Good Reasons to Choose EtherShare instead of Windows 2000 / 2003 Server

HELIOS EtherShare – Highest-Performance Server for Mac clients

The UNIX based operating system provides an excellent, stable foundation for HELIOS products, with scalability from small up to enterprise server solutions.

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

Mac-based server administration

Advanced technologies for Mac clients

Optional features for prepress customers

Superior Printing System

	EtherShare	Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3)
Moving print jobs between printer queues	√	–
TCP/IP spooling	√	–
TCP/IP Mac OS 9 printer driver	√	–
HELIOS mDNS (“Bonjour”) printer driver	√	–
UNIX command line spooling (lpr)	√	–
Balance queue spooling (Distribution of jobs to other available queues)	√	–
Custom spool directory per printer queue	√	–
Job pipelining to multiple printers	√	–

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

EtherShare benefits on Mac OS X

EtherShare product info

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

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

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. to 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 mDNS (“Bonjour”)

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 printer driver for Mac OS 9.

See PAP versus HELIOS TCP/IP 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:

Server Process Reliability

	EtherShare	Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3)
Three levels of service reliability	√	–
Separate process per active Mac client	√	–
Separate process per active Win client	√	–
Separate process per active print job	√	–
Separate process per active spool job	√	–
Automatic process restart on failure	√	–

Server Process Security

	EtherShare	Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3)
AFP file security enforced by operating system	√	–
AFP server failure will disconnect all users	–	√
Individual users can be monitored via tracing tools (“truss”, “strace”)	√	–

Mac-based server administration

Modern Mac OS X remote server administration for use by experienced Mac 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 HELIOS Admin:

HELIOS Admin “Server Settings” dialog window

HELIOS Admin “Volumes” dialog window

HELIOS Admin “Printers” (AppleTalk) dialog window

HELIOS Admin “Lists” menu

Advanced technologies for Mac clients

	EtherShare	Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3)
HELIOS mDNS (“Bonjour”) server and services (similar to AppleTalk zones / names)	√	–
Support of AFP two way random passwords	√	–
Support of AFP DHX128 64-bytes passwords	√	–
Scripting via UNIX Desktop Tools (mv, chmod, touch, incl. desktop update)	√	–
Support of private home volumes	√	–
Volumes security for group members only	√	–
Volumes security via TCP/IP access lists	√	–
Service security via TCP/IP access lists for each service	√	–
HELIOS Time Server for OS 9 clients	√	–
Migration of server configuration to other servers (“var” folder)	√	–
Desktop rebuild tools (during server operation)	√	–
Support of PAP print spooler authentication	√	–
LanTest diagnostic and benchmarking tool	√	–
Network maintenance via “netconf”	√	–
UNIX Text to PostScript printing	√	–

Freedom to choose the server platform:

	EtherShare	Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server (SP3)
Software upgrade path to medium and large servers	√	–
Server data format compatibility between servers	√	–

Supported Platforms

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.