This chapter is meant to be read by a systems or network administrator who is responsible for the rollout of Novell® Linux Desktop (NLD) in an enterprise, or for the safe operation of a network where NLD systems will be brought up and operated. It is intended to answer some of the most important questions experienced administrators might ask when told that NLD systems will be added to their areas of responsibility.
To those who aren’t familiar with NLD or Linux at all and who come from a Windows*, Macintosh*, NetWare, or UNIX background, we suggest evaluating NLD on a single machine before rolling it out to the network. Section 2.0, Deploying Novell Linux Desktop provides an overview of the deployment techniques available with NLD and contains a detailed description of the installation procedure (Manual Installation). By doing a manual install and testing it in lab conditions, administrators can familiarize themselves with NLD and determine how it meets the needs of their network and which deployment method best fits their requirements.
The first question that comes to mind if a new software is to be deployed is “What do I need to run NLD in the enterprise?” Next, experienced network administrators think of such questions as “What will NLD do to my network? What will it want from my network? How will it behave?” Because the answer to the first question determines whether the other questions apply, it is answered first (see Hardware Requirements).
Some of the more typical discussions that might be expected in an administrator’s guide (partitioning, performance optimization, network traffic optimization) have been given short shrift. This is due to NLD’s focus as a desktop product as opposed to a server product. As such, rather than discussing fairly common server topics such as RAID levels and RAID system configuration, for example, this documentation instead directs the reader to the appropriate companion documentation for SUSE® LINUX Enterprise Server (SLES) if the NLD component in question is shared with SLES, or to documentation resources available from the Open Source Community (see Additional Documentation).