NT/NetWare still has some integration woes
Current beta of Client32 for NT lacks important management features; best to wait for final release
By Mark Stanczak
PROGRESS REPORT
NetWare administrators, eager to upgrade to Windows NT 4.0, can now download the initial open beta release of Novell Inc.'s NetWare Client32 for Windows NT 4.0, the only solution available for managing NDS objects with NT 4.0.
Don't get too excited, however. When PC Week Labs compared the Aug. 1 beta of NetWare Client32 for Windows NT with Microsoft Corp.'s Client Services for NetWare, we were disappointed to find only baseline improvements in Novell's client.
(These two utilities enable 32-bit clients to communicate simultaneously with both NetWare 4.1 and NT 4.0 file servers.)
Although a 32-bit version of the NetWare Administrator and a single sign-on capability for both Novell Directory Services and an NT domain are welcome new features, we were surprised that the current beta release lacks any NT management utilities.
Missing NDS' potential
We yearned for the option to add an NT application server object to our NDS tree, for example. This would have enabled us to manage both NetWare and NT servers from a single console--NDS' eventual goal.
Client32 for NT is best implemented in networks where NDS and NetWare servers dominate and NT servers are relative add-ons.
In environments that are primarily NT with only a few NetWare 4.x servers, administrators could likely get frustrated with the Client32 utility, since they are unable to run NDS utilities from an NT workstation.
Historical differences
Due to an incompatibility, which started with Windows 95, Microsoft's 32-bit operating systems seem incapable of running Novell's two key management utilities for NDS, NWADMIN (Windows version) and NETADMIN (DOS version).
Solutions to this problem have been left up to Novell--whose first effort, NetWare Client32 for Windows 95, was a lackluster performer. Although it did include the NDS management capability and the Novell Application Launcher, the utility brought with it new incompatibilities--especially in 100M-bps network environments.
Let's hope that history doesn't repeat itself. Let's also hope that Novell uses its time wisely to offer a fully compatible NT client that has all of the necessary bells and whistles. And that the result will be available soon after NT 4.0.
NetWare Client32 for Windows NT 4.0 can be downloaded from Novell's Web site at novell.com. The file is about 4M bytes in size.
Senior Analyst Mark Stanczak can
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