Jeff Jaffe’s Blog

Two months ago, Novell quietly made a preview announcement of Open Enterprise Server 2. Actually, it wasn’t that quiet. It was picked up reasonably well by the technical press. It included details of the rich ecosystem of backup and antivirus support committed for OES 2 and specifics around OES training and support promotion. I call the announcement “quiet” because the press coverage that we received was dwarfed by the coverage that our Microsoft agreement had received earlier that month.

Over the next few months Novell is going to get very noisy about this product. Open Enterprise Server 2 brings together many elements of Novell’s mixed-source interoperability strategy [see my January 2, 2007 blog on Novell strategy]. These key elements include:

• Linux as the universal host – the host for numerous operating environments
• Xen as a key virtualization technology
• Interoperability
• A migration path for NetWare customers
• Linux/NetWare services equivalence
• A full NetWare ecosystem for OES
• Manageability
• Training

Thus it continues our drumbeat of a continuous set of offerings that realize the mixed source vision requested by customers.

Linux as the universal host

A key design point of OES 2 is that NetWare is fully virtualized on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). This provides substantial customer benefit. All core operating system services are provided through SLES, so advances in hardware come to NetWare users on the accelerated time scale of Linux. This includes device drivers for new disks and printers, processor enhancements, multiprocessor capabilities, etc.

We see great synergy between fulfilling the needs of NetWare customers and Novell’s broader strategy of being the leader in interoperability between Linux and other platforms. Here we use core Linux technologies to advantage NetWare.

Xen as a key virtualization technology

This virtualization leverages Xen technology. In that sense, Novell’s Microsoft partnership is also synergistic with the OES design. Virtualizing both Windows and NetWare on SLES further hardens both SLES and the Xen virtualization support.

The OES 2 release demonstrates the maturity of Xen virtualization. We are substantially improving the support for Xen in SLES 10 Service Pack 1 (the basis for OES 2) by relying on Xen 3.0.5. This has the right capabilities to support the NetWare functionality.

Interoperability

OES 2 realizes greater interoperability between Microsoft environments and eDirectory – a key requirement especially for large customers. This is true whether OES 2 users deploy on Linux natively or on virtualized NetWare. Much of this greater interoperability will ship with OES 2; other pieces will come with future Novell investments in OES and the Novell Open Workgroup Suite.

Why is there this staging of capability? There are a wide variety of scenarios where Novell and Microsoft need to interoperate. There are workstations that need to get access to both Windows services through Active Directory (AD) as well as NetWare or Linux services through eDirectory. There are scenarios where AD and eDirectory need to interoperate directly – to share information. More demanding scenarios have AD and eDirectory behaving like a single virtual directory.

In early November, Microsoft and Novell made a broad announcement related to Linux and virtualization. Part of this announcement was a commitment to collaborate on directory technology. Since our OES 2 announcement came less than a month later, we did not have time to factor in how much directory interoperability could we get into OES 2. Instead, we will fill in this detail at Brainshare in March, with future enhancements coming later.

Migration path for NetWare customers

Several years ago, Novell announced its strategy to move NetWare customers over to Linux. This is not a journey that is completed in one step. Most NetWare customers today are purchasing OES and are developing the Linux skills to begin to leverage the Linux side. As soon as we move to OES 2 with the full virtualization support, there is a step function advance. Now, the value proposition to rely on Linux for operating systems services is completely realized.

Linux / NetWare services equivalence

NetWare has always been noted for its superior file, storage, and print server capability, with very tight administrative control. For customers that have built additional applications on top of NetWare, OES 2 provides a path for these customers to stay with NetWare. Our approach is to virtualize NetWare so that Linux is providing the operating systems services and the existing NetWare code base is providing the higher level services.

New customers are better off getting these same services native to Linux. Over time, many NetWare customers will also migrate to get these services native to Linux. OES 2 provides Linux / NetWare equivalence in that most NetWare services now have equivalent or better performance and capability on Linux.

The availability of both approaches within a single product provides customers with the choice to migrate at the pace they are comfortable with. If they prefer the NetWare bits – these bits exist on Linux and will do so for the foreseeable future. Over time, if customers want to migrate to a pure Linux approach – that is available too.

A full NetWare ecosystem for OES 2

We have heard from customers that they would like to see more NetWare partners join us in our announcements of new releases. Of particular interest are the vendors that provide backup and antivirus services. That is why in our November press release we were joined by Computer Associates, Commvault, McAfee, Symantec, Syncsort, and Trend Micro. With OES 2 we provide a breadth of support not previously available.

Manageability

Aside from the excellent manageability that has always been the hallmark of NetWare, additional tools are needed to help manage the virtualization capabilities for OES 2. We have also recently announced new ZENworks tools to manage the virtualized environment which significantly will support OES 2 with the other platforms. More about that in an upcoming posting on ZENworks.

Training

After the release of OES, we received significant input from customers that more training was needed. We have begun an extensive training program – in fact that was the highlight of our recent announcement. Within one month of the announcement, we already had 150% of the downloads of the training materials than we had expected for the entire length of time until “announce”. Clearly a great deal of interest. This training helps customers and partners develop skills in Linux, virtualization, and all the aspects of Open Enterprise Server. If you’re not familiar with the OES training and support promotion, please visit www.novell.com/oespromo. Partners can go directly to the PartnerNet portal to learn about the offer.