"Novell's long journey from NetWare to Linux is finally complete. On Oct. 8, Novell released Open Enterprise Server 2 to its customers worldwide. Shortly after acquiring SUSE and its enterprise-focused Linux distribution, Novell announced that its follow-on to NetWare 6.5 would ship as a set of network services that could run atop the NetWare and the Linux kernel, OES 1.0. OES, which began shipping in April 2005, was the first major step in Novell moving NetWare's services from its native operating system to Linux. 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 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."
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-06
I'll agree that they lag behind Microsoft in this regard.
They log a long way behind, and there's no reason they should because moving to Linux should have given them what they needed.
There is no bare metal 64-bit version currently, nor will there be ever.
Basically, Novell couldn't afford to maintain it or keep up with the hardware world. We all understand that.
The same goes for drivers. Everything I've been lead to believe, it's a huge undertaking involving a heavy rewrite of the OS for little or no benefit over running those same services on the Linux kernel.
That's exactly what they needed to do if they wanted their customers to go with them. Not everything is going to work, and the concept of NLMs would have to go the journey, but everything else needed to fit and Novell needed to get everyone so excited about it that they would want to go along. That's also what I'm hinting at when I talk about graphical tools.
In terms of pure performance and feature set, you have to take the two products out of the politics and put them head to head.
Same difference. Windows Server has been eating share at the expense of Netware for years, and in terms of features Novell needed to arrest it. They havent.
It will be one product.
It isn't though, and it shouldn't have been until they released it.
The issue is, you can't just up and do away with NetWare in one movement. You have to continue to support it and provide a migration path.
That's Novell's problem, and they've done it very badly. In fact, they don't have any kind of adequate migration path. Mostly, it's left up to customers all in the name of choice. People don't want that - they want a network operating system and they want Novell to tell them what they are selling.
This is a phasing out process and OES2 is just next step of that process.
Phasing out shouldn't be necessary. At the moment, many people are caught in limbo between one and the other. Virtualisation provides Netware with something of a future for people who need all of it, but OES should have been released with all the tools necessary for people to migrate from Netware to Linux and have it be a drop-in replacement. Many jumped ship when that didn't happen.
Moreover, OES2 has been turned into an add on package to SLES10 rather than a separate operating system for lack of a better descriptor.
That's good, yes, but the two are named completely differently, and really, there should still just be one product.
To sum it all up, my main point is that NetWare is a dead end in terms of development and Linux is the best option as a successor.
I think everyone can understand that, but Novell's customers don't care and simply want a network operating system to do what Netware did with quite a bit extra. Frankly, Novell have failed to provide it.
Open sourcing NetWare would be a very time consuming and expensive process.
I'm not saying they should open source all of it - just the parts that they can get up and running on Linux.
Member since:2005-07-06
How many jumped ship because of that and who? Novell's entire reason for running 2 kernels parallel with similar feature sets was because the customers wanted it. You can't rip and replace like that. If you really want to drive customers away, then having OES services sitting on the NetWare kernel only one version and then eliminating that and going with the Linux kernel only on the next version would basically kill your File/Print business. Migrations paths are not supposed to be static rip and replace scenarios that are equal across the board. They need to provide as many options as possible for the varying situations one customer might have compared to the next. To do so is ignoring your customers and what they might want.
That's just the point, they are not one product. OES proprietary services sit on top of SLES, but it provides radically different services than basic SLES. Not everyone needs those services. Otherwise you're basically using the analogy that Exchange 2007 should come with Windows Server 2003 because it direct extends the server and the directory.
Have you used OES2 yet? Have you thoroughly tested it to make that conclusion? I don't know about you, but have a load of NetWare servers 30 feet away from me right now. I want to be able to run the OES services on new hardware which is becoming more and more difficult on the NetWare path. I also can't go in to my server room and rip and replace all my NetWare servers with OES2 Linux boxes. My next(as in time) best option moving foward seems to be OES2 Linux at this point. Although to be fair, I have not tested it myself, so my opinion on what the next best option is based on what I have read, what I have heard from people who have gotten their hands on it already, and the realities of supported hardware with NetWare.
Why? I'm not saying it's a terrible idea, I'm just curious as to what benefit would it be for them? Everything they need from NetWare has been ported to Linux already.
Edited 2007-10-10 19:44
Member since:
2005-07-06
I gather you mean what does Novell have in the way of tools like Microsoft's MMC? iManager would be the closest thing, but that's missing some things, mainly groupwise plugins. I've voiced my opinions directly to Novell about that. As for mono, I have thought of that. But, if they're going to stick with iManager, they just need to get the rest of their products merged into it. Basically, pick something and stick with it. I'll agree that they lag behind Microsoft in this regard.
NetWare, begining with version 5.1 I believe, has been slowly separated out from its services or rather the services from it. Running NCP or eDirectory is no longer platform specific. So all you're left with is the operating environment. I don't think NetWare has had a large scale rebuild in a decade or so. There is no bare metal 64-bit version currently, nor will there be ever. NetWare tends to struggle going over addressing over 4gb of memory. Third party support has been drying up since the mid 90s. Nobody wants to go through the pain of writing NLMs. It's not economically feasible. The same goes for drivers. Everything I've been lead to believe, it's a huge undertaking involving a heavy rewrite of the OS for little or no benefit over running those same services on the Linux kernel. We can't make the assumption that anyone would actually want to hack against NetWare if it was every open sourced anyway.
In terms of sales and market share, yes. In terms of pure performance and feature set, you have to take the two products out of the politics and put them head to head.
It will be one product. The issue is, you can't just up and do away with NetWare in one movement. You have to continue to support it and provide a migration path. This is a phasing out process and OES2 is just next step of that process. Moreover, OES2 has been turned into an add on package to SLES10 rather than a separate operating system for lack of a better descriptor.
I'm getting off point now. To sum it all up, my main point is that NetWare is a dead end in terms of development and Linux is the best option as a successor. Rewriting NetWare to support new hardware would be a very time consuming and expensive process. Open sourcing NetWare would be a very time consuming and expensive process. In my opinion, Novell would be wasting their money doing either. Open sourcing the services however, that's a whole different story...