Howdy All, I am the adminstrator in a school which has netware 4.11 ( five servers in the nds tree )as its main student platform. This has been working very well over the past 6 years or so. The school has the ability to obtain a microsoft solution at no cost ( except for the new hardware required, which is the reason for this email in the first place ). Advice and opinions are sought on the following points 1. do I go microsoft 2. do I stick with novell ( I am aware of a "misty" who recently migrated from netware to linux ) and perhaps move to netware 6 ( cost about $3000 ) 3. do I move to samba. 4. do I make a hybrid and pick the eyes out of each system Now I fully expect most people to say go linux and whilst I am all for it I need to be able to justify my decision . I am capable of administering a netware system and have a rudimentry samba server system running at another place ( no ldap ) so am familiar with samba to some degree but have ( up until now ) steered clear of the inferior microsoft server packages ( also have little experience with them ).So some traing costs in samba and microsoft should be included in the mix. Netware I am conversant with. One major consideration will be that I would like to be able to run a single user database. ldap I think will accomplish this. I am currently using netware's nds to do this. Mail and mailing lists and N.A.L. are also currently being used to good effect. Davis Harris's Mercury mail is being used as this provides great flexibility in mail but unfortunately no (automatic) spam filtering in the netware environment. I am going to build a linux box as a mail front end and use the "native" spam and "sendmail" environments to accomplish this. Pretty obviously, most systems are "customised" by the admin. Ours is no exception. Another question that people out there might know is can samba run as a susserver ? enough ramblings Thanks to any and all who read and reply. -- Greg Andrews System Manager RGTechnologies Pty Ltd 606 Skipton Street Ballarat 3350 613 53363603 0417 511 731 andrews@rgt.com.au
What to do, i guess that's up to you.. i must say, we migrated from a windows domain to a samba domain 2 years ago.. and it works all the same (for the users that is..) administrating the domain is easy as well. once you know your way around samba.. this year, we installed an intranet/extranet, with the samba user-DB as backend to authenticate the users. and this has also an mail-server (smtp & imap & spam & vscan) running also authenticating the users agains samba user-DB.! (PAM-solution!) so if you go for flexebilety, go with samba and linux.. support is mutch greader, and you can tune it the way you want.. if you want to go for a system that is harsh and non-flexible and with security issues ever week/month, go and give billy boy some more cash. (i must say, it's strainge that your able to run a free of cost ms server ??!) most people on this list, will recomend linux + samba or some sort of combination. it free, quick, good support flexible and does the job! Well have a nice decission time.. Greetings Collen Greg Andrews wrote:> Howdy All, > > I am the adminstrator in a school which has netware 4.11 ( five servers in > the nds tree )as its main student platform. This has been working very > well over the past 6 years or so. > > The school has the ability to obtain a microsoft solution at no cost ( > except for the new hardware required, which is the reason for this email > in the first place ). > > Advice and opinions are sought on the following points > > 1. do I go microsoft > 2. do I stick with novell ( I am aware of a "misty" who recently migrated > from netware to linux ) and perhaps move to netware 6 ( cost about $3000 ) > 3. do I move to samba. > 4. do I make a hybrid and pick the eyes out of each system > > Now I fully expect most people to say go linux and whilst I am all for it > I need to be able to justify my decision . I am capable of administering a > netware system and have a rudimentry samba server system running at > another place ( no ldap ) so am familiar with samba to some degree but > have ( up until now ) steered clear of the inferior microsoft server > packages ( also have little experience with them ).So some traing costs in > samba and microsoft should be included in the mix. Netware I am > conversant with. > > One major consideration will be that I would like to be able to run a > single user database. ldap I think will accomplish this. I am currently > using netware's nds to do this. > Mail and mailing lists and N.A.L. are also currently being used to good > effect. Davis Harris's Mercury mail is being used as this provides great > flexibility in mail but unfortunately no (automatic) spam filtering in > the netware environment. I am going to build a linux box as a mail front > end and use the "native" spam and "sendmail" environments to accomplish > this. > > Pretty obviously, most systems are "customised" by the admin. Ours is no > exception. > > Another question that people out there might know is > > can samba run as a susserver ? > > enough ramblings > > Thanks to any and all who read and reply. > >
Hallo Greg, i am sorry I didn't understand all your questions because of my bad english knowledge and I apologize for my mistakes. One year ago we changed our server structure from thee Novell 5 Servers with NDS to samba3 PDC with ldap for authentication and cups for printing. We have nearly 450 users and 400 workstations and after some problems at the beginning we are really happy about this descision. After this change we are not be able to use NAL, this was one of the biggest problem for the acceptance by the users, because with NAL the user did not need to pay for applications (the university paid for this licence but only in combination with novell client and nal) . Now we install nearly all applications locally on the workstaions and the user has to pay for a campus licence. Because of this more and more users are ready to use alternative applications like staroffice/openoffice or they try to use linux as workstation and they understand, that there is no need to use allways the newest version of an application. Now, we do not need to change the novell client every some weeks like before, so we have really less work with our workstations and because we do not need to use a novell client, the workstaation startup is much faster then before. For the users it seems to be that the whole network system is much more stable. I hope, this experience is a help for you. Sabine -- Sabine Zarabian university of bielefeld faculty of biology Computing support
Greg Andrews wrote:> The school has the ability to obtain a microsoft solution at no cost ( > except for the new hardware required, which is the reason for this email > in the first place ).So a different solution would only make sense if it doesn't need new hardware...> > Advice and opinions are sought on the following points > > 1. do I go microsoft > 2. do I stick with novell ( I am aware of a "misty" who recently migrated > from netware to linux ) and perhaps move to netware 6 ( cost about $3000 )If that's cheaper than new hardware for $MS, I'd do that.> 3. do I move to samba.AFAIK, you can use NDS through LDAP, (at least with recent versions) as backend for samba (extending the schema in NDS), or use another LDAP product...> 4. do I make a hybrid and pick the eyes out of each system > > Now I fully expect most people to say go linux and whilst I am all for it > I need to be able to justify my decision . I am capable of administering a > netware system and have a rudimentry samba server system running at > another place ( no ldap ) so am familiar with samba to some degree but > have ( up until now ) steered clear of the inferior microsoft server > packages ( also have little experience with them ).So some traing costs in > samba and microsoft should be included in the mix. Netware I am > conversant with.Personally, I found (Open)LDAP hard to grasp, there are still small details/constraints/pitfalls I'm picking up time by time, which are important for the big picture one should know (unfortunately you need that knowledge upfront when designing your directory, it's generally hard to change things later). It's a great piece of software with endless flexibility and possibilities but that doesn't come for free... ;)> > One major consideration will be that I would like to be able to run a > single user database. ldap I think will accomplish this. I am currently > using netware's nds to do this.Evaluate what you need to do/by to use NDS with samba, AFAIK support for samba and "Netware universal password" has been added recently, you may ask here for details.> can samba run as a susserver ?Nope, but you can install SUS on a normal XP box by "hacking" the installer... hth Paul