Hey Mac & Jimmr

[rblockmon]

Hey guys,

How did you guys become so good with Novell? How long did it take for you guys to know your way around Novell?

thanks,

rblockmon

[jimmr13]

About 7 years CNA~3 first then CNE~4~5.
But I find something new Almost daily,
They don't teach every thing in school.
Novell Coolslutions
Novell Knowledgebase
WinDrivers!

[MacGyver]

Where I used to go to public school (about 9 years ago), the whole school district used Novell 3.12 servers. It didn't take me long to realize that the school district computer techs didn't set up the network right, and I was able to give my account full supervisor access. Fortunately for them I was a nice guy, I could have wiped out the whole network! Eventually I figured out that all the servers in the school were connected together and was able to access other servers and print to printers on the other side of the building. In grade 11 and 12 I helped with the school newspaper (I basically ran it myself) and worked on special projects. I had a lot of toys to play with which cost 10's of thousands of dollars back then. (legalsize flatbed scanner and 24-bit color)

In college, again we had 30 workstations on a Novell Network (3.12 again I think) Well everyone worked crazy hours (students ya know) and if there was a problem they would come to me since there wasn't any tech on site at night. Usually it was a crummy network connection (I DETEST 10-BASE2 COAX ETHERNET) or an AutoCAD question.

When I started my present job, we had a Novell 3.12 server (again) but this time it died a horrible death in Feb 98. The cooling fans failed and the hard drive cooked itself. Our head network tech was 3000 miles away in Vancouver so he couldn't help. So he walked me through a complete Novell Netware install from scratch. I learned a lot that day.

In april 99 we junked our old 3.12 server which was a POS P100 clone for a brand new HP Netserver P2/333 with over 200MB of RAM and RAID. What a difference! We got all new workstations and ADSL net access, too! We also switched over to 10-baseT from 10-base2 coax, and I took great pleasure in trashing all the old coax! We are running 4.11 on it right now, and should be upgrading to 5.0sp6 in a couple of months. I am the one responsible for making sure the local network is running at all times, and fixing it when something goes wrong. Because I am in our company's most eastern office, I get in 2 hours before anyone else so I can fix most problems and act on virus alerts before people in Vancouver even get out of bed!

Now my next challenge is outfitting our brand new Ottawa office with our company's standard server and network setup.

I am 24 now. I have no formal training whatsoever. No certs of any kind. Completely self taught. The Novell Knowledgebase is an excellent resource, and one of the best resources on the net IMHO! It has helped me a lot and gotten me out of some sticky situations indeed. The Novell Coolsolutions sites are very useful as well and the writers are a little eccentric at times. I have learned over the years that you don't have to be a know-it-all, just know where to get it all. Oh yeah, where would I be without WinDrivers?