The purpose of this document is to describe File Service Processes (FSP's) in NetWare. This information has been gathered in a piecemeal process. Novell does not seem to be able to provide a definitive description of FSP's and what options in a NetWare OS affect FSP's. Some of this information comes from laborious trial and error testing. What is an FSP? An FSP is essentially a task in a multitasking system. The more FSP's you have the more requests the file server can handle simultaneously. Because NetWare is a non-preemptive multi-tasking system the exact details of how FSP's are utilized are not obvious. But this is not important. What is important is the understanding that the more FSP's you have the better off you are. You can check the number of FSP's you have by entering the "config" command on the file server console, or by running FCONSOLE and looking on the Statistics Summary screen. How many FSP's do you need? Novell personnel on Compuserve have stated that you should have a minimum of 2 FSP's. From my experience you can run with one FSP but you will probably have problems. We have been running 4 meg 20 mhz 386 file servers with 1 FSP. The only real problem we have is when something large hits the network. If that something uses the only FSP, other network requests will be put on hold until an FSP is free. If a request if held too long it will eventually timeout and a network error will occur. I have heard from various sources that this can lock up the workstation or the file server, but I cannot verify this. Usually I can choose Retry at the "Abort, Retry, Ignore" message and the workstation will recover. This seems to happen most often when a large NCOPY or NPRINT is performed. What affects the number of FSP's you have? Evidently NetWare uses a 64k data segment just like most programs. This data segment is reserved for certain information. Information about volumes, spooled printers, and network drivers make up some of the data stored in this segment. When NetWare is finished initializing these items it takes whatever memory remains and uses it for as many FSP's as it can create. Because much of the information on Compuserve is in disagreement about such issues as whether the number of volumes and spooled printers affects FSP's I decided to do my own tests. The objective of these tests was to determine the affect of things. These objectives are: 1 - Determine the affect of the number of volumes. 2 - Determine the affect of the number of spooled printers. 3 - Determine the affect of using SMC PC500FS cards instead of SMC PC110 cards. 4 - Determine the affect of using SMC's reduced service 1KB and 2KB drivers with the PC500FS card instead of the default 4KB driver. These tests were performed using: SFT Netware 2.15 4 meg 20 mhz 386 WD7000 - FASST SCSI controller CDC Wren IV 340 meg drive SMC PC110 Arcnet SMC PC500 File Server Card Test 1 1 32 meg volume 0 spooled printers SMC PC110 Arcnet card This yielded 8 FSP's. Test 2 10 32 meg volumes 0 spooled printers SMC PC110 Arcnet card This yielded 6 FSP's. Test 3 1 32 meg volume 3 spooled printers SMC PC110 Arcnet card This yielded 6 FSP's. Test 4 1 32 meg volume 0 spooled printers SMC PC500FS card with 4KB drivers This yielded 2 FSP's. Test 5 1 32 meg volume 0 spooled printers SMC PC500FS card with 2KB drivers This yielded 3 FSP's. Test 6 1 32 meg volume 0 spooled printers SMC PC500FS card with 1KB drivers This yielded 5 FSP's. Test 7 8 32 meg volumes 0 spooled printers SMC PC500FS card with 4KB drivers This yielded 1 FSP. Conclusions The conclusions of these tests are: 1 - The number of volumes does make a difference in the number of FSP's you have. I did not test to see if the size of the volumes has any affect, but I seriously doubt that it does. 2 - The number of spooled printers does make a difference in the number of FSP's you have. 3 - The SMC PC500FS card (as opposed to the SMC PC110 card) will lower your number of FSP's regardless of what drivers you use for it. 4 - The 1KB and 2KB drivers for the SMC PC500FS card provide definite FSP advanatages over the standard 4KB drivers shipped with the card. Final Points 1 - An FSP probably requires a minimum fixed amount of memory. Reducing your number of volumes or printers by a small amount may not increase your number of FSP's. 2 - According to SMC, the 2KB driver inflicts a 3% performance penalty over the 4KB driver, and the 1KB driver inflicts a 5% performance penalty. This is a minimal penalty considering the importance of FSP's. My opinion on the PC500FS card is that the primary performance advantage probably comes from the 16 bit interface and the priority chip, not the buffer size. 3 - SMC's 1KB and 2KB drivers are available on Compuserve (GO SMC). 4 - When is Novell going to get serious with it's 386 product and drop the price by $4000 ?