local installation. The peripherals will be consistent with UNIX (e.g., a VGA video card, keyboard, and mouse {optional}. Windows 2000 can be scaled to multi-processor servers with large databases spanning multiple drives. Windows 2000 can also run on 64-bit processors such as the Itanium or Opteron. Although these configurations would not be high performance, they represent possible implementations.
             UNIX also has modest requirements and research indicates it could run on the system described for Windows 2000 however that does not represent a typical UNIX implementation. UNIX is more commonly implemented on RISC (reduced instruction set computer) processor. These are commonly found from vendors such as HP, Sun, or IBM. Vendors have their own proprietary designation for these servers, so we will use a benchmark system from IBM. The IBM benchmark will include a 1.65 Power5 64-bit processor with 1 GB of memory and 36 GB of hard disk space (of which a minimum of 3GB is dedicated to the OS).
             The corporate market is interested in how to integrate servers and share network resources so IT dollars can be spent effectively and efficiently. Microsoft and UNIX offer an interoperability toolkit that provides the ability and simplifies cross platform management. Corporations do not want to be locked into purchasing one suite of software from one vendor but instead, use resources that will improve security, reliability, availability, scalability, enhance CPU performance, and does so in a cost effective environment.
             Corporations have made significant investments in both UNIX and Windows based applications, databases, and other business processes. The investment made in these operating systems were made to minimize the total cost of ownership (TOC) or reducing costs as the market moves forward. Information Technology (IT) budgets are limited and it is the prudent system administrator that can translate resource experience and know...