Hiya - pretty long posting for which I hope I won't get too flamed -
but I'm about to embark on a new employment venture and I need some
advice from all sides of the fence... please have a read if you've
got 5 minutes or so and are feeling charitable, curious or bored! :)
I've been a Linux sysadmin (not my main position description though -
I'm a computer graphics and visualisation person most of the time)
for approximately five years now - although it has been a fairly
casual affair as I own my own business and as such don't have the
pressure of being a sysadmin for a corporation. I feel that I'm
fairly experienced (I've managed to bring the systems to their knees
enough times by doing stupid rm -rf type tricks) with Linux / UNIX
administration and can handle most eventualities... sometimes with
the gracious help of our friends at [EMAIL PROTECTED]! :)
My experiences with UNIX to date have been approximately 0.9%
SGI/IRIX 0.1% Slackware and 99.0% Redhat Linux... I also have *very*
strong Macintosh system administration and moderate Windows 95/98
experience, and minimal 2000/NT experience. I feel that I'm able to
pick up new computer administration and operation concepts quite
rapidly and could most likely bluff my way through any situations I
don't really understand 100% by learning on the fly - as I have done
with most of my computer knowledge to date.
So... I've been plodding along happily running my own business (with
business partner - but he does mainly graphics stuff, I do more
business management and systems administration stuff) for a while now
- and a client that we've been doing about 75% of our work for over
the last year has proposed that they buy us out and that we go work
for them. This is kind of an interesting proposition for me as I have
never been "employed" by anyone as such before... Anyway - My
position is going to be "Manager - Technical Systems" and falling
under the banner of that title I'll be responsible for the management
of the company's IT needs, web site development, and other such
technical issues.
Now - finally - here comes the question! :) - I have gone in to
evaluate their setup and discovered that most of the workstations are
running windows NT, with a couple running 2000, and the file & print
server / internet gateway & firewall is running Novell NetWare. I've
heard of NetWare before - but never had the (dis?)pleasure of meeting
such a beast in the wild. One of my first tasks as we start
negotiating business takeover deals and employment contracts is to
take over responsibility for the IT management.
What I'm hoping you helpful folk will be able to help me with is:
1) Is NetWare a reasonable beast to administer, they have the license already,
the setup is pretty stable (after 10 months of screwups & problems!) and I'm
thinking that there is no point going in there and changing everything. Will
I be able to us my prior sysadmin knowledge to guess how to do most stuff?
Should I let the sleeping dog lie? Or should I try to teach it new
tricks?:)
2) I have to write a recommendation as to what we're going to do with
the LAN. I
really enjoy administering Linux. Are there better arguments as to why I
should migrate the services being provided to Linux? Can someone provide me
with reference as to how NetWare performs vs Linux on the same hardware? Oh
yeah - the server is a Compaq Proliant 1600 R so I'm pretty happy
that I will
be able to run Redhat on it with minimal fuss.
3) My gut feeling is that I should use the server as is, then gradually migrate
the services over to a Linux box (one of our spare servers) one by
one, until
I can reformat the Proliant and set up a Redhat based server that I can be
proud of! I was also thinking of improving redundancy by setting up a
separate firewall / dial-in Linux server, and a separate mail / web server
from the SAMBA file server. Is this what you would do? Can NetWare do
appletalk or will I need to keep our Linux server running for that?
4) Can you point me in the direction of *any* documents dealing with NetWare
vs Linux, or any other information that will help me with this quest?
5) Are there any other questions I should have asked? :)
Thanks loads for reading this far, and thanks in advance for any info
anyone has to offer...
- dan.
--
Nitro - 3D Visualisation, Graphics & Animation
Ph (+61 2) 9810 5177 - Fx (+61 2) 9810 0199
http://www.nitro.com.au/
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