server operation)	YES	NO
Support of PAP print spooler authentication	YES	NO
LanTest diagnostic and benchmarking tool	YES	NO
Network maintenance via "netconf"	YES	NO
UNIX Text to PostScript Printing	YES	NO

Freedom to choose the server platform:

	EtherShare 3.1	Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3)
Software upgrade path to medium and large servers	YES	NO
Server data format compatibility between servers	YES	NO

HELIOS products are supported on the following platforms:

Sun Solaris

IBM AIX

SGI IRIX

Hewlett Packard HP-UX

Compaq/HP Tru64 UNIX

Linux (PENTIUM-based computers)

Apple Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server

Depending on server performance, storage requirements as well as hardware and software maintenance, the customer can choose the preferred server platform to run the HELIOS software on. For a maintenance fee, all HELIOS products can be transferred from one platform to a new one.

All configurations and volume file formats are fully compatible between all HELIOS platforms.