Novell NetWare 5.1 Is Primed To Ensnare You in Its Web
December 13, 1999
By Ron Anderson
Get ready for NetWare 5.1, soon to arrive with the new functionality of mostly Web- and Internet-based improvements and additions. We explored an early copy at our Real-World Labs© at Syracuse University for a peek at the features that await when Novell releases it in early 2000.
In our view, the Web-management capabilities alone justify putting NetWare 5.1 on your wish list. Your users will be able to access their files over the Internet without the hassles and security problems accompanying use of an FTP client. And your developers will appreciate 5.1's rich tool set for developing state-of-the-art Web applications.
In the beta build that we tested--put together just before the public beta 3 release--Novell had to exclude a few components that weren't yet fully cooked: IBM's WebSphere
Application Server, Oracle 8i and the WebDB Oracle Web extensions. We'll take a close look at those additions when we test the shipping version.
Although NetWare 5.1 is a compilation of a number of technologies--including some from third parties--the installation routine is cohesive and was very smooth in our labs (but remember that the tough stuff from IBM and Oracle wasn't included). We installed 5.1 on two server-class machines, one with 256 MB of RAM and one with 128 MB. NetWare 5.1 requires a Pentium or faster processor, VGA or higher display adapter, at least 35 MB free on your DOS partition, enough free space on your disk drives for a 900-MB SYS volume for a standard installation, and 1.3 GB for an installation that includes WebSphere.
One of the first dialog boxes that pops up after you start the installation asks you to select NDS8, the default directory services version for 5.1, or NDS7, the NetWare 5.0 default. The 5.1 package includes NDS Deployment Manager, a Java application that will check for NDS8 compliance throughout your tree and make recommendations based on your setup.
The opening screen also gives you the opportunity to set your internal network number and server parameters that load from the STARTUP.NCF file. It was nice to see that Novell had moved the internal network setting, which NetWare 5.0 hid, back to a prominent position in the setup routine. Many companies have standardized the configuration of internal network numbers to help identify servers and to avoid duplication--5.1 makes this easy to configure from the get-go.
Like all the releases since NetWare 4.0, version 5.1 autodetects your disk and network controllers during installation. Hardware that caused problems when installing NetWare 5.0 (for example, disk drivers for newer Compaq servers) installed without a hitch due to NetWare 5.1's updated driver support. After the disks and network are set, the graphical part of the installation begins.
NetWare 5.1 retains all the features in NetWare 5.0, and adds new ones including NDS8, Enterprise Server 3.6, the Management Portal, a Web Search Server, FTP Server, News Server, Multimedia Server and Halcyon's InstantASP.
The Web Is Everywhere
The NetWare Enterprise Web Server is based on the Netscape Enterprise Server but has some can't-miss additions. For the first time, you'll be able to provide Web access to documents located on remote NetWare servers. We set up a document directory on our second 5.1 server and served it up from the Enterprise Server running on our other 5.1 server.
By creating a public_ html directory in a user's home directory, we were able to create personal Web space for individual NDS users accessible by using the ~username format. While this feature was available with the old Novell Web Server, this is its debut in the Netscape Server for NetWare series. Its welcome return puts 5.1 on par with
Unix-based Web servers regarding personal Web space.
The new Enterprise Web Server includes support for Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), a proposed IETF standards extension (RFC 2518) of the HTTP 1.1 protocol. WebDAV applications designed for distributed collaboration and document authoring, such as Office 2000 or Internet Explorer 5.0, enable users to work on shared documents across the Web as if the documents were on the local hard drive.
One very nice WebDAV addition included on the server side is access to the "My Network" folder. We tested this feature using Windows machines with either Office 2000 or IE5 installed. Windows Explorer is extended when Office 2000 is installed to include a new type of folder, called Web Folder. We set up a new Web Folder using the Web Folder wizard. Typing the "My Network" URL, server.domain/My Network, in the Add Web Folder wizard dialog box created a new folder called "My Network on server.domain." When we clicked on this icon, we were challenged for our NDS user name and password. Once authenticated, we had access to our NetWare home directory, any mapped drives included in our user login script, and NDS folders for the entire tree and for our own organizational unit.
Your users will benefit from this new service, gaining access to their NetWare home directory from anywhere on the Internet. However, we identified two problems with the setup for this new service. First, for users to authenticate without entering their full NDS context, your administrators will need to manage a list of contexts served by the Enterprise Web Server. Such additional administrative overhead is something all organizations wish to avoid, so Novell is working to automate the process for contextless authentication in a future release. Second, mapped drives are only presented to users if they are included in the user's login script. Most large organizations avoid individual login scripts in favor of the more manageable container or tree scripts. Novell says it has no immediate plans to address this.
The Web Is Everywhere, Part 2
First Novell does away with the need for the FTP service by replacing it with Web-based services, then it does the same for RCONSOLE. NetWare 5.1 includes a new service called the NetWare Web Manager (NWM), a browser-accessible service for managing your 5.1 servers and NDS over a link that is authenticated and encrypted. NWM pulls the services together nicely and provides an integrated management experience.
From the general administration screen, we created and deleted NDS users and groups, and managed the Enterprise Web Server, the NetWare Web Search Server and the NetWare News Server (NNS). We also set up file and directory trustee assignments from the users and groups tab. Making trustee assignments from this page is a bare-bones operation, but useful in an emergency.
NWM also provides a link to the NetWare Management Portal (NMP), which is accessible in authenticated or unauthenticated mode. NetWare admins will use authenticated access and get access to volume management, server management, NDS management, remote server access to other 5.1 server portals, limited access to the file systems on 5.0 and 4.x servers, hardware information, console screens and health monitors.
We used NMP to mount and dismount volumes, set volume attributes and server parameters, restart servers, manage connections and broadcast messages, view statistics and graphical representations of server performance, debug problems and execute console commands. RCONSOLE still will be required to interact with individual application console screens.
During testing we noticed a caution light on the Server Health monitor for one of our 5.1 servers. We drilled down into the monitor and found high CPU utilization to be the cause.
Via the profiling and debug information screen we could see that NNS was using most of the thread time on the 5.1 server. We stopped and restarted NNS, and got everything back to normal. This couldn't have been easier and our hats are off to Novell for providing this simple tool with such great utility.
NNS is a port of Netscape's Collabra server and provides a GUI for administrative tasks such as adding newsgroups, setting expiration policies and defining replication hosts. NNS is a good tool for intranet discussion groups since you can restrict access to individual discussions via NDS authentication.
Our biggest disappointment with the upgrade is that Novell still hasn't enhanced Novell Storage Services (NSS) to include file compression, quotas or transaction tracking system (TTS) support. Lack of TTS support makes it impossible to place the SYS volume on an NSS partition, and lack of quota support makes it difficult to use NSS volumes for user storage space, since there is no way to manage the amount of space that is accessible to each user. These enhancements were all promised "real soon" when NSS was first released with NetWare 5.0. Soon is gone, and the lack of these enhancements is a blemish on an otherwise impressive upgrade.
Send your comments on this article to Ron Anderson at randerson@nwc.com. |
