SUMMARY: Integrating Solaris and Windows NT

Nils K. Schoyen (sunadmin@elg.norsar.no)
Mon, 17 Nov 1997 16:00:01 +0100

Original question:

> The question of all questions: How do you access Windows NT applications
> from SPARCs running Solaris 2.5?
>
> Have any of you experience with WinCenter PRO from NDC?

And the answer is:

-- Gautam Das (gautam@bwc.org)
We are running Solaris/SunOS and NCD Wincenter. They integrate very
well. Wincenter has good NIS support.

-- dag@iplast.no (Dag Fagerhaug)
Vi har god erfaring med WINDD fra Tectronics

-- Aggeliki Karabassi <aggeliki@di.uoa.gr>
We have a SUN network with a Solaris 2.5 server and about 50 Solaris 2.5,
Solaris 2.5.1 and SunOs 4.1.3 machines. About six months ago, we
installed WinCenter on a Dual Pentium Pro machine , in order to use
Windows NT applications from our Suns.
The first problem - and probably the most important - is that we found out
that WinCenter can not work with C2 security : the result is that
WinCenter can not use the accounts we have in the Sun network an for every
user who wants to use WinCenter we have to set up a new account on the NT
server. Of course this is not a problem if you have a lower security
level, or a small number of users ( in our case with more than 500 users,
it is impossible to create all the accounts a second time ... )
The second problem is that currently WinCenter is not compatible with NT
4. NT 3.5.1 have a pretty unfriendly environment, both for the
administrator and for the user, and many people complaint to us about it.
This also creates problems when using certain applications for Windows 95
or Windows NT 4 which can not work easily with Windows 3.5.1. Even the
latest Microsoft Office version could not work with WinCenter, until we
've managed to find some special modules which allowed the program to work
correctly. We 've also experienced problems in using a second language
(Greek in our case), since NT 3.5.1 and NT 4.0 manage this in different
ways. And of course many drivers seem to have serious problems ...
Finally we still have a less serious problem which can be sometimes rather
annoying: Many users who have logged off appear to be still
connected , and nobody has been able to solve the problem or find a
reasonable explanation - not even the software provider.

That's all I can think of at the moment, although a coleague who is now in
the office says that there is more ... I know that there are other
solutions to the WinNT access problem, and I 'd strongly recommend that
you consider them seriously.

Anyway, it's not that I don't like WinCenter , I just hate it !

-- Chris Needham <needham@dpg.rnb.com>
We use Wincenter Pro and it works very well, I'd recommend that you
use a dual CPU PC and lots of memory ( we use dual 300 pentium II and
256Mb RAM )

-- Kevin Warren <warrenkb@aom.bt.co.uk>
Using NTrigue by Insignia. (Distributes NT session via X)

-- A S Lawson <tony%essex.ac.uk@mailhost.essex.ac.uk>
Ntrigue, WinDD
I have briefly started up an NT session on a Sparc-5 using NTrigue, and it works ok, and
seems to give reasonable performance. The cost, however, is not negligible - an NT license +
NTrigue license - I have heard a figure of 400 per seat mentioned. There is a hope here of
using such a setup to give a longer life to older PC's, as well as providing NT to unix
systems.

-- howie@warlok.ds.boeing.com (Howard Modell)
I'm not sure if we have WinCenter _Pro_ here, but we do have WinCenter
in the company.

I have an account on one of the NT servers (it does not have to be the same
server that is running Wincenter). When I want to access it, I do an
"rsh" to the NT machine with WinCenter on it, telling it to display back
to me (via a command line argument). A window pops up representing the
WinCenter "desktop", and I get a short dialog box in which I specify my
NT logon, my password, and the name of the NT server that my account is
authorized against.

From that point, I get a window with whatever Win/Nt apps the admin has
set up for me.

If I want to access files on my SPARC, I have to tell NT to "connect to
my network drive". I'm running SAMBA on my SPARC in order to export
my home dir to NT.

I can and have run Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Exchange over WinCenter.

It seems to run nice and fast .. certainly no worse than any other X-based
app coming from a remote machine. And I'm really talking _remote_ here ..
Boeing is spread all over the Puget Sound area (-:

-- James Noad <jehn@cortex.shef.ac.uk>
For NT 3.51 there is WinDD from Tektronix (www.tek.com), ICA from
Citrix and soon Hydra from Microsoft.

I have tried the Solaris demo WinDD client from Tek and also Citrix's
Windows 3 client under Wabi 2.2. Both appear to work insofar as I have
tested them - which is not very far.

-- Stefan Fruntke <Stefan.Fruntke@Germany.Sun.COM>
there are 3 products on market:

WinCenterPro from NCD
Windd from Tektronix
Ntrigue from Insignia (Java-Client for Browser included)

all are based on the utilities of citrix based on nt 3.51
it is a modified kernel to enable a multiuser mode.
(4.0 not available ms will do it itself propably)

We have installed Ntrigue and Windd.

Windd includes a NIS-Client
so you have a bridge between nis on solaris and nt (ypbind running on
a NT PDC (Primary Domain Controller))

Ntrige includes a java-client so you can work on any platform
(write once run anywhere) with your ms-apps if you have a
netscape-browser or a 100% pure java enabled browser

-- jyoung@educate.com
Take a look at SAMBA. Its free !!!!

Thanks to all that replied!!!

Regards,

Nils K. Schoeyen
NORSAR, Norway