* CNA Study Guide for NetWare 6
Last month, I told you about the “NetWare 6.5 Administrator’s Guide” by Jeffrey Harris, published by Novell Press (see link below). It’s a good book and one that any NetWare 6.5 administrator should have. All the feedback I’ve received on the book has been favorable. At the time, though, I complained about the dearth of books about NetWare. Wonder of wonders, Novell Press released a second tome in January – the “CNA Study Guide for NetWare 6” (by David James Clark IV).
That’s right, the NetWare 6 (not even 6.0, you’ll note) study guide. Did I happen to mention that NetWare books were few and far between? I guess we could say better late than never, but come on – this late?
NetWare 6 shipped two and a half years ago, for cryin’ out loud. It has been more than six months since NetWare 6.5 was made available. But look inside this book and you’ll find a foreword written by Carl Ledbetter, Novell’s “Chief Technology Officer.” Well, he was up until a year ago – when he left the company. Along with the CTO role, he was also Senior Vice President of Engineering (a better sounding title, I think), a position he had occupied since March of 2002.
Put all this together and you’ve got a book that was way too long in the making. Either Novell Education’s course 3001 (“Foundations of Networking: NetWare”) took way too long to be developed, or some odd occurrence caused Clark to begin the book, stop, then take it up again much later. It might be that the book was delayed and destined never to be published, except there is yet to be a CNA test for NetWare 6.5 – although you can still be certified on NetWare 5.1.
Having ranted on about timing, let me hasten to add that the book is (as most of Clark’s NetWare books are) fairly well done. I mean, it runs to almost 800 pages, for gosh sakes. It covers everything. In fact, it even covers things that aren’t part of NetWare. GroupWise, for example.
Chapter 10 is called “NetWare Messaging Services,” but it’s really all about GroupWise. Unless you bought NetWare Small Business Suite, GroupWise wasn’t included with your network operating system. While most existing NetWare administrators will know this, people getting the book in anticipation of learning NetWare to eventually take the test and go out and find employment managing NetWare networks, could be in for a rude awakening.
There is a CD included with the evaluation (3-user, non-time-bombed) version of NetWare 6.0 (possibly the only place you can still get this CD). That might make it worth purchasing the book (at $74.99, it’s not going to be an impulse purchase), or at least make the price more palatable. Just don’t go looking for GroupWise on that CD. It’s just not there.
