I sent an article (outlining the importance of NT 5.0 to MSFT) to a friend who is a network manager in the Pacific Rim. We have had an ongoing, fairly civil debate regarding Novell vs MSFT and he has been right about many things so far (esp in terms of MSFT). His latest response -
********************************************************************
Interesting article. I found this very relevant, especially right after returning from Singapore attending Microsoft TechEd98. I had first hands experience with NT 5.0 Beta 2 in a lab environment with over 100 servers, using active directory and the integrated software distribution features in NT 5.0. It was very interesting because the zero administration workstation (ZAW) functionality is now integrated with active directory. Yes, what the article points out about the complete makeover in NT 5.0 is very true. There are many many useful new "cool" features with NT 5.0, but what I personally discovered was:
1) Many of the new "cool" features will only work if NT 5.0 domains are running in Native mode.
2) It would take large corporates some time to migrate NT 4.0 netbios
name based domains & applications to NT 5.0 native DNS based domains and applications.
3) MS has a pretty good migration "path" where the NT 5.0 active
directory can "co-exist" with the NT 4.0 domains for sometime during the migration, however, this too will not be a painless process.
4) The planning and design of the Active Directory organization and
groups association is the MOST critical part of the new infrastructure. Poor design will lead to lousy functionality and a major pain in the a**. I quite certain that many organizations will make this mistake (many large corporates made this mistake with the simpler NT 4.0 domain infrastructure, I can't immagine their planning for the more complex AD design).
5) There is going to be a fairly steep learning curve for the industry
on managing NT 5.0 servers, with many corporations possibly encountering low productivity during this process.
Also, many of the Novell skilled folks at TechEd98 commented on the
similarities of Active Directory and NDS. However, most of them believe that the zero administration model from MS is much more powerful compared to Novell's ZEN. This is probably because NT 5.0 WKS will have zero admin features built in to work with MS's active directory and ZEN needs to work around NT 5.0 WKS to provide the functionality with Novell's NDS. Also all new MS Backoffice applications & BO certified 3rd party applications will be written to work off NT 5.0's active directory and will no longer have their own directory service (e.g. MS Exchange, SQL server, etc.). I guess MS is also using this to leverage on industry acceptance for Active Directory.
In summary, yes,NT 5.0 beta2 is much cleaner and leaner than beta 1, but still needs considerable amount of work before we see it on the shelf. It will be definitely interesting when NT 5.0 hits the shelve (sometime in 99). The industry should be scrambling for NT 5.0 skills to guide them through the complex migration process & skills transfer. Regardless, whether NT 5.0 will make or break MS, I am quite excited to participate in this discovery process... |
