1. EDITORS CORNER 
* WHAT IS Y2K'S IMPACT ON NT GROWTH?

2. TECH BRIEFING
* SUDDENLY ALL MAGS WRITE ABOUT "SANs" - WHAT'S UP?

3. NT RELATED NEWS 
* WINDOWS 2000 (W2K) FACTOIDS
* APPLICATIONS RUNNING UNDER W2K MAY NEED A REWRITE
* [HUMOR] NEW ERROR MESSAGES FOR WINDOWS MACHINES

4. NT THIRD PARTY NEWS
* HAPPY USER: "AUTOPILOT SPEEDS UP OUR EXCHANGE BIG TIME"
* SMARTBATCH32 NOW COMES WITH FREE WEB INTERFACE

5. HINTS AND TIPS - TIME SAVERS AND OTHER GOODIES...
6. THE NT STOCK WATCH
7. Y2K WATCH
8. HOW TO USE THE MAILING LIST
Instructions on how to subscribe, sign off or change your address.
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1. "EDITORS CORNER" 

Hi NT-ers,

Last week when I was in Paris, I was asked what I thought the NT
market would do regarding Y2K. Will it freeze up and go down, or 
will growth flatten out? Or perhaps will it even grow faster?

Well, if you look at the big picture, you have to differentiate
between NT 4.0 and W2K (NT5). Let me give you an immediate answer
to the question. NT4.0 sales will continue to keep on going as
they are but slow down somewhat. This slowdown is entirely MS's
own doing because of the sliding W2K schedule. Novell is making
good sales and profits with NDS because Active Directory is late. 
W2K deployments will be pushed back until deep into 2000 or later. 
This will not influence Microsoft's revenues much however.

NT 4.0 has shown very high growth in the last few years. That growth 
has slowed down a bit but is still in the 20-30% per year. This 
is significant and higher than any other platform. Since about 80% 
of small business is not Y2K-ready they will use 1999 to replace 
most of their existing non-compliant apps with NT and Y2K ready 
apps. Even very large enterprises are doing this. Just this week 
I read a story about Delta Airlines ripping out a 4-year old 
homegrown sales-force application and replacing it with a BAAN 
sales-force app in an all-out effort to get ready before the end 
of 1999.

Actually, I think that NT will benefit from a vast move to get 
Y2K-compliant in small and medium sized business. Since SP4 is out 
now, and MS has their Y2K-house pretty much in order, this is a 
feasible exercise. 

Generally speaking, the kinds of deployments that will be frozen 
in Q4'99 for the Y2K roll-over are large enterprise apps like ERP, 
and massive O/S upgrades like NT4 to W2K. The migration from other
platforms to NT will continue it's normal pace in the drive to
standardize and cut down on operating costs. As you know, the IT
market moves in herds. Looking at it from the big picture, there
is a current stampede moving toward NT. Top management is very
sensitive about being left behind when the competition moves to
the latest technology. US Government trials will not change that
course in any way.

So, if you are an NT-specialist there is nothing to fear about Y2K. 
(just have a week or so food and water stocked up just in case ;-))

Let's have a look at the current NT news!

Warm regards,

Stu Sjouwerman


********************************************************************
2. "TECH BRIEFING"

* SUDDENLY ALL MAGS WRITE ABOUT "SANs" - WHAT'S UP?
---------------------------------------------------------------
-- Standards are still forming, technology is not mature yet --
-- This article provides a 'SAN-IT check' --
-- and explains how SRM can help --
---------------------------------------------------------------

In about 5 years Seagate Technology expects 80% from their revenues
to come from SANs. This illustrates we are all going to have to 
know what this new development is and how we can manage it.

As IT organizations evolve their distributed Windows NT domains
to host mission-critical applications, increase data availability,
and provide for continuous operations, they are considering a storage
architecture called a Storage Area Network, or SAN, that was first 
deployed in mainframe data centers.

Mainframe SANs use a network storage interface called ESCON to 
connect mainframes to multiple storage systems and distributed
networks. Now, SANs are being implemented using low-cost inter-
connect technologies like Fibre Channel and common protocols like 
SCSI to make SAN benefits affordable for open systems environments 
like NT.

A SAN functions as a separate high-speed network, similar to a LAN, 
that establishes a direct connection between storage resources,
typically large RAID systems or robotic tape libraries, and servers 
or workstations. The SAN acts as an extended storage bus, and uses 
the same networking elements that a LAN uses - routers, hubs and 
switches - to eliminate the distance limitations of traditional 
bus interfaces like IDE or SCSI, and enable storage resources to 
be externalized from a single server and shared among multiple 
servers without affecting performance on the primary LAN.

There are many advantages provided by a SAN:

a) Disaster Recovery - The connectivity distances of Fibre Channel 
range up to 10 kilometers, while SCSI interconnects are less than 
200 feet, enabling IT departments to separate storage from application 
servers, and implement disaster recovery sites as part of the SAN.

b) Higher Attach Rates - Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) can 
connect up to 126 nodes in a one-way ring, while SCSI can only support 
16 total nodes, enabling IT managers to attach more devices to a SAN.

c) Speed - In addition to providing data rates of up to 100 MBps, a 
Fibre Channel SAN also provides low latency (the time between a request 
for data and its fulfillment). SCSI is also low latency, but its
speed tops out at about 80 MBps.

d) Fault Tolerance - A SAN using a Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL)
configuration can use central wiring points called hubs to bypass failed
nodes and links in the ring for greater fault tolerance. SCSI-based 
storage is inaccessible if the node (or nodes in a cluster environment) 
to which it is attached is unavailable or unreachable.

e) Leverage Existing Investments - SANs mitigate the "new technology"
element by reusing over 80% of existing SCSI technology. The cost of
migrating to Fibre Channel has been lowered even more by recently 
announced Fibre Channel-to-SCSI bridges, which offer transparent
access to storage regardless of its interconnect.

f) Off-load LANs - With SANs, data intensive operations like backup can 
be offloaded from the LAN to increase data and application availability 
and performance.

While SANs are attractive for these reasons, they also make storage more
complex (and more expensive), and add new categories of storage resources
that need to be monitored and managed - bridges, hubs, switches, switched
fabrics, and Fibre Channel components. They also present the following
deployment challenges to IT managers:

- What RAID systems, tape libraries, and other storage resources 
should I include in my SAN?
- What are my capacity needs?
- How will I partition my SAN disk storage?
- Which servers and workstations will have access to which 
SAN partitions?
- How much tape capacity will I need to add to backup my SAN?
- How will I monitor your the use and health of your SAN once 
it is deployed?

Another major hurdle to deploying SANs is the lack of industry standards
for interoperability, management, and reporting. Today, many of the
devices from various SAN vendors do not work with each other. A SAN
hub from Vixel, for example, will not work with a SAN switch from Brocade.
And while each of the device vendors provide management tools that enable
you to configure their device, there is no standard tool that can monitor 
SAN devices from any vendor, correlate information, and alert you when
problems arise.

The only solution available in the market now that is SAN-ready is 
HighGround's Storage Resource Manager family of storage monitoring, 
reporting, analysis, and management solutions. It can be used to 
monitor and manage your network storage today, and plan your future 
SAN topology. 

SRM automatically collects hundreds of configuration, capacity, 
health, and use statistics on your existing RAID systems, disks, 
partitions, share points, directories, and files. This information 
is stored in a Microsoft SQL Server database, where it is organized 
and correlated into knowledge reports and planning trends that can 
be used to determine current configuration, capacity, and use patterns. 

SRM will enable you to effectively plan a SAN by giving you a complete
understanding of your existing network storage capacity, use, and 
layout (topology). SRM will show you your current storage topology 
and capacity, the historical rate of disk space consumption, which 
applications and groups of users are using the most storage, and how 
big your incremental and full backups are. Armed with this kind of 
information, you can design your SAN topology much faster and easier. 

Once a SAN is deployed, the need for automated alerts, reports, and 
capacity planning trends continues. While Storage Resource Manager
works today over Fibre Channel to provide these capabilities, HighGround 
is working on a number of fronts to promote SAN interoperability and 
common reporting standards. HighGround is a member of the Storage 
Network Industry Association (SNIA) and Desktop Management Task Force 
(DMTF), two industry organizations that are defining standards for what 
and how SAN information will be reported. There are a number of 
workgroups in these organizations that focus on various SAN subject 
areas - HighGround is chairing the Storage Media Libraries and MIB
Standardization workgroup and the Disk Resource Management Review Group, 
and HighGround is a member of the Disk Resource Management and Fibre 
Channel Management workgroups. 

Future releases of Storage Resource Manager will collect, correlate,
analyze, report, and drive policies based on these emerging SAN 
standards. Some examples of what Storage Resource Manager will be able
to do with SAN: 
- monitor throughput, performance, health, use, and capacity of all SAN 
switches and hubs 
- report on Fibre Channel enclosure status, temperature, voltage, and
humidity 
- graphically map out a SAN topology
- re-configure RAID partitions based on the attributes of the logical 
files being stored on them
- dynamically re-partition a SAN based on space trends
- suggest optimal routing paths to SAN partitions

For more details on how SRM can help you plan for a SAN, visit
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/srmitsan.htm


********************************************************************

3. "NT RELATED NEWS" 

* WINDOWS 2000 (W2K) FACTOIDS

- It was announced in 1995 as the CAIRO technology
- Was expected in Q1 1998, but probably arrives late '99 earliest
- Is the largest MS-project ever undertaken: 35 million lines code
- Is an 80% rewrite of the current version
- Active Directory means a major infrastructure change
- Will be the future Single Code Base for drivers, hardware & testing
- W2K will come in 4 flavors: Professional, Server, Advanced SV and
DataCenter.
- There are daily builds for a 64-bit version as well
- W2K will finally support laptop features like PC Card and CardBus
- Supports digital video discs, MPEG, digital TV, broadband public 
networks, home networking, USB, and IEEE 1394
- The line "Built on Windows NT technology" will be attached to all 
the Windows 2000 products
-------------------------------

* APPLICATIONS RUNNING UNDER W2K MAY NEED A REWRITE

Quite a few applications that now run under NT4.0 will need new
versions if they want to profit from new features like Active 
Directory (AD), COM+ and/or DCOM. Since 80% of W2K is new, that 
is no surprise really.

Microsoft is trying to ease that workload by building some of the 
changes into the application programming interfaces (API) so 
developers can write to the APIs instead of building the coding 
into their own apps.

It is a wise thing to check with your software vendors if their
apps will be W2K compatible and if they will interface with AD.
Check for the complete story at the ComputerWorld Website at:
http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all/99021590D6
-------------------------------

* [HUMOR] NEW ERROR MESSAGES FOR WINDOWS MACHINES

A friend sent me this, and I really liked them. So as an exception
I'm forwarding this to all of you. Life is often made bearable with
a good dose of humor. In this case tastefully done. Here goes:

"The Sony Vaio machines have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful
Microsoft error messages with their own Japanese haiku poetry.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Web site you seek
Can not be located but
Countless more exist

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask way too much.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

My Personal comment: ROTFL 
(Rolling On The Floor Laughing !!)

********************************************************************
4. "NT THIRD PARTY NEWS"

* HAPPY USER: "AUTOPILOT SPEEDS UP OUR EXCHANGE BIG TIME"

One of your colleagues that implemented AutoPilot on Exchange wrote
us the following:

"AutoPilot is working very well in our Exchange Server 5.5 
environment. I've noticed a dramatic improvement in searches on 
large mail folders.

"The delay in opening a message in the Outlook preview pane is 
down to nothing also. This is just on the server. We are also 
deploying AutoPilot to the desktops that are running NT.

"Essentially, I find that the hardest part about AutoPilot is 
explaining 'what it is' to my users. I usually end-up saying "It's 
a little guy with pilot's goggles, hat, and scarf who sits on your 
PC making sure that bad applications don't hog any of your computer's
resources'. That seems to work rather well. :)

"So far, I've deployed it to about 3/4ths of the firm. EVERYONE 
who has gotten it installed immediately noticed a speed improvement 
and after a day or two reported that their 'virtual memory' errors 
completely disappeared! Note that people sometimes still get virtual 
memory errors (all caused by the same badly-developed visual basic 
application with a huge memory leak).

"A great example of how the AutoPilot process manager program 
reduces a 'hogging' application is how it handles our visual basic 
front-end for our contact management database. This application 
normally consumes between 18-24MBs of memory (using Task List and 
the Performance Tab as a guide) without AutoPilot running. With 
AutoPilot, the task averages between 2 and 10MBs of RAM depending 
upon what else is running and I suppose whatever AutoPilot thinks 
the application needs at any given time. "Bring those memory hogs 
down to size!" :)

"Gee...now all you need to do is give me something to improve my 
Novell Server requests from Windows NT workstations and this office 
will be hopping!

"Basically, AutoPilot gave me an out WITHOUT having to add extra 
RAM. Our Windows NT Workstations run on HP Vectra PCs (200-400Mhz) 
configured with 64MBs of RAM. The application listed above would give 
virtual memory errors even with 128MBs of RAM installed. With 
AutoPilot, memory management seems to be dramatically improved.

"Am I starting to sound like a commercial? Well, it's that good. 
I'm almost surprised that AutoPilot was not an integral part of NT 
in the first place. NT does a great job of isolating applications 
from each other, but does nothing if a particular application demands 
too much on system memory.

"As for installation issues...there are none! With the new SP4 version 
you provided, other than replacing two core system files and requiring 
me to reboot a workstation up to a max of 2 times, the installs are 
fast and the application is up and running immediately. Thanks mills!
Larry Seltzer - Ivy Asset Management Corp."

Obviously we have nothing to add to a glowing testimonial like this,
try it out on your own Exchange servers with a 30-day eval.
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/autoplt.htm
------------------------------------

* SMARTBATCH32 NOW COMES WITH FREE WEB INTERFACE

The developer of Smartbatch is pleased to offer Sunbelt customers
an exclusive limited-time special to introduce OnLine ToolWorks'
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SmartBatch32 Enterprise Edition license for $995.00, customers will
also receive one SmartBatch32 Remote Agent and three SmartBatch32
Web Administrators, at no additional charge!

The total price for these items if purchased separate from this
promotional offer is $1775.00, a total savings of $780.00. This
introductory offer only lasts until May 31, 1999. Don't miss your
opportunity for tremendous savings on a great job scheduler.

SmartBatch32 is our premier batch job scheduler for Windows NT. It
is a robust, fully integrated solution providing for flexible
scheduling, error detection and recovery, and complete notification
capabilities-all in one. This special offer from the developer is 
at an extremely aggressive price.

The SmartBatch32 Enterprise Edition addresses the key needs in the
NT batch job scheduling marketplace: central management and cross-
system scheduling, database hosting options on Microsoft SQL
Server, and integration capabilities with network management
systems.

And to make things even better, the SmartBatch32 Web Administrator 
is being introduced to complement SmartBatch32. This browser
interface gives customers a simple mechanism to check status, 
execute SmartBatch32 objects, and view information from home, 
another company location, or anywhere. Check for more info: 
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/smart32.htm 
and then download a free 30-day trial version.


********************************************************************

5. "HINTS AND TIPS - TIME SAVERS AND OTHER GOODIES...

If you want to understand how TCP/IP actually works, this is a great
intro that explains in simple terms what the protocol stack does and
how it is built. 10 minutes to read and you'll understand the concept!
http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds1-1/tcpjmy.html

********************************************************************


6. "THE NT STOCK WATCH" Closing day Friday Feb 26, 1999

52 WK 52 WK P/E WEEK
SECURITY CLOSE HIGH LOW RATIO CHNG
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Advanced Micro Devices... 17 7/8 33 12 3/4 +1.4%
BMC Softwear............. 40 7/8 60 1/4 34 7/8 31 -8.2%
Citrix Systems Inc....... 77 1/8 107 1/2 36 3/8 58 +2.9%
Compaq Computer.......... 35 3/8 51 1/4 22 15/16 -13.9%
Computer Associates...... 42 61 15/16 26 42 0.0%
Data General Corp........ 13 13/16 21 13/16 7 -10.5%
Dell Computer............ 80 1/8 110 30 1/2 76 0.0%
Gateway 2000 Inc......... 72 11/16 84 1/2 36 1/8 33 -0.2%
Hewlett Packard Co....... 66 7/16 83 7/8 47 1/16 23 -2.7%
Intergraph Corp.......... 5 33/64 10 9/16 4 11/16 -1.6%
International Business Ma 169 3/4 199 1/4 95 7/8 26 -1.0%
Micron Electronics Inc... 14 3/8 24 3/4 9 11/16 24 0.0%
Microsoft Corp........... 150 1/8 175 15/16 78 7/8 64 +1.6%
NCR Corp................. 40 15/16 55 3/4 23 1/2 34 -6.9%
Network Associates Inc... 47 67 11/16 25 1/2 +10.5%
Novell Inc............... 19 3/8 20 57/64 8 9/64 59 +5.8%
Oracle Corp.............. 55 7/8 61 3/4 18 3/16 50 +3.1%
Qualcomm Incorporated.... 73 75 9/16 37 3/4 45 +12.5%
Qualix Group Inc......... 6 3/8 9 1/8 0 15/16 +15.9%
Seagate Technology....... 28 13/16 44 1/4 16 1/8 -11.3%
Silicon Graphics......... 15 15/16 20 7/8 7 3/8 -6.2%
Sun Microsystems Inc..... 97 5/16 115 3/4 37 5/8 44 +0.9%
Sybase Inc............... 8 1/8 11 5/8 4 1/2 -0.7%
Symantec Corp............ 18 1/16 32 5/8 8 11/16 24 -5.8%
Unisys Corp.............. 29 13/16 36 1/2 16 3/4 28 -3.8%
Veritas Software Corp.... 71 86 23 3/4 71 -0.5%
Dow Jones 30 Industrials. 9,306.58 -0.3%


********************************************************************

7. "Y2K WATCH" Only 307 days to Jan 1, 2000 

Y2K Quote of the Week:
"I've heard that many people are hoarding cash and food just in case
civilization collapses. My strategy is to hoard guns and ammo so I can
take the cash and food from the people who didn't do a good job
thinking through the 'collapse of society' concept." 

--Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, from Salon Magazine,
"Lawyers, Guns, Money" (2-10-99)


********************************************************************

8. "HOW TO USE THE MAILING LIST"
Instructions on how to subscribe, sign off
or change your email address


TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE LIST (Tell your friends!)

Click: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/scripts/lyris.pl?join=nt-list
and fill out the form, simple & easy: 1 minute work.

Or by email, send a blank message to the following address:
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_____________________________________________________

TO QUIT THE LIST

1) The Web Way:
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choose the NT-List, use your email address that is at 
the bottom of each newsletter and leave the list via 
the web interface.

2) The Email Way: Simply follow the personalized 
instructions at the very end of this newsletter.
_____________________________________________________

TO CHANGE YOUR ADDRESS

First unsubscribe and then resubscribe as per the
procedure above.

********************************************************************

FOR MORE INFORMATION

On the World Wide Web point your browser to:

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This document is provided for informational purposes only. 
The information contained in this document represents the
current view of Sunbelt Software Distribution on the issues
discussed as of the date of publication. Because Sunbelt
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(email me with feedback: [email protected])