MICROSOFT NT ENTERPRISE DESIGN Interoperability Most organizations migrating to NT have a need to be have interoperability with their existing computer systems. There are two areas of integration that can be addressed - Clients, and Servers. Client Integration - If your companyís desktops are primarily Windows 95, or Windows NT Workstation, you are in luck. Outside of the need for the user to manage one more ID and password, making a few changes in Control Panel will enable connectivity to the NT enterprise. Wherever possible try to use TCP/IP and DHCP. This not only utilizes the network bandwidth efficiently, but also eliminates the manual maintenance of IP addresses. Keep in mind the issues with WINS(e.g. Don't make your WINS replication chain long), and Browsing(e.g. A maximum of 2000-3000 entries are possible in your browser table) as outlined in the Management section of this chapter. If your desktops are primarily Windows 3.x, then you will need to do a lot of work, especially, if your server platform was NetWare. Enabling the ODI and NDIS stacks on the same machine at the same time is not a task for the meek. It requires memory optimization on the PC, and standard configurations, otherwise it will result in chaos. Your best option is to migrate to Windows 95 or Windows NT Workstation. For UNIX clients, NT comes with an FTP service, and third-party NFS and Telnet products can make file systems and applications available. Using standard RPCs also enables the workstations to communicate with the applications on an NT server. UNIX clients can also use DHCP to request IP addresses from the NT server. Macintosh clients have easy access to the server after the administrator installs Services for Macintosh. The software enables an NT server to appear as an Appleshare resource. Microsoft has made it very easy for an NT server to participate in a NetWare network. Microsoft tools such as FPNW, GSNW, and Directory Services Manager for NetWare, allow both sides to talk. File/Print Services for NetWare makes an NT server look like a NetWare 3.x server. Any desktop with NetWare client access software can login to this server and map to volumes etc. The volumes are simply directories on the NT server that the administrator has enabled for NetWare File/Print services. You have access to the printers as well. FPNW is an optional product and is a great transition tool while you are enabling the desktops for NT access. The only caveat is that access to the server from NetWare clients can be slower than to a native NetWare server. Gateway Services for NetWare allows the NT server to login to a NetWare server, and while maintaining a single NetWare connection, it is able to provide access to NetWare file resources for it's clients who may have only the ability to use NT resources on this server. So the NT server with the GSNW service acts as a gatewa y to the NetWare world translating between SMB and NCP calls. The administrator can map areas of the NetWare servers to Shares that clients can access easily. NetWare print queues are also made available to Microsoft clients. Again this is a good tool if you have critical data residing on a NetWare server, but want to give NT clients access to this data. However, because access from multiple clients is sent through a single connection to the NetWare server, the access can be slow. Directory Service Manager for NetWare allows the administration of NetWare server Ids from an NT console. If you are primarily NT, and have NetWare servers as well, or if you would like to administer all IDs from one platform, a single point of administration can be achieved by using this software. Changes you make to UserId and Groups using an extended User Manager for Domains are propagated back to Novell has recently demonstrated the ability to manage NT Ids from their Novell Directory Services Administrator. So if you are a NetWare 4.x shop, Novell will make it easy for you to administer NT Ids. The ideal would be to have one ID for accessing both NetWare and NT services. FPNW, GSNW, and DSMN are all Microsoft products and enable access to and control of NetWare resources. You can run NetWare utilities such as SYSCON from an NT or a Windows 95 workstation. Herein lies the problem. Novell, being the market leader, hasn't done nearly enough to enable management of NT from NetWare clients. While this may be changing where NetWare 4.x is concerned, i.e., utilities to manage NT resources via the NDS tree, there isn't much for NetWare 3.x shops. To migrate a NetWare server to NT, use NWCONV utility to transfer userids, and groups to a accounts server, and the files and directories to a resource server. This utility only recognises bindery servers(NetWare 2.x, 3.x) Important steps to consider in migrating from NetWare to NT: If currently NetWare 4.x, th en its best to wait for NT 5.0 (Cairo) X.500 capability Develop an enterprise WINS infrastructure Choose an appropriate domain model to allow for growth and/or conversion to NT 5.0 Publish user and workstation naming standards to avoid duplicate NetBIOS names Develop Microsoft Networking training for user migration Develop support plan for central and distributed administration functions Pilot a controlled migration plan before implementing fully Provide for contingency recovery and design reliability Next Updated August 15, 1996 Print This Page E-mail this URL