I Want NetWare!



  • You scream...I scream...We all scream...for NetWare!

    Feeling Pressured to Move Away From Novell NetWare and eDirectory?

    Microsoft's release of Windows 2003 indirectly raises the question of solution selection between Novell and Microsoft. While improvements have been made to Win2003 in specific areas (particularly closing some security holes and a redesigned Web server), it still suffers from architecture and administration weaknesses which lead to deficiencies in the areas of scalability, openness, administration, and security. In addition, the level of features and number of services that are available with Win2003 out-of-the-box are minimal when compared to those available with NetWare® 6.5.

    After reading through the testimonials on the site, I'm convinced - no more playing around. I'm ditching the cloud!


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    It back links to this site: www.redjuju.com

    Goddamned Discourse not letting me paste it in.

    Read through it, he talks out of both sides of his mouth. In some lines it seems like a consultancy group and bad mouths "one man bands", in other he talks about being a one man shop.


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    I looked up NetWare on Wikipedia. I am a little surprised it was discontinued in 2005. If Lotus Notes is still a thing and AS/400's are still in use (I saw one, still in operation, less than a year ago), then it surprises me that NetWare does not have a foothold in some government agencies or something.


  • Garbage Person

    @Intercourse said:

    AS/400's are still in use (I saw one, still in operation, less than a year ago),
    They still build them. Though they call them the iSeries now. Same shit, though.

    We're still developing software for ours.
    And by "we" I mean "not my team".
    But we have to interface with the garbage.

    As a general rule, anything that needs to be done realtime OLTP style goes to the AS/400 teams. Everything that's offline batch-mode stuff goes to the more modern teams. Because that makes sense.


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    No, I mean an AS/400 that could be used to safely anchor an oil tanker. The old school type that needs to be installed on a concrete pad or reinforced floor.

    I was surprised that they still used it. It was still chugging away, running a purpose-built ERP system with a terminal interface. No plans to upgrade or replace it. I wonder if you can still get parts for those behemoths?


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    Am I the only person who thinks Marvin looks like the type of person who might have to disclose things to his neighbors pursuant to "Megan's Law"?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    So is he the sort of person you imagine owns a full sized van? Presumably cargo (mine's passenger).



  • @Intercourse said:

    If Lotus Notes is still a thing and AS/400's are still in use (I saw one, still in operation, less than a year ago),

    Next time you're in a Costco, take a peek over at their cash register screens.

    AS/400s are also epidemic in healthcare.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    Next time you're in a Costco, take a peek over at their cash register screens.

    They are replacing that system this coming year. They have already started, but should be done by Q3 of next year.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Outdated shit is also epidemic in healthcare.

    FTFY


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @boomzilla said:

    So is he the sort of person you imagine owns a full sized van? Presumably cargo (mine's passenger).

    Yes and yes. As his primary business seems to be working with NetWare, I would imagine it is something from the 80's, with a bad exhaust leak and 5 working cylinders.



  • Windows 2000 Server started shipping with Active Directory as a core feature. Active Directory is an (arguably) better version of Netware than Netware was.

    NetIQ still sells the Netware NDS core as NetIQ eDirectory:


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I get that, NetWare started the trend toward a lot of technologies that we still use today. It was kind of before its time, then they rested on their laurels and other companies started stealing their ideas doing it better.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    The key thing is though, he seems to have a "pedosmile".



  • @Intercourse said:

    I looked up NetWare on Wikipedia. I am a little surprised it was discontinued in 2005.

    Novell moved all of their NetWare services (e.g. eDirectory, iPrint) to SuSE and created SuSE Linux Enterprise Server



  • @Intercourse said:

    It was kind of before its time, then they rested on their laurels and other companies started stealing their ideas doing it better

    Not really. Novell never had a desktop OS and the sales pitch for Windows Server was easy: Learn one operating system instead of two. At the time, there was no practical alternative to Windows on the desktop - Macintosh was a tiny fraction of the market, Linux had no business application, and there wasn't enough on the web.

    No one cared if Windows was technically better; you didn't have to learn it, so it was nearly free from a manpower perspective. Since Windows server licensing wasn't more expensive than NetWare licensing, there was no way for NetWare to ever compete from a cost standpoint, especially when they were simultaneously being assaulted from below by Linux. That's why they bought SuSE - they gave up trying to sell an operating system.


  • BINNED

    Don't forget that for it to be legal NetWare required almost always a DOS licence for booting



  • Maybe in ancient times. Since 1991, the NetWare installation floppies were DR-DOS bootable and had DR-DOS's sys.com on them to make your server drive boot DR-DOS. People used MS-DOS on their servers because that's all they knew.

    I was a Master CNE in the 1990s and I didn't miss NetWare at all after Windows Server 2003 came out. NDS (later renamed eDirectory) was better than Active Directory, but not by enough to cause problems. NetWare's big miss wasn't any a particular feature weakness, it was the fact that it was impossible to have a homogeneous system. Besides the desktop problem I already mentioned, there never was a database server worth a crap that ran on NetWare, nor a decent messaging platform. What IT manager would ever choose NetWare if it added another platform to support without removing one? If you already had NetWare, you almost certainly already had UNIX or Windows as well, so the consolidation question constantly came up. The answer to the consolidation question was never "let's ditch everything else and move all of our applications to NetWare".

    So Novell bought SuSE hoping they could offer a total package to their customers, but they found that the market wasn't big enough to have two winners in the "Commercially Supported Distributions of Linux" category and they lost to Redhat. Right move, five years too late.

    @powerlord said:

    Active Directory is an (arguably) better version of Netware than Netware was.

    Nope. But being better isn't what wins markets. To this day it still annoys me that I can't give an Organizational Unit rights to something in Active Directory. NDS had far better capabilities for branch offices that really weren't matched by Active Directory until Windows 2012. But, it's still a better business move to buy the "inferior" OS and know that your print drivers will work on it rather than having a whole new set of things to learn for a second operating system, not to mention staffing Windows guys (which I need for Exchange and SQL anyways) and NetWare guys. Hardware is cheap. People are expensive.


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