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Novell Releasing NDS for Linux
Eric Feldman writes, "Novell will finally be showing its NDS product running natively on Linux. Red Hat is listed as a vendor who will be at the Brainshare conference in March, and Caldera was there last year. The article also talks about some open-source license problems Novell has been having, as well as the possibility of some parts of Groupwise being released under Novell's Open Source License. The next version of Groupwise (code named BulletProof) is supposed to be announced at Brainshare also. It will be XML-based and tightly integrated with the directory."
This has got to be good for Linux - NDS could well prove to be a key technology, particularly as by most reports it not only beat MS's offering to market, but also is the better of the two. It also serves Novell well to have NDS on all available platforms - theres little point having a global directory for your organisation if it's specific to only a few systems.
I don't think the license matters - this is a business product aimed at IT departments, who are quiet happy to pay for serious products - but it should help legitimise the use of Linux for other purposes (why can't we use it as a web server, it's already used for NDS...)
Even with a standard commercial licence, this is a tremendous step forward - NDS, for all it is a damned expensive way of administering a network, is still the best way I have seen to date. It is stable, cross-platform (and single-login enabling) and can manage almost anything (from remote resources to application licence counting to bandwidth allocation from NDS enabled routers).
However, the company I work for rejected it for NT administration - purely on the pricing structure; for each registered (not concurrent!) user, per server, you had to pay a large NDS licence fee, with obviously the cost of a standard NT user licence on top of that. I would want to see how the new NLS "per user" model is applied to both the Linux and Nt clients - and how much a Server licence for Linux is under this scheme.....
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-=DaveHowe=-
Here are some relevant references from Novell's site:
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(darren)
I am aware of many customers that would not let Linux in the server room if it wasn't possilbe to manage it centrally with NDS. Why? Do you ever think why are so many MCSEs needed? Because to administer an NT network you need a lot of silly NT admins that will run around silly NT boxes that need to be rebooted or administered.
NetWare does not need that, hence the little number of CNEs around. A typical CNE will lean back on the chair and happily administer a horrendously huge network composed of NetWare, NT and (since recently) Sun boxes. Thanks to NDS. The companies that are used to keep the administrative expenses low (NOT those having a pure NT network, obviously) didn't want to have to deal with Linux because it's a separate box, unattached to the rest of the NDS tree. Now, Linux has a way into those companies, too.
And believe me, those NDS-enabled companies are much more willing to work with Linux than the NT-only companies, for the simple reason that the NT-ony companies have IM departements run by morons.
Sigged!
My experience is completely different.
In our environment, Novell is a dinosaur. To its credit, the old install base of Novell servers are performing their jobs admirably. But they're being replaced by NT. And the admins know it. They can't wait to get pulled from the Novell pool and get their MCSE. One admin I talked to was rather bitter about being held in an "unmarketable" position by the company.
Technical merrit need not apply to this conversation. Certification is as much about marketing as technical issues (be it the base technology or the individuals involved). And true to form, Microsoft has positioned themselves (and their certifications) into a much nicer position than Novell.
One final comment...
If the generalizations expressed in this post were slighting Linux, it would have been labled a troll. And to think we feel cheated by other's FUD.