Novell Doc: OES 2 SP3: Upgrading to OES—Best Practices Guide

1.4 What Do Novell Customers Recommend?

Periodically, Novell polls customers to get a reality check. The table below summarizes customer advice from a survey of OES 2 customers.

Table 1-2 From a Recent Novell Customer Survey

Customer Tip
Learn basic Linux skills first (before starting) or have someone handy. Make sure you:
Understand the Linux file system and rights. For help, see Understanding Directory Structures in Linux POSIX File Systems in the OES 2 SP3: File Systems Management Guide and Aligning NCP and POSIX File Access Rights in the OES 2 SP3: Planning and Implementation Guide
Know Linux command line tools for the equivalent NetWare commands (DSTrace, DSRepair, etc.). Learn the commands by setting up a test server and playing out the scenario you want to see on your production server. For help, see the OES2 SP3: Linux Tips for NetWare Administrators guide.
Understand that in-house Linux expertise is a necessary prerequisite. (The good news is that fully 89% of survey respondents who have deployed OES 2 discovered that they already had Linux expertise on their deployment teams.) For help, see Section 1.6, How Much Training Is Needed? and Section 1.7, What Training Is Available?.
Plan ahead and know your NetWare, OES, and eDirectory environments very well:
Make sure eDirectory is clean and that you are current on all patches.
Plan the deployment scenario and find the holes and gotchas.
Plan data locations, file systems, and LUM configuration objects.
Perform a complete inventory of all applications (and their dependencies) before you get too far into planning in case they or their dependencies can't be moved to OES/SLES.
Upgrade slowly and cautiously, but start now
Start in small scale (a couple of servers) or just move DHCP for a couple of weeks, then DNS for a couple of weeks, then GroupWise®, WebAccess, etc.
Be careful; you can harm your OES production environment if you don't understand what you are doing; don't start with your most important servers.
Test, test, test.
Test everything multiple times, including third-party products like backup solutions, before full deployment.
Create an initial test box if you don't have previous Linux experience. For help, see the OES 2 SP3: Getting Started with OES 2 and Virtualized NetWare.
Use VMware^* (or other virtualization products) and install many times to get the feel for it, then test, test, test.
Give it a try.
Moving to OES 2 is easy and relatively painless.
Start your upgrade in a lab environment first and play with the product.
Try installing Linux at home and use it as your primary OS.
Make sure you have a test environment that mimics your production installation.
It works the same as NetWare.
The Novell management Interfaces look the same. iPrint, iManager, etc.—all of the benefits of NetWare are available on OES 2.
Don't freak out about service and management differences
Learn the iMonitor and iManager Web tools for service and server management. Become familiar with the basic management commands, such as ndsconfig for eDirectory management.
Do your homework and read everything you can find.
Scour the discussion forums and see what problems others are having and how they solved them, ask questions, and make notes.
Avoid mixing OES 2 and NetWare, if possible.
Create separate servers providing other services such as DNS, DHCP, etc., on OES first to gain familiarity with Linux as a whole.
YaST is your friend.
It's not always the answer, though. Learn which things are best configured in the configuration files and which things you really should use YaST for.
Find out how well your hardware vendor supports Linux.
Make sure your hardware vendor not only supports Linux, but also provides regular driver updates for the version of SLES you are planning to deploy.