I've known John McCann since before he could legally buy a beer. I think he only had to shave once a month in those days. But he'd already created a software metering networking service and was well on his way towards showing Novell how best to run its online support and developer services when he (according to a story that might be apocryphal) developed the NetWare Name Service over a long weekend in 1989. NNS was the precursor to the distributed directory service we now know as eDirectory.
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For the past 10 years, McCann has been involved with an Austin, Texas company called Visual Click Software and its primary application, DSRazor.
I first mention the application back in 1999 (see "New tool quickly creates apps that enable users to interact with NDS") when it was called "Click:VISION Manager" - an unwieldy name, at best. But the product hasn't been stagnant. There are now five different versions of DSRazor supporting eDirectory, NetWare, GroupWise, Active Directory and Windows. The first three, though, are probably the most interesting to you.
While you'll want to check the functionality of all of the products, DSRazor for NetWare is one that all of you should find interesting. Among the things you can do with it are:
* Record all login and logout activity.
* Block unwanted files on your NetWare File Systems (even using wildcards such as *.mp3, *.avi, *.mpeg, etc.).
* Track all file activity including open, read, write, delete, rename, purge and salvage requests.
* Alert on changes to file system security - watch for addition of administrative privileges.
* Document effective file system permissions for all users and groups.
* Get reports on disk space, purgeable space, directory space restrictions, Inheritance Filters and more.
* Delegate help desk duties, clear connections, user passwords, disk space restrictions and so on without the need to give help desk staff change permissions at all!
* Manage and document ZENworks plus ZEN Remote Control, NDPS, print queues, NLMs.
* Find connections with hung login scripts and more.
And that's just the short list! Free trials are available for all the products, so there's no need to wait to see if this would help in your organization.
Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found at Virtual Quill.
Kearns is the author of two Network World Newsletters: Windows Networking Strategies, and Identity Management. Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these respective addresses: windows@vquill.com, identity@vquill.com .
Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail.
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Copyright 2008 Network World Inc.
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