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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.'"
I could have sworn they sold this product ten years ago...
Presumably the reason you are sticking with a platform that has not really changed much in a decade is because you are too risk-averse to jump to something else. That said, is swapping out your NetWare servers with "Nu-NetWare" running on top of a Linux kernel really less risky than just switching to Linux -- or to Windows with Active Directory, for that matter? If it's taken you this long to even consider replacing those servers, couldn't you have spent some of that time constructively -- by coming up with a longterm migration strategy that would enable you to minimize risk? Seriously, I have heard some arguments why NetWare is so much "better" or "more elegant" (or whatever) than a Windows network, but these arguments usually seem to hinge on some specific minor capability. It seems to me that you can get pretty much everything NetWare gives you on a Windows network with some third-party management products, with the upshot that your platform is not obsolete.
Breakfast served all day!
Netware confirms it: Netcraft is dying.
er... wait a second
Why use Novell these days? Linux builds are much more flexible and user friendly, not mention cheaper.
Netware 6.5 can run virtualized, and the nlms are also ported to linux. So you can run 6.5 in Zen for your Netware, or just run some NetWare services right on top of OES.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
eDirectory
... but not to Ubuntu. So you can have all the Novell apps on your Microsoft network.
GroupWise
ZENworks
On the other hand, Novell has ported all of them to Windows
Anyone care to comment on how nice it is to depend upon the good will of your biggest competitor for the stability of your apps?
That said, is swapping out your NetWare servers with "Nu-NetWare" running on top of a Linux kernel really less risky than just switching to Linux
Yes it is. I can test and deploy this easier than starting fresh with anything else.
couldn't you have spent some of that time constructively
I did spend that time more constructively. The boss said "I've got other things for you to do that will actually make me money. Don't worry about something that basically works."
hese arguments usually seem to hinge on some specific minor capability
It works in Netware and I can't do it as easily on any other platform. Don't denigrate something you know nothing about.
One of the fundamental premises behind your opinion is the "constant upgrade cycle" mentality.
Is IT's job making work for itself by breaking things that work or making users/systems more productive? My boss and I both choose the latter. That's why I'm happy and work lots of very regular hours.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Good Lord, you need professional help. I don't care if that was a metaphor for someone who uses and installs netware, you have serious problems.
Now what is SCO going to sell?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This sounds like Novell's version of Microsoft's "good news! We're going to keep offering Windows XP until next June!". When OES was first released, Novell proclaimed "NetWare is dead! Long live OES!". OES is supposed to be a complete NetWare replacement, running eDirectory, NSS volumes, print services, etc, etc. So now Novell is saying that the ability to run their old "dead" product on top of it's new replacement is press release worthy? And if you're running OES with NetWare in a Xen hypervisor, then what is the point of OES? Why not just install CentOS or some other well behaved Xenish distro, you'll save money and the support will be just as good.
To spite repeated assurances from the CEO Jack Messman when Novell purchased SuSE that "they were not dropping Netware, but adding linux", everyone saw through the market spin and prophesied this would happen. It's not the dropping of Netware that should concern Novell customers, but the lack of applications and features available for years in Netware that are still not in the linux versions, and the (still) glaring lack of a truly single management tool for all servers, applications, and services. (iManager was a move in the right direction, but it never seem to be complete, thus forced admins to continue using Console1, NWAdmin and the terminal). The best thing Novell could have done was to license it's awesome directory technology to anyone who wanted it, including Microsoft. The comparison between eDirectory and AD is pointless - there is none. eDirectory has features that AD can never have without a complete rewrite (and we have seen Microsoft's competence with developing new platforms via Vista). I was a huge Novell fan for many years - they had the right technology, but terrible marketing abilities. Nowadays all I am seeing is the beginning of the end of this once very promising company.
I don't make predictions, and I never will.
> Yes, DOS is still needed to boot NetWare.
.93 Linux kernel that started FOSS on its way.
Next thing you'll be telling me is that you need to boot Linux to get to VMWare ESX!! LOL, ROFL!!!!
> The problem is that Novell has (at best) remained a static target. Microsoft has been improving Windows. Linux has been improved. So now, there's really not much of a reason to run Novell's products IN A NEW DEPLOYMENT.
We like those old deployments, the ones that have been working since about '89. Oh yeah, they dropped IPX for IP, and got a life after eDirectory. Yawn.
> It seems to me that you can get pretty much everything NetWare gives you on a Windows network with some third-party management products, with the upshot that your platform is not obsolete.
Or, you could buy NetWare, say back in '89, with maybe some of that Zen stuff and have obviated the need for generations of patch work from Microsoft. Oh yeah, that was also before the
> Pretty much. Again, Novell has chosen to remain a fairly static target. Eventually, your competition will meet your feature set.
These wars have been going on for years. Has Novell kept up? Perhaps without the intense amount of FUD that its competition has needed to use.
> But remember, Novell makes more money from Microsoft (court cases, licensing deal) than it makes from sales of its products.
Cite your source. Novell shareholders will smile at you. And they'll also point out the number of jursidictions that they've successfully won in, much to the chagrin of Microsoft shareholders, who merely seek world domination.
It's an empty argument to say that Novell didn't win the war. You're probably to young to remember the Ring Zero wars, and how hilarious Windows NT 3.51 was, and how people tried in so many ways to make pre-Active Directory services work. Novell tried valiantly to out-brain Microsoft. They did it, but they couldn't out-MARKET Microsoft. There's a big difference. Want fries with that?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The reason this makes sense is mostly because of driver support. Anyone seen any major support for new iSCSI SAN devices for NetWare lately?
By moving NetWare into Xen they gain the driver support SUSE Linux Enterprise Server will have, and at the same time create an environment that makes it easy to upgrade.
To the top poster - it's not exactly easy to migrate away from a platform like eDirectory once you've committed to it, and yes Virginia, eDirectory does scale better than Active Directory any day.
Here's to the crazy ones
Did I say they did? No, I did not.
And Novell has ported eDirectory to Microsoft Windows. And who is Novell's biggest competitor?
No, Novell is not working on a "Linux GroupWise client". They're working on a Java-based one that pretty much sucks right now. And has sucked for as long as they've been working on it.
No, ZENworks is available on SuSE (and maybe Red Hat). But it is definitely available on Microsoft's Windows platform. Again, who is Novell's biggest competitor? Novell is not porting ZENworks to "Linux".
That would depend upon how you define "their job".
If they're trying to leverage GroupWise to sell more SuSE, then you are correct.
If they're trying to increase the marketshare of GroupWise, then you are wrong.
People using Microsoft Windows will, 99.9% of the time, NOT be looking to deploy GroupWise on it. They would go with Microsoft Exchange. It makes it easier for them because they have ONE company to deal with. Rather than dealing with Novell claiming that it is a Microsoft problem and Microsoft claiming that no one running Exchange sees that problem.
GroupWise could be THE corporate email server for Linux. And if it is not Novell's "job" to make it such
Who's job is it?
What REALLY is Novell's job?
Since then, the iFolder project has struggled, with people leaving, some wanting to rewrite the whole thing in C again (mono had some scalability issues), etc. Finally when they've managed to put in some of the features people have been wanting (multiple ifolder-servers, encryption etc), Novell in all its wisdom has decided again to make iFolder exclusive to OES2.
That's right: if you want to setup an iFolder server with the new 3.6 features, you need to buy OES2 at the premium price Novell is asking (and besides OES2 is full of other stuff many people don't want). So for Red Hat and any other distro, 3.4 is the latest version..
That's not entirely correct. You can download the iFolder 3.6 server from: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/dl9pf/. That is linked to from the iFolder site (www.ifolder.com). Now admittedly, I don't think there has been a whole lot of community involvement with iFolder 3, Novell has mostly been doing their own thing with it. But you can get source RPM's for iFolder 3.6 from the link above, along with RPM's for Fedora and OpenSuSE/SLES. They do need to do a better job of giving information to the community about what's going on with iFolder though. The website doesn't really have much on the new version - it seems like there are just occasional announcements out of the blue. There are also several different versions of iFolder mentioned on the site (3.2 - which came with OES 1, 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6). Hopefully Novell will do a little bit better job managing iFolder now that OES 2 was released. I love iFolder and use it a lot. It's great for people with laptops that need to have access to their files while off the network, but still want to have all of their files stored on a server to share with other people or run centralized backups, etc.
I briefly played around with OES 2 in VMware last night, and it doesn't seem too bad. I haven't been able to try out too many of the new features, but the installation was pretty smooth (especially in comparison to OES v1).
The good thing about what Novell is doing is that they are making Linux a viable option for a lot of midsized companies. RH or other distros work fine for small companies or large companies that have the technical people to make the glue to put everything together. But midsized companies need something more than RHEL/Fedora would provide out of the box, and may not have the expertise to put together a home built/3rd party solutions for directory services/groupware/web based file access/etc. You can certainly do those things with RHEL/Fedora, but not out of the box. With Novell (and MS, and maybe IBM & Sun too) you can get software to do all of that that works together without having to spend a lot of time putting together bits and pieces of software from different places.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
...Chuck Norris did.
You've never seen 'In Soviet Russia...' jokes on /. before? That's... that's... impossible!
Undelete was unquestionably the single greatest feature of netware (circa the 3.1 days) that I've not seen anywhere else.
It's still better than windows for file and print services. I don't miss trying to get the BTrieve settings for ArcServe and Solomon to play nicely together, though.
That's quite possible. I only run 6 of their servers (and GroupWise 7.02 and ZENworks). But let's see what you have
Again, no. It is "on top of" SuSE. Not Linux. I've already pointed that out.
You asked if it was Novell's "job" to port it. I asked if it wasn't Novell's job, what REALLY was Novell's job. Remember?
I noticed that you said "SLES" that time. Good.
You are wrong on the Windows Server 2003. They're supported all the way back to Win2K server.
Yet, strangely, not Debian.
And your point is
Again, you asked:
GroupWise could be THE corporate email server for Linux. And if it is not Novell's "job" to make it such
Who's job is it?
What REALLY is Novell's job?
MS-DOS, DR-DOS, OS/2, and now Linux. Netware has bootstrapped from various OS over the years.
But I refuse to take anything seriously involving Novell and Linux. At one time we were expected to believe that Caldera would change the world, and look where that went. Nowhere.
Is any of this likely to be of use to me - I have a legacy app that was written in Turbo Pascal using a file access unit that only works properly when the data files are on a Netware Server (it has close ties with NCP). We need to access the legacy data perhaps 2-3 times a year and at the moment, we just stick the caddy-based Netware disk in a spare PC fire it up for an hour or so and then close it all down - it would be ideal if there was a virtualised Netware 6.x (or even 4 or 5) that I could run on one of our Linux (or Windows) servers when required. The only other option is to port the data.
AT&ROFLMAO
I was one of several dozen people administering the Windows environment. This was from mid-98 through late 2001. We were using Windows NT workstation, NT server and I was one of the people who did the migration to Windows 2000. As of November 2000, there were still stability issues and security issues needing regular updates from Microsoft. Both of these things required rebooting the servers. I've seen several 3.x and 4.x Netware servers (from early to late 90's) that have stayed up for years at a time.
Also, it isn't 25 experienced admins, it is 25 IT personnel. I think only about 4 of them are experienced admins. The rest are techs, management, help desk, and web programmers.
The company I worked for had some of the best and brightest people I've ever worked with. The problems weren't because of lack of knowledge or skill, it was from a crappy product with scaling issues and ridiculous problems with security. The same problems many Microsoft products still suffer from today.
Since that time, I've worked in W2k environments, W2003, and I'm finally getting to work in another Netware environment. Strangely, even though we have 900 workstations and about 30 servers, we are able to provide all necessary services with only 15 IT people. Only 4 of us are experienced admins.
I've been in IT for 15 years professionally and another 10 years prior to that for recreation. I've also heard the arguments from zealots from both sides. The only ones I care about, though, are the ones from people who actually have in depth experience in both Windows and Netware. Of those people, the people who actually know what they are talking about, I don't hear a lot of praise for Windows on servers.
I can't speak about the Xen stuff that Novell has put in OES 2, but I have ran Netware 6.0 and 6.5 in VMware (6.0 in VMware Server, and 6.5 in Workstation), and they work fine.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Thanks for that. Not having played with Virtualisation yet, are these things you have to package yourself or can you just download NW6.x as pre-virtualised runtime apps?
Point me in the right direction and I'll take it from there!
AT&ROFLMAO
Salvage, that's what it was.
Seriously, why is novell 3.1 still better than whatever latest windows server os is out there?
Or were you talking about an ADP server? You mispelled "day", then.
While on the other hand, some people seem to realize that indeed, file servers should only need to serve files (hence the name!) and therefore shouldn't be expected to have thousands of dollars worth of RAM and video options.
I'm sure all the other netware guys out there have already seen this story:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20010409S0001
But nonetheless, some older servers run circles around the newest from m$ because:
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I think thats not even the first time that story has shown up in a slashdot forum this week. Obviously I'm not about to read it word-for-word, but I recall seeing a painfully long posting not long ago about some guys obsession with library poo.
Some of the stranger spam I've seen, I'll say. Apparently whoever is behind that one doesn't know how to work the slashdot url tag?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I've noticed a few fallacies in some of the comments that definitely need correcting. In general, people tend to combine arguments about Netware as an OS versus the services that have been bundled with it. Over the years Novell has been rather inept at developing , communicating, and executing a strategy on the inevitable migration from the Netware OS to something else. First they went through a period of simply supporting their services like eDirectory on Windows. Second, they acquired Suse and talked about parallel platforms with common services. Ultimately, it seems they made a rather smart decision in how they were going to continue to support their existing customer base that is utilizing Netware while giving a rather clear path to Linux. The problem Novell still has is that a lot of their services haven't been completely migrated to Linux yet.
1) eDirectory - Done. Has been multiplatform for years. Continues to be the single best meta directory repository on the market. There is not a single environment of any decent size that can get away with one directory to service all the business requirements, but eDirectory continues to be the best option for consolidating the directory data using Novell's Identity Manager suite of drivers and tools.
2) zenWorks - Pretty much anyone who has used it considers it the premiere tool for managing Windows clients. Only in the next release will they not require Netware for some of the components. The middle tier design and agent-based client make it a pleasure to work with compared to the fat Novell Client days.
3) Management tools - someone else already said it, but Novell cannot seem to stay focused (and enforce discipline on their own development teams) to provide a consistent management tool. They have gone from NWAdmin to ConsoleOne to iManager - except you still pretty much need each of them depending on what you are going to manage.
4) File permissions - The NSS file system is pretty damn good, has been ported and made available on Linux for a few years now. It still provides the leading access controls / inherited rights / filtered rights that other file systems should be ashamed of for not offering.
For sure, Novell is just as if not more screwed up than any other company. They have squandered many opportunities to reestablish themselves as a significant technology player, but they are hardly on the verge of going out of business. They are profitable and still growing as a company. Product lines die out and Netware has been dying out for years, but they are considerably more than Netware.
- Original post: -1, redundant
- First reply: -1, troll
- reply to first reply: -1, troll
And of course several AC posts on the same thread auto-modded 0 since then. Oh, if your keeping track, feces man is actually the troll that replied to the troll that replied to the redundant post. And they were all AC posts as well, IIRC.Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I have been an Admin for several iterations of Netware and now OES1. I am keen to see the direction of where OES is headed and what sort of benefits this will have.
I admit it is far harder to setup correctly, but once it's done, it's done! And Active directory... if anyone thinks it's easier then eDirectory, they obviously haven't really worked with both.
Like many things M$, It's only better the M$ way because most people don't know any better.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
When I used Netware in VMware I just created a virtual machine in VMware and then went through the normal installation process for Netware(I don't remember any caveats, but it's probably been a year or two since I installed them.) I doubt that you could find a pre-made Netware VM, since you can't distribute Netware for free. Novell has some information on installing Netware as a VM under OES 2 here. I think there are sections for both VMware and Xen. It looks like their documentation is walking you through installing OS from an ISO - not using a pre-packaged VM. Hope that helps.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Your comments remind me that the objective "everything to everyone" very nearly defines a general purpose computer, including the entry level server. There exit better ways to implement complex systems, even though like the general purpose computer which are intended to meet, to a large degree, this somewhat nebulous objective. One architectural principle, which is very important in helping to produce a complex system, and which seems to elude Microsoft is that of "loose coupling".
Some layers or components should be cleanly separated by well designed and well documented interfaces. When loose coupling is considered to be an important design objective, you can wind up with a system in which both a rapid evolution in technology, and a stable technology and production base, are possible. (More generally, the complex system can facilitate multiple competing objectives, and let you, the client, operator, or administrator, choose at run time which objectives you seek.) The architecture permits this, for example, by providing abstractions such as "modules" which let the administrator choose what components to load and run, swapping in new modules if they need to be "on the cutting edge" or using the tried and true ones if they need stability more than any other objective, for example. As a reasonable example of this principle, consider "the web" as a loosely coupled complex system, or consider simply Apache as a very coherent example of a single system where multiple modules doing different things and created by different authors co-exist pretty peacefully over generations of software revisions and wholesale architectural changes.
When loose coupling is ignored, or subjugated to the desire to create opportunities for "vendor lock", you wind up with things like the SMB/CIFS snafu (that may sound harsh, but calling it a "protocol" is overly generous).
The items you mention in your point "2" above are nearly all rooted, ultimately, in the failure to consider the principle of loose coupling, when designing a complex system. Well, honestly as far as I can tell, Microsoft intentionally undermine it at every turn by trying to tie everything to everything else so that you get snared in the "Chinese finger trap" that is the Microsoft world.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
What Novell sells, Novell has to support. They have trained practically everybody in the company to use SuSE, and the tech support people have been trained enough to troubleshoot and isolate bugs - in SuSE. And now you want them to be subject matter experts for RedHat / Debian / Ubuntu / Kubuntu / Slackware / Damn Small / Joe's Own / ...?
At what point does it end?
And from a system administrator's point of view: if you can run Debian, can you run SuSE? Of course you can. ssh into the SLES isn't going to look any different....
Part of Novell's problem stems from having to ship binary code. GroupWise has that built-in encryption. NCP uses RSA encryption. Novell really isn't in a position to spill the security beans by releasing source code. Even good old NetWare has that proprietary C-Shell menu system that belongs to someone else - it's not theirs to open source.
So they are stuck with the binaries. They'll even help you get eDirectory installed on RedHat - but if your environment has something tweaked that causes the whole thing to go boom, well... sorry. What more can they do? It's not like they have the bankroll that Microsoft has.
You asked what Novell's job is. Novell's job is to keep and gain customers. The NetWare customers are happy enough with SLES - particularly when SLES comes pre-set-up with XEN to run NetWare 6.5 inside it. For gaining new customers, Novell is going to get them from people fed up with Windows. SLES / RedHat / Debian - doesn't matter to the Windows admin. He/she will bite whichever bullet and learn to love ssh and grep.
I would love it if Novell had the resources to port the GroupWise 8 to RedHat / Ubuntu / etc. The reason they wrote the client in java is that it does port to Mac OS X (and their own WebAccess client). But the reality of their world is that the GroupWise team has to compete with Outlook / Exchange, and that means a Win32 client in a constant upgrade cycle, or else they suffer the fate of looking abandoned (like the Lotus Notes client).
So far, they have managed to keep the java client only one revision behind the Win32 client. That's not terrible, considering the size of the company.
You do make a decent point that if GroupWise ran on RedHat / etc., that could grow the GroupWise market. But I think there are more people unhappy with Exchange who want to migrate. If I were Novell, I'd pursue the largest market - particularly if my email product already ran on Windows, and I had a native migration tool.
The worst part about Novell is that they have some large stockholders who want out, and wouldn't mind liquidating the company if it means getting their cash back. So stupid financial acts tend to periodically damage the company. It's really hard to convince management to grow the investment in your email product when the finance robots are telling management to downsize instead (More cash! Reputation that we're dying? Not quantifiable - why do you ask?)
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
This story sounds vaguely familiar... didn't Novell try to rewrite Netware to run on top of SVR4 Unix and call it UnixWare? Whatever happened to that, eh?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I remember that tool - how wonderful. And how many times it saved my user's and my butt.
-- "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." - R.A.H.