Netware 4.12 to 6.5 - Good or Bad? 1

[CaptKirk]

I am considering updating from Netware 4.12, 4.11 (SP9) to Netware 6.5. What are the benefits and what will be lost. I have read about print queues not supported and nwclients not needed. I know Novell says great things about NSS, iprint, i-this and i-that. What indeed are the benefits and drawbacks? I am using Window XP Pro workstations.
Perhaps a list of items gained and items changed would help. The more I read the more I fear updating. I don't want to screw up the current system, which is working quite well, but Novell is not supporting 4.12 anymore and I am being pressured to update.
I do have Portlock Storage Suite which I plan to use for backups before I attempt any update. It seems to be a great product for Netware. Does it work well with 6.5? What about NSS also? Benefits and problems.
I am in a school system with 4 servers. Is it better to wait until summer and implement it for the new year?

Thanks very much in advance.

 

[marvhuffaker]

First put all hype aside. 6.5 is a good product, but don't overwhelm yourself with trying to figure out all of the new features.

Take what you have now, which is File and Print services, and only worry about them for now. Do the upgrade, and get your file and printing systems running on 6.5. After you are more comfortable with it, you can start trying out some of the new products and services.

NDPS (iPrint) is much easier to use than queue based printing. But if you need print queues for whatever reason, you can set NDPS up to service those old queues. no big deal at all. Furthermore, iPrint is just an addon to NDPS.. You might not even need the iprint component in your environment.. But the whole NDPS system in general is very nice to work with.

NSS is much easier to manage than traditional file systems. Sure it's had it's problems, but it has matured significantly since it's introduction in NetWare 5.0. I would never go back to traditional volumes.

Clients - you can go ahead and continue using the Novell client. There are other client-less ways to access the server, but don't get all caught up trying to figure that out right now.

There's a lot more that could be said about it. I understand your apprehension just because a 4.1x to 6.5 upgrade is pretty significant. Pretty much an entirely new world by the time you're done. Just take it slow, don't try to rush into it. make sure your tree is healthy and stable, and don't forget to run the deployment manager before putting the first 6.5 server in the tree.

The biggest problem I see when helping a company recover from a failed migration/upgrade is that they didn't run the proper health checks before hand to make sure everything was in order. A healthy tree is an upgradeable tree, and putting NetWare 6.5 into a damaged tree will not magically fix it.

Also, make sure you install IPX & IP on the 6.5 servers and continue to run IPX untill you get rid of all of your 4.1x servers. Don't get all hung up on going Pure-IP.. That will probably be a ways down the road for you.

Hope that helps. feel free to ask if you have any further questions.

Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[BigGuySmall]

I just went from NW4.11 to NW6 sp3. I went from IPX to a pure IP environment. There is nothing wrong about using both IPX and IP, but I just figured I'd rather bite the bullet and switch, since I have no need for IPX. I use Portlock and it works great for both for NW4.11 and NW6. I'd read the Portlock updates because I recall seeing that NW 6.5 functionality is somewhat restricted. I use Portlock to backup copies of the server volumes to Win2k machine with an ftp server and a huge hardrive. As a test I was able to restore everything to another machine using portlock reading from the ftp server. I've found that with 1GB NICs and a 1GB switch connecting machines, backing up with portlock is super fast. NDPS printing is much better than Queue based, but it was a bit tricky to setup because of the need for a couple of patches since we have older printers, but Novell tech support easily got me through it. All the webserver functions are very useful, but I agree that you just gradually make use of them