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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Earl who wrote (22890)	6/24/1998 11:03:00 AM
From: Mike Kelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

All: Reference novell.com Orion: Questions & Answers Q1: What is Orion? A1: Orion is the code name for Novell's clustering product derived from Wolf Mountain and other Novell technologies. Q2: Why is the service called Orion? A2: The name Orion was selected as the product code name, after a cluster of stars in the Orion Nebula. Q3: Is Orion Wolf Mountain? A3: No. Wolf Mountain is not a product, but rather a set of technologies. Orion will be created by leveraging some of the Wolf Mountain technologies as well as other exciting Novell products and technologies such as Moab, Novell Storage Services (NSS), Novell Directory Service (NDS), Storage Architecture Services (SAS) and others. Q4: What Wolf Mountain technologies will be used to create Orion? A4: The Wolf Mountain technologies will be leveraged in stages. Orion will take advantage of the most developed technologies first such as the Cluster InterConnect Protocol and others. This will allow Novell to deliver market driven solutions in a timely manner. Q5: What other Novell technologies will be used to create Orion? A5: Novell has a large array of superior technologies which will be leveraged to support its clustering initiative. Novell Storage Services (NSS), Hot Plug PCI support, SAS (Storage Architecture Services) and NDS (Novell Directory Services) are just some of the technologies which will be leveraged by Orion. Q6: How many nodes or servers can I have in an Orion cluster? A6: Up to 16 nodes, however, the total number of nodes in a cluster will be dependent upon how the cluster is configured. For example, some interconnect technologies may impose a limit on the number of nodes that can be supported. Q7: Will SFT III still be available when Orion ships? A7: Yes. SFT III is an excellent fault tolerant solution for customers who cannot tolerate clients losing access to the network due to server hardware failures. Novell will continue to sell and support SFT III on NetWare 4.1x so that customers will have the ability to select the best solution for their needs. Q8: Why would someone purchase Orion over SFT III? A8: Orion is a clustering service for Moab that provides a high availability solution. SFT III will not run on Moab. Orion will also provide some features SFT III does not, such as scaling beyond 2 nodes, support for heterogeneous Intel Architecture based hardware, support for failures caused by applications and others. Q9: How will one migrate from SFT III to Orion? A9: Novell will provide a migration path from SFT III to its clustering solution. The specifics will be released at future date. Q10: Why would someone purchase Orion over Vinca's StandbyServer? A10: Orion is a clustering service which will provide a high availability solution to a particular market segment. Orion will provide features not available from third party failover solutions such as Vinca's StandbyServer. For example, Orion does not require a hot standby machine, scales beyond 2 nodes, and provides a single system image. Q11: Why would someone want to purchase Vinca's Standby Server over Orion? A11: The Vinca solution will have some features which will be appealing to a certain segment of the market. For example, the Vinca solutions will support the use of the local disk in the standby server as a data store, whereas Orion will only support shared disk initially. Although pricing for Orion has not yet been determined, it is possible that solutions like Vinca's Standby Server will also be priced more aggressively and appeal to a more cost conscious segment of the market. Q12: What will Orion cost? A12: Pricing and packaging for Orion have not yet been finalized. Q13: When will Orion be delivered? A13: The second half of 1998. Q14: Will Orion be an OEM only release? A14: Orion will not be an OEM only release, however, many OEMs have expressed an interest in being able to provide an Orion based solution. By not shipping Orion as an OEM only solution, Novell will not have the same problem that exist with other solutions, where OEMs have been forced to create proprietary and incompatible derivatives. Q15: Will there be an Orion beta? A15: Yes. The Orion beta program will start in the first half of 1998. Q16: Will there be an Orion SDK? A16: Yes. Orion will include APIs which ISVs will use to make their applications cluster- aware. Q17: How does Orion Compare to Microsoft's Cluster Server product (formerly known as Wolfpack)? A17: Click here to see a comparison chart. Q18: Will Orion support NT? A18: Orion has been designed as a cross-platform service. The first release of Orion will run on top of Moab, however, future releases of Orion will be able to support other operating systems such as NT and UNIX. The availability of Novell's clustering service on other OSs will depend largely on market trends and customer demand. Q19: Will Orion support multiple Operating Systems? A19: Orion has been designed as a cross-platform service. The first release of Orion will run on top of Moab, however, future releases of Orion are planned to support other operating systems such as NT and UNIX. The availability of Novell's clustering service on other OSs will depend largely on market trends and customer demand. However, because NDS is so widely accepted by all of the leading OS vendors, NDS will provide a means to support and manage other OS platforms from an Orion- cluster network, prior to the availability of Orion on other operating systems. Q20: Will Orion support multiple hardware platforms? A20: Orion is a clustering service designed to support servers based on the Intel Architecture IA). Customers will be able to create clusters of homogeneous or heterogeneous IA based PC Servers. Novell has already demonstrated both homogeneous 12 node clusters and heterogenous 12 node clusters using the Wolf Mountain technologies on systems from partners such as Intel, Compaq, IBM, Siemens Nixdorf, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi/Apricot, HP, Olivetti, NetFRAME and others. Q21: What do I need to do now to be ready for Orion when it ships? A21: Specifications required for running Orion will be provided at a later date, however, since Orion will initially run on top of Moab, if your network will support Moab it should support Orion with little or no changes. Q22: What features are included in Orion? A22: A few of the Orion features included: Up to 16 node scalability Support for industry standard interconnects such as SCI, ServerNet and Fiber Channel Client failover Shared disk support Hot Plug PCI support Support for the Novell Storage Service file system Support for NDS Support for industry standard protocols such TCP/IP,IPX/SPX, HTTP, etc. Java based GUI administration utilities Q23: How will Orion benefit Novell customers? A23: Orion will benefit Novell customers by providing them with a clustering solution which easily integrates into their existing networking environments and allows them to migrate to an even greater level of reliability, availability and scalability. Q24: Is Orion designed to target enterprise customers? A24: Orion is designed to target all customers looking for a high availability solution that provides more than simple failover support. Orion is a clustering solution that will provide customers with high availability as well as other features of a cluster such as easier use, administration and management from a single system image, and scaling beyond two nodes. Q25: Will Orion be year 2000 compliant? A25: Yes. Orion will run on top of Moab and Moab will be Year 2000 compliant. Q26: Which vendors are supporting Novell's clustering initiative? A26: Novell has been working with the following vendors on its clustering technology: Intel Cheyenne Oracle IBM Dolphin Interconnect Solutions Compaq Computer Corporation NetFRAME G2 Networks Mitsubishi/Apricot Siemens Nixdorf Olivetti Fujitsu/ICL Hewlett-Packard Tandem Unisys