* Novell releases documents to help you migrate to OES
Last issue, I told you about Novell’s “Where to Start: Open Enterprise Server Migration Guide” which outlines six fairly easy and straightforward projects to help you begin to explore OES and the wonders of familiar NetWare utilities and services running on Linux.
After you’ve gotten your feet wet with these demonstration projects, Novell hopes you’ll be ready to plunge right in and go for a full-fledged move to OES. To help you plan a successful migration, Novell has made available a deployment guide (https://www.novell.com/products/openenterpriseserver/deployment.html).
The guide has quick links to the documentation for the tools you’ll need to perform the following “move to OES” tasks:
* Installing a new OES-on-NetWare server.
* Installing a new OES-on-Linux server.
* Consolidating NetWare/Windows NT/Windows 2000/Windows 2003 servers onto OES (either NetWare or Linux).
* Migrating data from a NetWare server to OES.
* Upgrading SuSE Linux Enteprise Server 9 to OES.
* Upgrading NetWare 4, 5 or 6 to OES.
But even before doing that, there’s a very helpful guide to help you get the network right the first time. The Getting Started guide is in five parts: assessment, design, implementation, training and support. Each section talks about why you need that step and then outlines a methodology to follow to help you reach the goals you have for the network. The assessment phase, for example, asks you to consider (among other things):
* How well a migration to OES fits your corporate strategy.
* What your stakeholder and business requirements are.
* What open source services and applications are available to meet your needs.
* Whether regulatory policies and requirements need to be taken into account.
The Guide then goes on to point you to specific white papers (as well as “beige papers” – documents written by the team that did Novell’s own OES deployment) that will help you implement what the assessment has told you that you need to do.
There’s a lot at stake for Novell in OES, possibly the fate of the company. It’s going to do whatever it can to see that your first venture into OES-land is as pleasant an experience as possible. You should at least explore the possibility of doing this migration.
