[RESOLVED] HELP!

[lycia69]

We have NT servers that run fine, but since my company is Mormon owned, and so is Nobell, the brain trust wants to Switch to Nobell! Short of nuking Utah, help??!!??!!

[MacGyver]

Do this: (and put everything in writing, you will thank me later)

Get a hold of a consultant that will do the changeover. Get them to come to your office and examine what you've got, and get a quote (make sure you are sitting down when you read it, make sure your boss is standing up when he reads it )

Get a quote to train all of your company techs to become CNA's (and maybe CNE's, too for good measure!) so you can run the new system effectively. Also get a estimate of how long it will take to train somebody. Alternatively, find out how much the going rate is for CNA/CNE's.

Get a quote from Novell as to how much it will cost for enough server licenses and user licenses for your current setup. Again, do the same thing with the quote.

With any luck, the sticker shock of all the above should beat some sense into your company's brass!

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sHIFT hAPPENS

[cyberhh]

Also keep in mind the NetWare is an excellent File/Print server and an ungodly horrible application server. Windows 2000 is a stable server platform that licensed NFS from Novell as Active Directory to complete their package and create a very nice server package. The upgrade cost to go to Windows 2000 would be infinitely more cost effective than to replace all the NT boxes and go to NetWare - look just at the downtime you will generate changing the server OS over and reinstalling all the client software, not to mention that every peice of the network setup must be reconfigured since the way NetWare works is completely different from how NT handles it.

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Death is lighter than a feather - duty heavier than a mountian.

[pcshark]

Actually, NDS and Active Directory are two completely different things, and Microsoft did not use NDS in any way to create their Active Directory.

Active Directory is a form of Domain structure with two-way trusts built in, but it really goes beyond that, using the x.400 naming standard and a heirarchical structure. NDS is a tree structure, also based on the x.400 standard, in a heirarchical structure. This is where the similarity ends. NDS is a partitionable database, which greatly improves performance particularly in WAN environments. The NDS tree can contain billions of objects, and reports have been made showing up to 8,000 users per server in practical use, although Novell recommends a ratio of 1,000/1. Also, because the schema is extensible, the administrator can create object properties that are specific to his or her own environment. For instance, a law office may want to keep track of the university/college that their lawyers graduated from, and the years they graduated. You can make these properties part of the user object. Active Directory does not have an extensible schema. What they give you is what you get.

Also, while NetWare of the past (4.2 and prior) was typically file/print services only and a lousy application server, NetWare 5 has made great strides to compete in that market with SMP support and various database engine support, such as SQL and Oracle. I just read an article on NetWare 6, now in open beta and due for release toward the end of 2Q 2001, and the improvements they've made are astronomical as far as improved SMP support (up to 32 processors out of the box), clustering services (up to 32 nodes in a cluster), NSS as the filesystem, increased performance in NDS (now called eDirectory).

I've always chanted the "File/Print only" mantra when it comes to NetWare, but I have to tell you that the winds of change are on the horizon, and I'm looking forward to the next release of NetWare.

The article can be found in the October issue of NetWare Connection (Now Novell ConNection) at http://www.ncmag.com

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R. Bret Walker, CNE
(I'm not a Master Tech, but I play one on TV)

Wondering what videos to rent this weekend? Check out The People's Reviews, movie reviews written for the people and by the people.

[cyberhh]

Honestly, thank you PC Shark for the education. It does appear that I was misinformed, and I am looking at NetWare 5 again as a WebSphere server and cannot wait for 6.0. I love NetWare, especially the administration in NetWare 4.x and above.

Incidentally you are one of the users I look for as I find I constantly learn something new from your posts.

Thanks
howard

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Death is lighter than a feather - duty heavier than a mountian.

[pcshark]

Thanks for the kind words. I learn a lot from these forums as well (-:

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R. Bret Walker, CNE
(I'm not a Master Tech, but I play one on TV)

Wondering what videos to rent this weekend? Check out The People's Reviews, movie reviews written for the people and by the people.

[PJPilate]

I'm a Lan tech in a Novell/Win2k Enviroment, so let me say what i've found.... Novell Netware 5.0 FAR FAR FAR outreaches Win2k in administration, software installs, and file/print sharing.

The Zenworks for Desktops 3.0 is a much better product than its predecessors. You can... image/ghost a machine, and blow down ZenWorks packages, which are fully installed applications (no more next... next.... typical installs) and deploy a PC, or a non working PC in just a fraction of the time you can with a NT box running SMS. You can remotely manage PCs, transfer files, and even have them do unattended maintence, with a FRACTION of the hardware... like... PII will support upwards of 8000 objects... thats users, printers, workstations, applications, and you can split that up to support upto 64000 objects. Our organization has over 30,000 objects, spread across 120 Netware 5.1 servers, across the US. Our new 2k servers are top of the line, quad processors, 1 gig ram, and they still run slower than our 4 year old Pentium Pro 180 servers with 256 megs of ram!

The issue of cost alone justifies the switching over to Big Red, but thats just my opinion.... remember. Novell started out building an OS that did file/print/user management really well. Microsoft built a consumer operating system with bells and whistles, then integrated it into NT/2k. Why go with someone that cobbled together an OS with consumer bricks? Netware is a NOS, and only a NOS. just my 2 cents though.

[cyberhh]

I completely agree with PJ, My only concern with NetWare has ever been as an appliction server, which I am recieving an education is - it achieves very well in the recent versions of it's NOS. You must admit NT is a bear to administer in an enterprise - I love admin. for NetWare - the NWAdmin tool and NDS make life wonderful (compared with NetWare 3.1) or NT.

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Death is lighter than a feather - duty heavier than a mountian.

[MacGyver]

ZENworks is the kicker though. It wasn't for ZEN's ability to roll out software via the network, we would constantly be pounded by viruses.

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sHIFT hAPPENS

[cyberhh]

We use a batch file in the login script to update the NAV software when a new virus update is released.

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Death is lighter than a feather - duty heavier than a mountian.

[pcshark]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by cyberhh:
We use a batch file in the login script to update the NAV software when a new virus update is released.

</font>

The corporate edition of NAV version 7.0 and above has an association between server and workstation, so that when the server is updated, the workstation is automatically updated as well. Check out the NAV Corporate Edition thread in the AntiVirus forum (-:

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R. Bret Walker, CNE
(I'm not a Master Tech, but I play one on TV)

Wondering what videos to rent this weekend? Check out The People's Reviews, movie reviews written for the people and by the people.