With OES 2.0, Novell Moves NetWare To Linux

apokryphos writes "Novell's long journey from NetWare to Linux is finally complete, with Open Enterprise Server 2.0. Linux-Watch takes a look at the newly-released OES 2.0: 'Now, with OES 2.0, the NetWare operating system kernel, NetWare 6.5 SP7, is still there if you run it, but it runs on top of the Xen hypervisor. You can also run the NetWare services, or a para-virtualized instance of NetWare, on top of Xen with the SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) 10 SP 1 kernel. So, if you're wedded to NetWare and its way of doing things, you don't have to wave good-bye to it.'"

Comments

Re:Skeptical

[Orange Crush]

Ummm, Netware was going strong long past Win 3.1. MS didn't really get their act together until Win2k. Even as just a file server, Netware was way ahead of windows with easy-to-manage folder-by-folder (if you want) ACLs. Heck, Netware 4 still plays nicely with Windows XP.

Also, any idea how much of a PITA it would be to migrate from Netware without having to re-do all file and user permissions? Yeah, there are tools, but I've never had much luck with them.

For those who don't know netware ...

[damn_registrars]

There is a good reason to keep netware on a network, if its already there, and its not just laziness or fear.

Actually, two things come to mind immediately - TCO, and the netware permissions.

From my experiences when I ran netware servers, a system could be thrown together for about $5-600 (thats hundreds,
not thousands...) that could serve directory services, files, and print jobs to 200 clients simultaneously without batting an eye, and do it nonstop for months. Its hard to get anything else to match those numbers for that little $$.

Though one of the true hallmarks of netware is the permissions set that it has, that I really haven't seen an equal to in anything else. IIRC, there were 8 different permissions that could be set in netware, as opposed to the 3 in *nix. It is particularly valuable if you want to use directory structure as part of your workflow - for example a user could have a directory where they could write, read, but not modify or delete. I ran this for a newspaper, and the utility of this should be quite apparent.

So just to answer it for all those people who are speculating why netware is still relevant - yes, it is. There are plenty of good reasons for people to keep it around. Though I'll admit it will likely become yet another good product killed by the micro$oft marketing machine.