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I am pleased to announce "Novell Kanaka for Mac" for all Open Enterprise Server customers. The powerful combination of Novell Kanaka for Mac and Open Enterprise Server deliver the worlds best Mac file sharing solution for Corporate enterprises and Educational institutions.

Kanaka benefits include

- Single Sign-on to OES file shares / homedirectory
- New Group home directory allows easy mounting of group shares
- Mobility - allows users to edit files offline and sync to the network
- Store desktop settings on the network
- Ability to use AFP or CIFS protocols, with cross-protocol file locking

Novell Kanaka for Mac is available at no additional charge for current OES customers on Maintenance. The solution works with OES11, OES2, and can also work with NetWare ( with the agent running on OES).

With the features of the Kanaka client, the native Apple File Protocol Support, and the scalability/performance of users all provided with Open Enterprise Server, there is no better solution in the industry for supporting Mac users on the network. Later this year, you will also see Kanaka integrate with iPrint and the Zenworks Agent for Mac, for a total Single Sign on solution to these services.

Customer Feedback

Here are bits and pieces of some discussion seen on the forums regarding this announcement -

#1
"Novell listened.. it’s now free, it runs on OES Linux, And it now supports both AFP and CIFS - AFP is arguably the best protocol for Mac usage (for a number of reasons, especially the
preservation of Resource forks), and AFP on OES Linux has proven very
stable and performance. I think I'm going to be a very happy bunny. Its GREAT to see Novell
listening and coming up with solutions *now*, this is the kind of responsiveness we need."

#2
I still think that Novell is the best at File services. We have about 3400 Macs connecting to our 2-Node OES2 Cluster at any given time of the day…but compare that 2-Node Cluster to the 5 Open Directory Replica's I need to have [to do a similiar workload] because they can only handle up to 1000 users per replica or you'll most certainly corrupt OD and they are only doing the delivery of mcxsetting/mcxflags until we move that to [Novell] eDirectory! Which then you look at [Novell] eDirectory vs Open Directory and the performance and management tools alone give OD a spanking.

#3
"Kanaka leverages technologies already present in OES (eDirectory attributes with the posixAccount extension, AFP, CIFS) and OS X (the DirectoryServices framework, AFP and CIFS client functionality, a little bit of MCX) to provide a simple-to-configure but relatively rich client experience on OS X. Ultimately that means that it is highly supportable and doesn't try to mangle either the Novell or Apple engineering."

"Between this, iPrint, iFolder, Filr, Vibe, and ESPECIALLY the Zenworks Mac [agent (coming)] we should soon be able to treat Macs as first-class citizens on Novell networks. Congratulations to all involved."

#4
Wow!

Additional Information

Press Release -
http://www.novell.com/news/press/2012/1/novell-ope...

Video - Download the attached file and unzip it. Execute the file to see a video on the overview of the product.

Documentation - http://www.novell.com/documentation/kanaka/

Download - www.novell.com/center.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.