Blog Entry

(View Disclaimer)

I am pleased to announce two major changes to Novell's demo systems. These changes will make the systems easier for Partners to use and improve the performance of remote demos accessed via the Novell Online Demo System (NODS).

Standard Image Set for Employees and Partners
In the past we have been unable to share our virtual machine images containing Windows and other Microsoft software with our partner community due to restrictions in our licensing agreement with Microsoft. Novell Demo Systems have recently signed up to the Microsoft VHD Test Drive Program, which for the first time gives us a compliant process for sharing customized Windows virtual machine images with our partners. As a result we have decided to standardize our DVD offering to a single kit that will be the same for Novell employees and partners. The next update we send out will be a complete replacement of the current DVD kit and will contain ALL of the Utopia vm images.

Licensing Implications
While the Novell-owned Linux images will continue to be supplied with PartnerNet demo licences the Windows virtual machines will ship with a 30-day eval licence. Utopia subscribers will then be able to choose whether to use them for the eval period or activate them using their own Microsoft MSDN or TechNet keys. Further advice regarding which subscription levels can be used for activation will follow shortly.

This is great news for our partners because it gives them a complete Utopia demo offering for the first time, without the need for them to build the Windows components themselves. We hope that this change will accelerate adoption of the demo system by partners and help them to win more Novell business through the use of high quality pre-built solution demos.

NODS Upgrade
The Novell Online Demo System aka NODS is a farm of servers on which Novell hosts all of the Utopia demos for remote-control access by employees and partners. We have seen significant growth in demand for NODS demos over the last year and have been planning an upgrade to the infrastructure for several months.
I am pleased to announce that the upgrade will be going ahead over the next couple of months, with new, faster servers going into the datacenters in Provo, Nuremberg, and Sydney. We hope the combination of new larger capacity servers and new functionality being developed for the NODS Provisioning Portal will deliver a better, faster service for your remote demo needs.

More details, including dates, will be posted here as soon as we have them. For more information on Utopia & NODS please visit
http://www.novell.com/partners/demosystems

Happy Demo'ing!

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.