Open Enterprise Server

The much-anticipated release of Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 has now made it to release.

Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 is a network operating system based on SUSE® Linux Enterprise, featuring enterprise-class workgroup services that are easy to deploy and manage. It delivers award-winning file-and-print networking, communication capabilities and collaboration tools with unmatched security, reliability and scalability. Novell Open Enterprise Server combines proven workgroup services from Novell with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the open, flexible platform for mission-critical computing.

New features within OES2 include:

• Xen virtualization
• DFS Junctions
• Dynamic Storage Technology (DST) (SP1)
• Archiving and Versioning
• Novell iFolder 3.6
• Novell iManager 2.7
• Client for Vista

   

Improved features include:

• Identity Manager 3.5 Bundle
• eDirectory 8.8
• NMAS
• NetStorage
• iPrint (inc Vista)
• Printer Agent Redirection
• QuickFinder v5

Finalizing the Transition to Linux

There isn't really a single feature; it's a whole array of new capabilities that let you finalize your transition to Linux. For the most part, these were services that NetWare administrators had grown accustomed to, but were not yet available on the Linux side of Novell Open Enterprise Server. Some key components of this set include directory-enabled DHCP and DNS, and DFS junction support.

The ability to transition your existing DNS and DHCP infrastructure from NetWare to Linux, as well as centrally administer them the same way you do on NetWare, keeping the services “Directory enabled” To accomplish directory integration for DHCP, Novell proposed the needed changes for an eDirectory/LDAP-enabled DHCP to the DHCP community. Once the community validated the changes and agreed to provide support, Novell coded the changes and submitted them upstream. The new directory-enabled DHCP was then accepted into the downstream code base of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 1 as a pure open source project. With these enhancements in the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server code base, your Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 environment will be able to have all of its DHCP information stored in eDirectory, enabling you to centrally manage your DHCP servers from iManager.

To accomplish this eDirectory integration on the DNS side, Novell did a full port of NetWare DNS to Linux to make it functionally equivalent to DNS in NetWare 6.5. For now, Novell will provide direct support for its proprietary BIND in DNS, but is working with the community to have the changes accepted into the open source BIND project.

Another oft-asked-about feature was DFS junction support. This is new in Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 and lets you take your existing Novell Distributed File System infrastructure and migrate it to Linux. It provides move and split support of your DFS infrastructure for NetWare to NetWare, NetWare to Linux, Linux to NetWare, and Linux to Linux. It also provides client support for the Novell Client for Windows (v4.9x), Windows 2000 and XP Native protocols, and Linux CIFS/SAMBA protocols.

Full 64-bit Support

While the first iteration of Novell Open Enterprise Server let you run in a 64-bit environment, you were still 32-bit bound. The upcoming release lets you take full advantage of the extra processing power, added memory capabilities and improved heat and energy savings offered by 64-bit dual-core and multi-core processors from Intel and AMD. So now you can run Novell Open Enterprise Server on top of the distributions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server that have been optimized for x86 64-bit architectures, instead of just the x86 32-bit distribution.

To give you an idea how the ability of Novell Open Enterprise Server to harness 64-bit processing power can affect your scalability and performance, Novell did some comparison testing in its super lab. One of these tests pitted a 64-bit server against a 32-bit server, each running on 64-bit processors of the same speed. The test focused on the ability of each server to serve up SSL connections. Not surprisingly, the test revealed that the 64-bit server yielded a 65 percent performance increase over the 32-bit server. Simply put, this means that if you're already running Novell Open Enterprise Server on a 64-bit processor, by upgrading to the new version you'll probably double the number of SSL connections your server supports. You'll see significant performance improvements with other services too.