Dealing with Directory Dilemmas?

Bardaris asks: "In my work environment, I maintain a large number of Novell, and Windows servers. Although Novell is the dominant OS, vendor applications are increasingly making the change from Novell based apps, to single NT4/Win 2k servers. This has put a strain on my PDC. Currently the MS boxes are outnumbering my Novell 30 to 22, with more Win 2k servers in the coming months, as each application vendor has found it cheaper to dictate a sole Win server for their app, rather than sharing nicely on Novell. Now I've been tasked with assessing what to do with the Windows environment. My preference leans to eDirectory and dirXML to contain and maintain the Microsoft proliferation, but what of my NT4 PDC. Should I upgrade to Active Directory (if so, how)? Leave it as is until the last possible moment, whatever that may be? Is there a better way? I highly doubt I can sell a Linux/Samba solution, given the current state of the server environment and political climate here in my company, so that's not one of my options. I'm wondering if other Slashdot readers have ran across similar problems and how they tackled this issue."

Comments

Re:Just make the Move

[NanoGator]

"Dump Novell, consolidate to Active Directory and W2K/2K3, and get on with your life."

Do you think they'd be running multiple OS's if they could consilidate? Man I hate answers like this.

Re:Just make the Move

[FreeLinux]

It's funny that everywhere I have seen someone make the move from Novell to Windows 2000/2003 they replace one Netware server with three Windows servers. And, they still have twice as many problems as they did before they switched. The solution is always the same, add more Windows boxes.

Not for me thanks, I've had enough.

Re:Stay with Novell

[duffbeer703]

AD is awesome... it is the cheapest way to integrate LDAP into your environment with Windows clients.

The sucky thing is the Microsoftized Kerberos implementation... they modified the specs some to break interoperability. I've heard of people using standard Kerberos with Windows or MS Kerberos with something else, but have never seen and documentation.