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quaie
Asked: 2010-09-25 12:48:25 +0800 CST

novell netware benefits

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I am in the process of moving a business' servers to a virtualized solution; so far so good, but the main problem is an old novell server (v4.something, from 1999)

it seems to me that its functions are more like active directory's --> auth users, map shares depending on group membership, fileserver

are there any other functions of this ancient program which I should be aware of ? can it be replaced with AD or a samba deployment ?

supposing I have to keep this solution, is it possible to install a higher version (I have found 5.11 on some torrents) and import somehow the old config ?

(the fact of seeing its ancient-ms-dos-like console makes me stay away from this ... software :))

thanks

novell

4 Answers

  1. There is a good upgrade path to this technology. While Netware as an OS is EOL, the services it provided included eDirectory (which provides great user management and authentication plus very solid LDAP services) and NCP file sharing have been migrated to Linux. They are part of a product called Open Enterprise Server (OES) that is very much a going concern.

    The marketing materials are here: http://www.novell.com/products/openenterpriseserver/

    I would recommend taking whatever the Netware 4 server is used for, and migrating those services to an OES server for the following reasons:

    1. An upgrade preserves the existing server services better.

    2. OES and eDirectory is easier to support than openldap.

    3. It is more cost-effective than AD.

    Who knows? You might fall in love with the technology.

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  2. If you're the support guy, and you know nothing about it, my first advice is to stay away from it. My second advice is to learn it well enough to migrate off of it.

    Novell Netware and NDS was great, it was better than AD, but it's not the wave of the future. But it does what you asked - centralized user auth, fileserving, printing (you forgot that), even database and applications. Make sure you know what you're doing - you could find out that they have an accounting application that depends on BTrieve after you've migrated the fileshares and print queues and turned off the Netware machine.

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  3. How much data, how many users? You may find it easier to start over :)

    Tom

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  4. Best Answer

    netware was pretty cool, actually.

    unfortunately, it is no longer used (much) in the SME environment it sounds like you're in - so a change to active directory makes more sense. the process of setting up the netware server again is going to require resources that aren't going to be that cheaply/easily available...

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