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Submitted by jaharmon on 29 July 2009 - 11:32am.

FTP was there an brought over, but there was the remote server connection feature that was not yet there. That is the FTP component of which we are discussing

Submitted by RiceLock on 30 July 2009 - 5:23am.

Not so much about remote server connection (I don't need this and have not tested it) but about:

1. FQDN support i.e. login to FTP as .user.ou.ou.o from eDirectory rather than an LDAP login or contextless login.
2. CaSe insensitivity - NetWare and Windows FTP are both CaSe insensitive, all my customers scripts are written for that.

#1 is bad but not horrid for us, #2 is ugly.

Btw - I would love to be wrong here, I don't enjoy replacing Novell with Windows.

Submitted by lisaldiaz on 30 July 2009 - 7:55am.

Care to comment on the legitimate complaints and issues brought up?

Submitted by Sgermanides on 31 July 2009 - 1:56pm.

First off, I'm glad to hear << I don't enjoy replacing Novell with Windows.>>

That means that you are willing to work with us to get this right.

FTP has been an issue since Open Enterprise Server 2 was released. Customers have expected that as a reasonable requirement for an upgrade path from NetWare. I agree that customers are unhappy that we don't have feature parity yet for FTP between NetWare and Open Enterprise Server on Linux. @lisaldiaz is right that this is a "legitimate issue." OES2 SP2, releasing in the next few months, will have a fix for you.

What I really want to comment on is that some customers have said things like "isn't FTP the most basic thing about a server?!" I think it's important for you all to think about what Open Enterprise Server has become. It's not a just a server; it's not just a "Linux replacement" for NetWare; it's intended to be more, too. It's now a collection of services that ratchet up the abilities of your file and print infrastructure in ways that match your company's IT direction. In developing these services, we focused on innovating in areas that the market (i.e., customers and IT departments worldwide) told us were hot spots for them: proliferation of storage, simplifying management of mixed environments, and most importantly, costs associated with server sprawl. By focusing on meeting the emerging needs of our customers, in this case, we dropped the ball on one of the basics: FTP.

The good news: It's coming. You'll get to try it out soon. We hope we meet your requirements. But please don't lose sight of the forest for the trees. There are benefits with Open Enterprise Server that you never got with NetWare, and you can't get with Windows. That's the reason that 80% of our customers have told us that their experience with Open Enterprise Server on Linux is "satisfactory" or "very satisfactory" despite pockets of feature issues.

Most importantly, thank you for spending time discussing these issues here. Joe Harmon, myself, and lots of other people here are reading your comments and discussing them.

Best,
Sophia Germanides
OES Product Marketing Manager

Submitted by lisaldiaz on 31 July 2009 - 2:37pm.

Sophia,

I'm just "Lisa", not @lisaldiaz, just as you are "Sophia" and not @Sgermanides.

Now that it seems Novell is listening -

The migration from Netware to Linux has been extremely frustrating and disappointing. All I ever seem to hear from Novell is, "it's coming!". My customers need to have certain things working "right now". Where we could salvage SUSE/OES, we've moved them back to Netware until it was ready. Where we couldn't, they moved to Windows.

The FTP issue is moot for us.

When you say, "OES is a collection of services", you hit the nail on the head, but appear to have no idea why or how.

Netware wasn't just a "collection of services" - it was ONE. Pretty much everything Novell made on Netware worked great and appeared to be just another process running on the OS. NSS, eDirectory, GroupWise, and ZENworks come immediately to mind.

OES on the other hand is as you stated - "a collection of services" that do not fit well with SUSE. Can I get OES2 with SLES 11? In any case, it doesn't flow with the OS, but almost fights it and the configuration and management of it is "off".

Installation - As I asked before, why can't Novell provide a single DVD of the OS and OES and simply make the installation process that much easier? Make it install just like you did with Netware - select what you want DURING the OS install, and not as an after-thought. ("What products would you also like to install?")

Management - Why can't the management of the OS be as easy as it was with Netware? Got a replacement for Monitor yet? Ever will? How about DSRepair? ndsrepair is NOT a good replacement, no matter who you ask. Even Jim Henderson doesn't like it as much, and he's a tried-and-true Linux geek. Some parts STILL require NWAdmin, and that's not available natively on Linux, is it? ConsoleOne? iManager? The product lines don't seem to talk to each other and have the SAME management interface for all of them, as it should be.

ZENworks - ZCM 10? Novell should be able to do better than that!

iFolder - hasn't been worth much since v2.1 - all because Novell just *had* to rebuild it for Mono. Did Novell port Mono to Netware? Nope, but they did for Windows.

iManager - has built-in ActiveX extensions, which means that there are certain things that can't be done in the stand-alone version and *must* be done with Internet Explorer. Who made that decision? Are they still working at Novell?

OWS - Novell has had SUSE for years and instead of trying to attract the small to medium businesses with a suitable replacement for NSBS (for example), Novell has given them the middle finger, and MS has cleaned up.

OO - Licensing for MS Office vs OpenOffice aside (as you can install OpenOffice on Windows, so no real big savings there), there's nothing really there to make anyone move off Windows. The licensing cost savings is easily off-set by the steep learning curve and finding the appropriate browser plugins and application replacements.

Marketing - (you knew this would come up). Novell has a CMO who posts about once every two months, except for lately. What exactly does he do? What real marketing has Novell done? Where?

Novell simply killed off Netware WAY too soon. You are STILL finding things that should have been ported over before cutting the cord, and it still doesn't flow as it should.

The appliance / studio thing is a great idea and from what I've read, executed well. Time will tell if Novell doesn't mess this up, too, as they've done with other products.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

- Lisa

Submitted by VMikhelson on 19 August 2009 - 1:11pm.

Lisa,

Thank you for the great summary.

You had covered almost all of it in your last post.

Here are my 2 cents.

Novell took the wrong path in regards to NetWare. Is it accidental or not the history will show.

NetWare was and is the only fundamental Novell product. NDS (aka eDir, AD), ZEN, etc. grew on top of it.

There is no competition to NetWare in the current PC-based file server OS market. Linux is not a replacement with its limited file systems. Maybe in the future. We will see. Windows? Sorry. Mac? I do not think so.

Novell's effort to migrate its features to a foreign kernel is something worth admiration from a theoretical standpoint. Practically speaking the road is as bumpy as it should have been expected to be. Will it lead anywhere? It is a good question I do not know the answer for.

Novell's atttempts to distantiate itself from NetWare, e.g. "NetWare Connections" becoming "Novell Connections," lead to people distantiating themselves from Novell and NetWare...

Somebody mentioned that Novell does not know how to program any more. This is unfortunately very true. The reason is simple. Not the same people. The true Novell programmers were laid off 6-7 years ago. Novell India it is these days.

The bottom line.

The company changes its direction, its image, replaces the engineering, moves headqurters to a completely new place, hires a CEO with a completely different vision. It leaves the name though.

Is this company going to care of the great product its predecessor had created? Does it have resources to do that? It looks like the answer is, "No!"

Only miracle can help NetWare at this point. And I have not seen miracles lately....

-Vladimir

Submitted by Rachelsdad on 20 August 2009 - 7:36pm.

Upon receiving a marketing email from Ron Hovsepian (okay, so he didn't send it to me personally, but neither does Bill G or Steve B with their nonsense), I stopped on over at http://www.novell.com/rms and posted my "enhancement request" to continue NetWare development and retract the EOL for the platform.

Consider NetWare with a fully 64-bit kernel running on new hardware five or eight years from now. Now that's a platform I could sell to my IT clients.

Much of what has been said here is what I hear in the field all day long. Linux is great, and so many of us use it (I'm an OS/2 guy, however). That said, it is not all things to all people. Like so many other OSes (yes, even those from Redmond), it has its uses. NetWare is still the most stable NOS for managing the network (file, print, directory services), and to cut it off at the knees when so many people still want to use it is simply silly. If Novell doesn't want to maintain it any longer, then they should consider selling it to a company who does - or spinning off a new company entirely (look at what happened with Btrieve, now Pervasive).

Anyway, I suggest that all admins, consultants, and customers who are committed to NetWare visit the above site and try to get through en masse. There is still hope (I hope) to curtail this folly.

Submitted by mmccaffe on 23 September 2009 - 7:44am.

My concern is that Novell dropped its engineers and now has huge development cycles for mediocre software.
Old Novell had solutions that administrators could really use. And today you see solutions that seem shabby and under engineered.
Novell was full of top engineers, cream of the crop. Not today, and good luck ever being able to recover the abilities of old Novell.
I use Suse Linux and other flavors of Linux and am happy using Linux for some of the services we need. OES has seemed like such a patch job, showing the engineering weakness of Novell. I really hope OES2 SP2 does not disappoint, because Netware has proven itself as bulletproof and requires very little Administrator time/resources.

I really hate to be negative but Novell management has been asleep at the wheel and possibly forgot how important all those engineers where, and that they currently are a lot weaker than they used to be, and have very long development cycles with poor results.

Current user of: OES(Netware), iChain, Access Manager, Portal, NSS, iFolder, Groupwise, iPrint, Virtual Office, IDM, BorderManager.

Submitted by Techlord on 25 October 2009 - 12:19am.

Okay, I'm a hardcore Linux user, and have been for 10 years. I have used may different Linux distros, so I am comfortable with Linux, be it RPM based or Deb based. I know how a stable Linux server should act, and how services should run. I also have used Netware for MANY years now, and have always been impressed with its stability. Now here's the ugly part. As Jublian stated, I too, have put my blood and sweat into trying to get OES1 and OES2 Linux to work for me, and move away from netware. I would spend hours at a time, getting things working the way I want, only to find that some netware services for OES2 would not work properly for me or fail. Even being versied in RPM and DEB packaging systems for upgrades did not help...upgrades ARE VERY convoluted in SLES OES2 with netware services. I can fairly say this, after working with Debian and Ubuntu...its not the SLES upgrading that suck, its the netware services for SLED upgrade system that is poorly integrated. I really think that an RPM based distro was also a VERY poor solution, as it can leave the customer in dependency hell. Couple this with Netware services for OES2 that are convoluted and poorly integrated and you have a nightmare on your hands.

Yes, I have OES2 working, but the system breaks with any upgrade, and many of the services break, or don't work out of the box without tinkering..and sometimes, weird things just happen for no real apparent reason. As a solid sysadmin, I don't mind digging through logs, but the way I see it, if a system works like it should, I shouldn't have to. My experiences have been Exactly THE SAME AS Jublian's, and that hasn't change in 3 years, the product is NOT getting better... My answer to this has been to virtuluze netware on Ubuntu, so I can have the stable Linux services I need, have a clear and easy to upgrade Linux server, but also have those great stable netware services I have come to love. I wish netware OES was still being developed, I would happily continue to run it on Ubuntu, if I knew it wasn't going EOL. As well, as many others have stated, I have been "Encouraged" to look into AD on Server 2008, as I fear being left in the dark after 2010, as SLES with OES2 netware services, just is NOT ready. And once I have to put AD in my environment, and go to that work, I will likely never look back. And frankly, I'm gong to virtualize Server 2008 on Ubuntu, as this is the kind of stability I need.

I wish they would rethink the good old netware kernal, and rethink Netware OES 2, but I don;t want to hold on to a pipe dream, and get stagnent, I need to move forward and get on board, if I am to have a job in the future. A part of that is embrassing the reality that AD is not going away, but instead getting stronger...It sadens me, netware was a great product.