4 ms·

NDS was overkill for what was effectively a departmental file and print server. NetWare failed to innovate as an application server platform - NT had a much ri

by efitz 4y ago

NDS was overkill for what was effectively a departmental file and print server. NetWare failed to innovate as an application server platform - NT had a much richer API. NT was also viewed as much more easy to administer. This was a double edged sword as many people at the time didn’t (or wouldn’t) acknowledge it as a serious server platform due to having a GUI. Also it enabled many people to run servers who had no business running servers (tubes screensaver anyone?) Finally Novell was really late grokking the internet. I remember running early NetWare 4.0x and trying to configure TCP/IP and having to configure IP addresses as dotted HEX quads. At that point I mentally flipped the bozo bit on them.

ghaff 4y ago
Pretty much. Basically they could never recapture the NetWare magic. This is something I wrote in the early 2000s when they were making another (and pretty much last) attempt with SUSE. http://bitmasons.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/pubs/novellsuse.pdf http://bitmasons.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/pubs...
bluedino 4y ago
I worked at a team blue and team red shop, NDS was amazing compared to AD.
- efitz 4y ago
  The Microsoft code name for services for NetWare was “Visine” because “it gets the red out”.
  - lukeh 4y ago
    Novell also had a similar sense of humour with the original codename for DSfW.
lukeh 4y ago
Around 2006-7 we added an Active Directory personality to NDS, called Domain Services for Windows. It was an interesting piece of engineering that highlighted both the similarities and differences between the two technologies. (Note that it ran on OES Linux only, not NetWare.)