Migration Question - netware to windows 2

[Juandaman81]

Hi,

One of our clients are moving from a netware enviroment over to windows 2003 in the later part of the year. I have been given the task of trying to design this.

The job was my technical superior's until he left the company to move on for bigger and better things.

I'm still doing 70-290, so i'm someway of MCSE level.

this client has 190 sites running netware, i need to come up with some replacements for various options they had available in netware.

for example

Desktop - Currently use a Nal Desktop launcher - ?? group policy maybe???

Tree - currently they have 1 tree, with all 190 servers intergrated into it - Same structure with AD?

Memory requirments - most servers have 1gb - i would have thought at least 2gb?

any help in this i would be very grateful




If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

 

[pagy]

If this is going to be later this year I'd suggest to your customer going with Windows Server 2008

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/default.mspx

It is much better in branch office environments (which I'm assuming the 190 sites are), mainly because of Read Only Domain Controllers but there are other improvments.

Paul

MCSE 2003

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
Albert Einstein

 

[58sniper]

I'm not inclined to recommend 2008 only because it'll be too new to roll out to 190 sites, IMNSHO. Proper site design should allow a good replication design. Use 2003 R2 with DFS.

I'd actually go for 4GB of RAM in DCs.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[pagy]

Maybe I am getting a bit carried away Pat but I've been very impressed with 2008 so far.



Yeah 4 gigs of RAM in DCs.

Paul

MCSE 2003

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
Albert Einstein

 

[58sniper]

Yes, it's cool. But bigger orgs are better suited to go the tried and true route. It's hard for a large org to justify the expense in a new platform that hasn't been road tested yet.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[Juandaman81]

ok, 2003 r2 then. with 4gb memory for the domain controllers.

Has anyone done this size of migration before? any pointers would be helpful.

How many domain controllers? i'm guessing not 190 (1 for everysite)

i'm sorry for the really stupid questions, my company have booked me on an mcse boot camp in 4 weeks time, which isnt ideal i know, and most mcse's will look at it like i'm cheating. but i've always looked after netware servers, now its time for a change, and i have to change with it. so any help before my training would be really handy.



If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

 

[pagy]

What speed is the connection between sites? is there a central site? If you don't have a DC at each site then users will be logging in over the WAN link which probably isn't ideal. If your WAN link is down and you don't have a DC at site then no one will be able to log in.

How many users at each site?

Paul

MCSE 2003

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
Albert Einstein

 

[Juandaman81]

15 generic users at each site, link between sites is about 512k, and there is a couple of site's that could be considered central sites.



If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

 

[pagy]

You might want to have a look at;

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...F6-A8A8-40BB-9FA7-3A95C9540112&displaylang=en

Paul

MCSE 2003

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
Albert Einstein

 

[58sniper]

Without seeing a topology diagram, it's going to be hard for anyone here to give you an answer. But it's probably not necessary to have a DC in any office with only 15 people. "Central" offices are more likely a target for DCs, GCs, file & print etc.

But, as I mentioned, we'd have to know a LOT more.

my company have booked me on an mcse boot camp in 4 weeks time, which isn't ideal i know

Well, that's not going to totally prepare you for what you have to do. In all honesty, it might be in the companies' best interest to bring in a consultant for the design aspect.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[BobMCT]

While you guys are hot and heavy on this topic - I'd like to jump in with a similar but different scenario.

My shop has central datacenter currently running Netware 3.12 as a file server ONLY for approx 150 win2000 desktop clients in eight locations distributed as 30, 50, 30, 10, 10, 5, 5, 10
with the datacenter representing the 30.

All the users' home directories are on the Netware servers.

Desparately wanting to get rid of the Netware to shed its ipx/spx overhead, we've installed a NAS and a Win 2003 R2 server with Active Directory.

Hopefully we're on the right track so far. But, can one or both of you kindly advise as to how we can best approach the access permissions and control of these folders/files using AD?

Any pointers, references, links, suggestions will be really, really appreciated.

Thank you,

B

 

[philhege]

Another topic to consider is how the migration will affect applications. File locks are handled differently between the two OSes, so you'll have to make sure that apps don't break because of file lock behaviour.

You've already considered the implications of losing NAL; in our case we came up with a login script that reads application group membership and constructs a NAL-like folder for the user.

Sounds like you're going to learn how to swim in the deep end. Best of luck to you!

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
Not NULL-terminated yet.

 

[58sniper]

BobMCT - kindly start a new thread as to not complicate this one.



Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[Juandaman81]

Paul,Pat and Phil,

Thank you for taking the time to look at my questions.

Pat..

You mkae a valid point about getting a consultant into to help design the AD structure. I will suggest this to them once they've paid for my MCSE boot camp (don't want them pulling the plug now do we ;-) )
i know that the boot camp won't make me technically as stong as someone who goes through the self study, but it will be a vast improvement on where my knowledge is now. so for that reason i need to do this.
Anyway.... you 3 guys can be my consultant via Tek-Tips!!! i pay by purple stars!!!

Phil..

Your right....Deep end it is. The application launcher was such a handy tool. i don't know if windows has an equal?

What about Zenworks for Desktops, the remote management? is this SMS in Windows???

Paul...

What about workstation imaging? Server imaging??
The workstation imaging currently works under our ZFD application. which works on the whole really well. where do we go from here?

Antivirus - I'm big on Nod32, but they've uttered words like Mcafee!!! uuuurg

Thanks again guys!




If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

 

[pagy]

With SMS you have features like Remote control, operating system deployment and applicaton deployment.



Paul

MCSE 2003

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
Albert Einstein

 

[philhege]

For a NAL replacement, you can roll your own with a login script. As I said, we created AD groups for each application, and the login script constructs a local folder, with shortcuts created for each pertinent app. This pretty much serves as the "application launcher" for our users.