Server Consolidation

[tcstudio]

I am currently working on a project to replace either our novell or windows server products. We basically need to colsolidate the servers some we are running one lot of server operating system. I have a few question

1, Can novell be a domain controller?
2, Can it provide internet accesses for our users?
3, What is Groupwise like?
4, What is ZENworks like?
5, When does Netware 6.5 Come out

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[Provogeek]

1 No, Netware can not act as a domain controller, but Linux can

2 To be literal, no, you need an ISP for Internet access. Novell does offer a package called BorderManager that can act as a firewall, VPN server, Proxy server and authentication server. All managed through NDS. 3.7 has web managment features that intergrates with the new NW6 NetWare Web Manager.

3GroupWise is pretty much like any other enterprise e-mail package. One advatage it has over others is that it is cross platform. I preffer GroupWise my self, but Exchange is just as good in functionality. BUT I have seen Exchange choke on it's own vomit when 200 users are online, and GroupWise did not choke until it had 500 users online. There will be those that will argue this, it really is just user preference. People who like exchange don't know groupwise and vice versa. Groupwise does give you the freedom to choose what ever email client you want to use, including Outlook.

4 ZEnWorks is awsome, a huge time saver, but it is not a fresh out of the box solution. You need trianing to properly use it, and just reading the book will not be good enough. Using ZEN I rarly have to go to a users PC for anything. I can shove preconfigured applications down to a workstations, provide the user the ability to repair any problems with the application using the self healing features. Manage workstations using polocies that are stored in NDS, not the file system like the M$ solution. I get remote control and wake on lan, imaging, and PXE support. If you get your organization to have a polocy to store user information on the network, this wil make the workstations expendable, then you no longer have to worry about figuring out the latest windows issue. If it breaks, tell NDS to image it on next boot, user reboots, PXE pulls down an image you specify in NDS from the network, using M$'s SYS prep and some other tools you can consolodate images to just a few and have the workstation setup automated, then once the user has a clean system, they just click on their application icons and the programs will install them selves.

5 Should be late spring or summer. I have not heard an exact date, but the betas are looking great.

Provogeek

Saving the world, one network at a time