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Novell Nterprise Linux Services Announced
eer writes "At BrainShare (Novell's customer/developer conference), Novell customers reacted positively to the news that they would have the choice of running Novellâ(TM)s network services on Linux or NetWare or both. Today the company provided more details by introducing Novell Nterprise Linux Services, which will give customers file, print, messaging, directory and management services in an integrated package that runs on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server distributions--along with providing those customers with comprehensive Novell technical support, training and consulting services for Linux. Partner companies, including IBM, HP, Dell, Red Hat and others, also voiced their support for Novell's Linux."
Buy a vowel.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
I thought that they named it Novell NTerprise, and were setting themselves up for litigation.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
At BrainShare (Novell's customer/developer conference)...
How many brains do they have to share between them?
http://twitter.com/onion2k
And, if i'm reading this right, we can have files under linux too!
In your face SCO!
More great stuff from them.
... can anyone challenge GroupWise?
I have seen many people put Novell down recently with all the SCO crap going on. But the truth is, they really do make great stuff that nobody can compete with (right now). Linux/Sendmail/mySQL is great (I use it a lot) but everything from Novell is just easier to deploy (flame bait).
I mean
Now this is an important step for Linux! To have integrated file, print, messaging, directory and management services on Linux is something sorely needed. Way to go Novell!
I'm not sure about that. Can you imagine if Novell had announced this 2 years ago? Linux lovers would have praised them, but no one else would have taken them seriously because so few people took Linux seriously. It would have been another questionable product/marketing move from Novell.
Now, however, Linux has tons of mind share, and we also know why Novell got involved with the SCO train wreck.
--madgeorge
Boy have you been left out in the cold. I think IPX has been left out since 6.0 and an option since 5.0.
"that runs on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server distributions"
Kids! Never trust any product with Enterprise in the title unless it comes with batteries and has a light up deflector array and real torpedo and phaser sounds.
On a similar note, if a website ever uses the acronym "SME" even semi-seriously then you should avoid that assiduously too.
graspee
http://forge.novell.com/modules/news/ a SourceForge repository of Open Source stuff for Novell. RSYNC, Apache, bash, gcc etc.....
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I mean, just a couple of weeks ago, Novell was trying to put SCO off of Linux by claiming ownership of key UNIX Copyrights. With this announcement just made - I would think they were trying to keep SCO at bay so that they could come out with this new product announcement and not have a certain amount of uncertainty about it from the Industry. After all, they have been developing this software for years ... yes years! There's a lot of money tied up in this.
It all makes a little more sense now. I'm glad they finally embraced their services on Linux though. I always like the Novell File Services!
The truth is usually just an excuse for lack of imagination.
The United States' second largest bank, universities, hospitals, county and state governments.
Yeah, people still use it.
It didn't run a modified version of MS DOS, it used DOS to bootstrap itself.
integrated package that runs on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server distributions
...
I can't wait to see a version of Novell's package for OpenLinux, or even UnixWare+LKP
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The problem is, this ain't gonna be cheap, especially if you buy one of the enterprise Linux's mentioned. Novell's got to make it extremely convenient for their existing sysadmins and Linux/UNIX sysadmin's too. Unless Novell does something miraculous, both groups will need to be retrained for this product. Novell admins will have to learn Linux and Linux admins will have to learn Novell. The Linux admins are going to scream why should I learn Novell when i can use NFS/NIS/LPD or Samba and Novell admins are going to scream why should I learn Linux when i can just use Netware. Sounds great, but they're gonna need to overcome one of their traditional weeknesses - MARKETING!
Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
it only used MSDOS(or PCDOS or DRDOS) for bootstrapping, Netware was never a "modified version of MS DOS".
I can't see this as being anything as a "good thing".
Used to be, the reason why you bought Netware was to do thse these things:
1. File Server.
2. Print Server.
3. Administration of 1 and 2.
For a long time, Novell had the best of 1 and 2 - and with their directory services, they weren't matched. I loved using Novell's admin tools. They were usually easy enough to get in and do what you want, and powerful enough to do all sorts of other things. You could set up rights, trickle them down or stop trickling, take care of email stuff - right there in one nice interface. Sure, it wasn't perfect - but compared to the compeition....
The problem came with Linux, and people realized "Hm - do I need to spend this much for a file/print server?" They web server offerings in my humble opinion stank, and I never really liked Groupwise that much. It could do a lot of cool things, but other simple things that I would have expected were beyond it's grasp.
So I see this as a Very Good Thing for Novell. In a way, they can be like Apple, only for the Server world on Linux. Apple's OS X's strength is that you can do all the cool Unix stuff you want - without having to do anything Unix-y to get it to work. You can crawl under the hood if you like or just sit at the dashboard.
I'm browsing through the Novell offering, and here's what I'm hoping for:
1. A kick-ass admin tool like thier old NWAdmin.exe tool. Start making plugins for things like Sendmail, Postfix, Apache - whatever. Go ahead and charge for the plugins so we can just sit back and go "click, click, click" and get stuff done rather that going "Hey - what was the setting in Apache for turning on directory indexing!" (Yes, I know what it is, thank you, move on.) Sure - there's stuff like Webmin that can do this, but Novell's Admin tool was still (IMHO) cooler. And with drag and drop, the directory style layout, and being able to click on a user and get all info right there would be most excellent.
Make it Java based so I don't have to run it off of Windows. (What the hell was up with that, anyway? I could never figure out why Novell couldn't make an Admin tool for their servers that didn't run on Windows - granted, the last Novell I really used was Netware 5, so don't sue me if things have changed.)
2. You can have multiple Linux servers out there, and instead of trying to figure out your LDAP settings and that, just install the software, start the admin, and say "These Directory users have these rights on this box on this directory" - click, click, click - you're done, have a nice day. This was something promised with eDirectory, but I'd like to see it really hardcore delivered.
With this, merge the strength of Linux's "no license fee" with Novell's admin/directory tools. I want to have a server I can throw 5, 500, 50000 users on and not worry about licensing - and I just pay Novell for the user interface and tools. I can even see paying Novell like their mass server license - I pay for how many concurrent users I have on the system, unlimited servers. (So, for example, I can have 500 servers out there, and if I only need a 5 user license, I just pay Novell once for 5 users to administrate the boxes.)
I think if Novell plays their cards right and goes for the "administrate, authenticate, and authorize" bit for Linux services, they can work with Linux to make a lot of money, and make Linux so Admin Friendly as to keep pushing that other desktop/server OS out of the market.
Of course, I could be wrong. But... isn't it nice to dream....
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Novell customers reacted positively to the news that they would have the choice of running Novellâ(TM)s network services on Linux or NetWare or both
In other news, IBM announced they'll give their customers the chance to run OS/2 on AS/600.
-- No sig today
The only good reason to use Novell is it's BULLET PROOF file system with proper file access control and the excellent file undelete utility SALVAGE though other companies have caught up since the last time I used Novell as a Sys Admin in '98, I've yet to see any other x86 network OS with a standard utility like SALVAGE which can undelete files regardless of the application which deleted them.
It's worth the thousands it cost for the licenses when the research dept deletes a days worth of work which hasn't been backed up yet while tidying up their server files.
Try undeleting a file on an NT server which was deleted by a DOS client or a Windows application file browser... ouch painfull.
Those files in the NT recycle bin are only there because the app e.g. Explorer put them there not by the OS.
Please (please?) can we stop with the "Novell runs on MS-DOS" business? Propriatary hardware (Sun, IBM, most minis and workstations) have ROM-based bootstrap loaders and monitors built in so that the machine will boot and can be managed/repaired even if the main OS is dead. This doesn't mean that these systems "run" on the bootstrap loader.
Since about Netware 1.1 Novell software has always run on commodity Intel boxes. Commodity boxes don't have bootstrap loaders or monitors. So Novell uses xx-DOS, which is cheap, simple, fits on a floppy, and understood by most sysadmins worldwide, as their bootstrap loader and monitor. After boot, feel free to do a "REMOVE DOS" command and purge all traces of DOS from memory.
Netware DOES NOT "run on MS-DOS". And if you think it does, I really have to question that "+5 Informative".
sPh
Is there any reason for anyone to consider using it...
Here are a few reasons:
With ZenWorks, you can lock down a users' W2K or XP workstation, deploy/install applications and printers without leaving your desk and remote control their PC if they are having a problem (technical support).
With groupwise, you have all the functionality of any other Enterprise level Email system. With the security of GroupWise, you have less worries with some of the Virus' that can plague many of the MS Email systems.
The Directory Services of Novell is far superiour of any other company's, mostly because it is more mature (going on what... 9, 10 years now?). Novell's eDirectory can handle about a billion objects in the Tree. Maybe more now, I am not sure
Of course, Novell NetWare runs pure IP or a mixed IPX/IP environment if you want. Since 5.0, NetWare has had IP natively.
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Who cares! Linux doesn't need Novell, or Microsoft for that matter.
I earned my Novell CNE (Certified NetWare Engineer) back in 1996, and since then watched Microsoft's Windows NT steadily eat away their market share. Novell succeeded back in the 80's and early 90's because they filled a need. It didn't matter that their support was bad or their marketing non-existent, because at one time NetWare was the only game in town. But they lost their market share to Microsoft because they did not improve their support or their marketing.
But times have changed. Microsoft may be the leader now, and although they do a good job of marketing, their support is awful, mostly because their products are bloated piles of spagetti code. I ditched working with NetWare because I can do everything and more with NT, and then I ditched NT because I can do everything and more with Linux and can support it or make changes without things blowing up. Linux will never have the marketing that Microsoft has, but it doesn't need it because word of mouth and an ever improving product is the best form of advertising.
Sorry Novell. Sorry Microsoft. You treated guys like me who paid thousands of dollars for your certifications like crap for years, so we left and decided to write our own. Linux doesn't need Novell or Microsoft to succeed in the long run. Anyone who says different hasn't worked in the industry long enough.
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Obviously you've never been aware that Novell has been equipped with Phasers for years.
There is a poll on the page with "what Linux distribution do you use". Debian got a lot of votes (more than SuSE). As RedHat and SuSE Enterprise Server software doesn't come cheap, I suggest that people who like Debian should go vote. Maybe Novell will support Debian as well. Think about it -- the platform OS will come at zero cost.
Does anyone wonder how personal biases get introduced into business decisions? Maybe when people decide to completely disregard all products from a company for no reason other than their ignorance of those products.
Just to prove it, go look at the capabilities of the DirXML product from Novell. Then I can explain how our HR department processes a new hire and DirXML automatically creates the network account, portal account, email account and gives access to all appropriate backend systems seamlessly. And then it keeps everything in sync.
Well, that post was trollish, but seriously, Novell's network administration is superior to the way *nix or NT works (until MS created Active Directory - a clone of the way netware worked from verison 4 on).
In the NT world, and *nix, you have an account on a machine, you log in to one machine, then maybe connect to others, maybe having permissions there or not, all controlled by the servers you connect to or the NFS mounted shares, whatever.
In the netware world, you authenticate to the network as a whole, with one account, you have different permissions on various network resources (not servers), and through replication this permission set is passed anywhere its needed. Any workstation on the network can authenticate you to the network, because you have an account on the network. If the local server doesn't know about you, it can query around and find your account, and your envirnment is perfectly identical to what you had at 'home' as it were. Properly integrated with the client OS, moving offices is completely painless - this is not the case in NT or *nix setups.
I've not done a huge *nix installation, perhaps there are ways to make *nix do this, but it appears very very server centric, much like NT 4 was.
At one time the only viable solution for a large wan with thousands of users was Netware, and I'd argue that Active directory is still much inferior to it (and slower).
Dont' get me wrong, in that same vast installation, any critical service should be running on some flavor of *nix, because I don't see Novell competing there in the slightest.
When they finally ditched their silly IPX protocol (well or strongly favored TCP/IP) around version 5ish, Novell/*nix networks should have dominated the planet.
I like Linux as much as the next guy, but I use the right tool for the right job, and don't see *nix as being comparable to Netware in some respects (at least before this sort of project), but then again, neither is Netware as good as Linux in others.
-- If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment. -- Harry F. Banks
You are British, yes?
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If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.