Michael,

I have worked with all three platforms.  If you primary criteria is
performance, then you will be happiest running ADSM/AIX H50.  According to
the IBM performance reports the AIX server should perform at approximately
2x that of the NT server.  The AIX server should also scale better.  I have
a customer that is backing up over 400 good sized clients to one RS/6000
R40- 4way.  I would recommend the H50 4way, but no larger.  There is a
potential for performance degradation due to thread management issues on a
server larger that a 4 way.  You will be challenged to provide enough of a
load to outgrow the 4-way;  in fact, a 2-way may serve your needs.  The
ADSM/AIX server has been available for several years and is probably the
most solid of all the ADSM platforms.

Please feel free to contact me for additional information.

DanC
=============================================
Daniel G. Crouse
IBM Certified Specialist - ADSM
Mainstar Software Corporation
Storage and Recovery Solutions
  URL:  www.mainstar.com
Email:  Dan.Crouse AT mainstar DOT com
Vmail:  800-233-6838
Voice:  770-682-7739
   Fax:  770-682-7739


> Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 13:31:40 -0400
> From:    "Yelle, Michael 2-3823" <MGY4V AT HSCMAIL.MCC.VIRGINIA DOT EDU>
> Subject: Is ADSM/NT or ADSM/AIX a better choice?
>
>We currently run ADSM on OS/390 to manage a number of Novell, NT and AIX
>clients. We have tried for quite a while to obtain an acceptable level
>of performance on OS/390 1.3 but to date we have not (OS/390 ADSM and
>TCP/IP are single threaded and appear to be the bottle neck, plus OS/390
>is really optimized for CICS regions, not ADSM). In particular we have
>experienced 24+ hour restores on large Novell Super fileservers. We now
>believe that a dedicated machine for ADSM is the way to achieve
>consistent, high levels of performance.
>
>We have done some benchmark tests on ADSM/NT and ADSM/AIX. Both
>platforms appear to easily outperform OS/390 in all of the tests we have
>done to date.
>
>Does anyone know of performance benchmarks comparing NT to AIX for ADSM?
>
>Does anyone have any objective reasons why we should prefer to NT or
>AIX?

>We are looking at either a Compaq 7000 for NT or RS/6000 H50 for AIX.
>ATL  will probably be a IBM 3575  with the new "C" drives which are
>rated at 7 Meg/Sec and have 1.6 terabytes of storage (uncompressed)  for
>either machine.

>We have the expertise in-house to support either operating system so
>that is not an issue for us.