Guide to NetWare 4 Networks

Introduction

All network installations, regardless of size or complexity, benefit from sound planning and efficient implementation. The goal of this guide is to give you practical information regarding processes, guidelines, and rationale for planning and implementing a NetWare^® 4^TM network.

Much of the information included in this guide originated from extensive research and testing done by consultants in the Novell^® Consulting Services group. The processes and rationale in this guide are derived from case-proven operations performed by these consultants.

As with any implementation of a new product release, some transitioning is required. Because of NetWare 4's wide range of new technologies, features, and support, the transition may appear greater than it really is.

By following the processes and guidelines in this guide, you will discover the best approach and strategy for transitioning your network environment to NetWare 4 and identify necessary tasks and scale your NetWare 4 project to meet the needs of your organization.

The processes and guidelines that are provided can be easily tailored to your particular project and network infrastructure.

Once you complete your NetWare 4 implementation, you will see the numerous benefits of using NetWare 4 in your network environment.

Some of the obvious benefits are:

Sizing your network into a single view of the entire network for simpler access, use, and administration.
Protecting your existing investments by more than doubling disk capacity and adding numerous network services without added hardware expense.
Supporting previous NetWare installations by providing full backward compatibility with NetWare 3^TM.
Providing a high level of scalability for managing growth and changes in your network.

General Process and Procedures

The general process and procedures for designing and implementing NetWare 4 can be divided into three phases. These phases are:

Project approach
Design
Implementation

Each phase contains a series of procedures you may or may not need to perform, depending on your particular network environment.

Phase	Procedure (Section)	Rationale
Project Approach	Organizing and Training the Project Team	Helps the project team set realistic expectations so that the design and implementation will proceed smoothly. Organizing the project in this way also gives members of the team an idea of their roles throughout the process.
	Gathering Information and Defining the Project Scope	Helps the project team identify specific resources, organizational and workgroup access, and workflow processes within your organization.
Design	Designing the Directory Tree Structure	Helps you set up Novell Directory Services (NDS) so that it works efficiently, is easy for network users to employ, and is easy for administrators to manage. It also lays a foundation for completing of the next procedure, designing partitions and replicas.
	*Determining a Partition and Replication Strategy	Helps provide the scalability, fault tolerance, and accessibility of the Directory across the network.
	*Planning the Time Synchronization Strategy	Helps provide accurate, synchronized time to all servers on the network. The servers can then apply time stamps to NDS events and to other services such as messaging applications and file systems.
	Creating an Accessibility Plan	Makes it easier to access network resources and services.
	*Designing a Data Protection Plan	Helps you avoid data loss or disasters.
	*Designing an Application Management Strategy	Helps you effectively set up your application for easier access, load balance, and fault tolerance.
Implementation	*Developing a Migration Strategy	Makes the actual upgrades and migrations go smoothly. Setting up a lab helps you avoid the problems that administrators could otherwise encounter when trying to implement NetWare 4.
	Creating an Implementation Schedule	Helps prepare the various implementation teams, eliminates confusion, provides efficient execution of tasks, and communicates migration tasks.
	Implementing NetWare 4 Services	Allows for a trouble free and timely implementation of NetWare 4.
* conditional procedure

Identifying Conditional Procedures

Some procedures are labeled as conditional. When beginning a specific procedure, you should first identify if the procedure is conditional or not. If so, determine if you need to perform that procedure for your network.

For example, a procedure for designing time synchronization requires that your network have a WAN link or over thirty servers in the network.

The discussion for each conditional procedure begins with a list of requirements to help you in decide if you need to perform a specific procedure. See Procedure Requirements at the beginning of each section for information.

Overview of This Guide

This guide is a central reference point for information about NetWare^® 4^TM design and implementation. After reading this guide, you should know how to design and implement a NetWare 4 network.

Pointers are provided for accessing only the pertinent information for your particular network type. Administrators of simple networks are guided to information that addresses their particular needs. Administrators of complex networks, or those that have WAN link considerations, can access critical information useful during their planning process.

This guide contains processes, rationale, and examples of current implementations and applications of NetWare 4. For more detail, references are provided to the documentation included with NetWare 4.

NOTE: In Novell documentation, an asterisk denotes a trademarked name belonging to a third-party company. Novell trademarks are denoted with specific trademark symbols, such as ^TM.

This guide is not a resource for conceptual information about various features of NetWare 4. It also does not address issues about complex and specific configuration of NetWare 4. Those issues are discussed in Novell^® Application Notes^TM or can be obtained from Novell Technical Support documents.

NOTE: To set up or maintain a network in the NetWare Enhanced Security configuration (the Class C2 evaluated configuration), you must supplement the information in this manual with the information in NetWare Enhanced Security Server, NetWare Enhanced Security Administration, Auditing the Network, and Security Features User Guide.