Stuck in Novell, needing MS experience

Hi everyone,

This is my first post. Have been reading the different forums for quite awhile and am very impressed with what I see. Need some help so here we go..

In my current employment situation, we are a predominately NW 6.5 environment with the exception of a couple of 2003 servers. I need to gain experience with MS active directory and everything as far as deploying a MS network. It appears we will not be migrating any time soon to a AD network. Problem is, I don't have the extra cash on hand to build my own lab. I've looked at opportunities to volunteer or work PT somewhere working in an AD environment but haven't come across anything. I feel I won't be able to get a job anywhere else or step up to a Network Admin position unless I gain a few years experience doing this. And I can't afford to leave my current position.

If anyone has some advice or direction, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks

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Turgon

Nsdad1107 wrote:

Hi everyone,

This is my first post. Have been reading the different forums for quite awhile and am very impressed with what I see. Need some help so here we go..

In my current employment situation, we are a predominately NW 6.5 environment with the exception of a couple of 2003 servers. I need to gain experience with MS active directory and everything as far as deploying a MS network. It appears we will not be migrating any time soon to a AD network. Problem is, I don't have the extra cash on hand to build my own lab. I've looked at opportunities to volunteer or work PT somewhere working in an AD environment but haven't come across anything. I feel I won't be able to get a job anywhere else or step up to a Network Admin position unless I gain a few years experience doing this. And I can't afford to leave my current position.

If anyone has some advice or direction, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks

There's really nothing wrong with getting experience in a Novell environment. In fact a few years ago a CNE was rated higher than an MCSE by many recruiters. Have a look at building something at home even if it's VMWare and start to take on some of the MCPs. You should find reflection on what MS have to offer these days in terms of functionality very interesting given your Netware/eDirectory experience.

Good luck.

malcybood

Nsdad1107 wrote:

Hi everyone,

This is my first post. Have been reading the different forums for quite awhile and am very impressed with what I see. Need some help so here we go..

In my current employment situation, we are a predominately NW 6.5 environment with the exception of a couple of 2003 servers. I need to gain experience with MS active directory and everything as far as deploying a MS network. It appears we will not be migrating any time soon to a AD network. Problem is, I don't have the extra cash on hand to build my own lab. I've looked at opportunities to volunteer or work PT somewhere working in an AD environment but haven't come across anything. I feel I won't be able to get a job anywhere else or step up to a Network Admin position unless I gain a few years experience doing this. And I can't afford to leave my current position.

If anyone has some advice or direction, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks

Hey,

Currently working in a Novell House myself, but we're planning our AD migration. Novell will only support Netware 6.5 until 2015 with Open Enterprise Server being the product replacement. Do your bosses know this? They should do and should be planning already for which direction they intend to go after support expires.....I would be!

http://support.novell.com/lifecycle/lcSearchResults.jsp?st=-1&sl=-1&sg=1

You can do some low cost lab work if you beef the RAM up in your machine to at least 2GB or higher and setup a virtualisation lab through VMWare Server or Virtual PC, pretty straight forward. You need a copy of Server 2003 obviously but if you can't get a copy from work or something then there are always the 180 day trials available from MS!

I haven't found it that difficult to understand MS stuff having a good grounding in netware, console one, NWAdmin etc really helps. It's all pretty much the same thing at the end of the day, just different terminology and structure.

Good luck

Malc

CoryS

Hello!

First let me say I was an MS guy who had to learn a decent amount about Novell in the last year and am now in the middle stages of a full migration off of Novell.

Let me tell ya, the best tools I have used to get used to what would be required were the free ones. Heres the list of what I have used to figure out what I needed to migrate off of Novell.

Hardware:
- 2 physical Desktop machines with a decent bit of horsepower built within the last year and a half.
- VMWare on one machine with 3 Virtual Servers, 1 Exchange, 1 Novell for eDir, 1 for XP since I didnt have my laptop at the time
- VMware on the 2nd machine, 1 Virtual Server for Groupwise, the main rig was my DC

Software: MSDSS 5.x, great free tool which pretty much does the same stuff as Quests NDS migrator (minus a few profile migration tasks)
- Demo'd the Quest Groupwise Migrator for Exchange, pretty much the best thing since sliced bread.
- Tons of scenarios labbed out to simulate different setups in Exchange 2007 by itself as well as setting up a coexistance with 2003 in the mix.

The reason I list this is because I worked in the opposite direction of you, using these tools forced me to really get a grasp of ConsoleOne and NWAdmin, as well as the intricacies of GroupWise (which in all honesty I have come to despise despite its few outstanding features that make it unique from Exchange).

Pretty much all thats required from you: The drive to do it, patience, time.

Nsdad1107

Thanks to everyone who responded. I enjoy Novell, actually. Seems like there's not alot of people out there who are real familiar with it and I want to be one of them. I think as I go on my experiencce administering and working with NW will help me out in the world of Windows.

Kasor

If you can handle Novell eDIR, then MS migration is easy. Novell structure is actually more complex when come to certain environment issue. Mostly running on the backend with MS product at the frontend.

GW 6.5 had reach the limited and I look forward to upgrade to GW 7.0.

In addition, VMware and Virtual PC is a way to go. Just get a P4 and load with 4G or RAM, then you can test and run any type of OS you want. However, I found that many old computer MB don't suppor huge amount of RAM. So, play attention when you build your own machine.

We used to reboot the MS or Exchange SVR first time in the morning before the rush hour kicked in, but for Novell or GW SVR. You don't have to....