Depending on how you look at it, Novell's Open Enterprise Server is either more of the same old stuff, or a major breakthrough in how advanced services can be built to run on a variety of base operating system kernels.

Based on our Clear Choice Test of OES , we think it's a major breakthrough in Novell's long-stated intention to marry its directory and administrative applications to Linux. OES layers a highly competitive directory service onto Linux, provides decidedly evolved administrative and management components and offers very good, egalitarian client support.

With OES you get a choice: traditional NetWare (Version 6.5 with Service Pack 3), or traditional Linux (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 [SLES] with Service Pack 1). NetWare shops can now peer Linux applications and services with NetWare-hosted eDirectory and Novell-based identity-management services. On the flip side, Linux-based IT organizations can now plug into a cohesive, mature, encrypted authentication infrastructure that's commercially supported worldwide.

A single OES license entitles the user to build two servers of either foundational type and cluster them together. The OES glue that binds the two base operating systems together is eDirectory, which is easier to implement, manage and administer than the open source OpenLDAP directory service. Novell has made the eDirectory services largely congruent across both kernels.

The downside that still remains for both NetWare and Linux users - even with OES - is that connectivity to Windows Active Directory and NT domains creates a duplicate layer of directory services because that integration requires the installation of Samba proxy services to make the necessary connections.

Both versions of OES can be managed by iManager 2.5, a browser plug-in that gets to the heart of virtually all OES services worth mentioning - especially Novell's evolved eDirectory. This application uses browser real estate efficiently but begs for a high-resolution screen. On the Linux side of OES, where iManager leaves off, SLES 9's Yet Another Setup Tool (YaST) takes over for driving operating system-specific configuration and administration detail such as hardware management, low-level settings and DNS/DHCP tasks. In our tests, we hardly used YaST.