What was Managing a Network like Pre-Active Directory?

[Jadow]

I was never a network admin in a non-AD environment, but I just can't imaging how much harder it'd be without AD. It is the most kick ass tool ever. You can manage user and group permissions, mailboxes, mail distribution lists, HR systems, everything in AD. I love how it centralizes everything in one place. If someone gets fired, just disable the AD account, they lose their rights, email is deactivated, HR system is notified, the works. It's awesome.

Thoughts?

 

[spidey07]

What is a domain for the win alex.

 

[stash]

Managing NT4 in a large environment was hell.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: stash
Managing NT4 in a large environment was hell.

What is Netware FTW, alex?

 

[ScottMac]

Nuts Spidey, I was gonna say how wonderful it was was for YEARS using Novell's NDS (and before NDS, when Networks were fast with fewer resources, running Netware).

When Novell announced Netware 3 they had 1000 (one thousand) PCs connectd to a single PC/Server (it was a 386/33, IIRC, with 8 or 16 meg of RAM...) all doing productivity apps just fine. Running Netware, the most perfect file/print service ... secure, fast, and reliable. This was back in the day when, in order to make the Microsoft product C2 secure, you had to remove all of the NICs and modems ...

And now, it's running on top of a 'nix, the world's most perfect database platform/OS (aside from the System39x/AS400/S38/S36 ...) ... something wunnerful is gonna happen there someday.

It's a shame that the folks at Novell suck so bad at choosing Marketing people and public representation (or maybe Microsoft just bought 'em all .... who knows).

I still have some hope for Novell, but I'm still a Registered MS partner and use Linux at home for servers and clients, along with my Server2003/AD and MS Windows machines.

Diversity is the key, and the right tool for the job is always (which, of course means "usually") the way to go ....

Fond memories; indeed I was a Novell zealot, when you cut me I bleed red ....

FWIW

Scott

 

[spidey07]

Well, we sidetracked so let's sidetrack...

The only reason why MS won that battle was by making a server/NOS look like a PC. Same tools, integrating it all, allowing just about any idiot that could open "my computer" setup a server.

MS stole (just like they always do, and I love MS products) the entire directory concept from novell. IIRC ldap was a big push from novell and the entire industry.

and MS takes it, bastardizes it to only be wholy compatible with their products.

Microsoft AD is nothing short of what has already been done better and more interoperable by other companies. The entire move of the industry to a standards based LDAP is still going on and in many industries MS and their active directory is viewed as a "damn MS and their proprietary crap" viewpoint.

You'll find that most enterprises do NOT rely on AD for their serious work. AD is taking care of the lowly PCs, while REAL operating systems are doing all the work.

 

[spike spiegal]

MS stole (just like they always do, and I love MS products) the entire directory concept from novell. I

BS. For that to be true, please show me the 'Netware Desktop OS'.

From it's existence Netware is nothing more than a directory replication system for servers, with desktop integration as nothing more than a prostetic 'strap-on' that never ran correctly anyways.

You think NT 4 was "hell", try NDS 4 and trying to route that crap with IPX, which took Novell forever to admit was an inferiour protocol to IP. I guess according to you Novell invented IP.

You'll find that most enterprises do NOT rely on AD for their serious work

Unemployment line getting frustrating there, buddy? I'm been in AD infrastructures with over 10,000 clients and many Novell ones just as big. The biggest difference is with the Microsoft infrastructures it takes half the staff to run it. Most of the whining is because disgruntled Netware admins have to actually work for a living rather than consider user needs an annoyance. In every Novell environment I've been in there's a group of CNE's and CNA's clustered in a room bad mouthing end users because their server OS's take precedence over the end user. Of course, most companies have figured out this is backward, which is why Novell is being kicked to curb.

The entire move of the industry to a standards based LDAP is still going on and in many industries MS and their active directory is viewed as a "damn MS and their proprietary crap" viewpoint.

What loser runs 'LDAP' for their entire backbone?

 

[spike spiegal]

Diversity is the key,

Diversity costs company's money, and 'diversity' historically resulted in users needing 15 different passwords just to log onto their stupid computer.

Of course, this makes Novell admins feel adequate about themselves because they feel needed. Now a small company can deploy Microsoft SBS and have a secretary create user/E-mail accounts because Exchange runs hand in hand with AD.

I'm trying to remember with Groupwise integrated that well with NDS, and can't quite recall. Perhaps you can reresh my memory, or perhaps you're too busy configuring your 'Netware Desktop OS'.

 

[spidey07]

spike spiegal,

It's been my experience that the "big" applications are not run on microsoft due to it's many failures, security problems and instability. the "real work" is done by mainframes and large unix boxes - supply chain, logistics, web and database servers, ERP, etc.

As far as ldap, it's the defacto standard for directories/authentication and is used very heavily in my experience. MS has it's little niche though in taking care of the PCs and sharing printers and files.

But you don't put the real work on MS.

 

[Genx87]

Didnt Novell piss a bunch of people off when they made an older version basically incompatible with the newest?

I didnt follow Novell much because it was before my time. The only exposure I have had is when doing side contract work. I wasnt terribly impressed with it, seemed clunky on the desktop and often didnt work. But maybe it was the implementation of it. The place that primarily used it was still using NT on the desktops, with some Win2K, Token ring network, and just a cluster of other crap that when mixed into a bag obviously didnt like to play nice.

And I guess my exposure to an AD infrastructure has been pretty positive. The biggest being a company with ~60,000 employee's scattered around the world. I think MS got a bad rap in the Win9.x and NT days and rightfully so. But Win2K + XP + their server counterparts have been pretty good for a lot of things imo.

When I left my last company they were working on bringing about 5000-6000 users onto a single exchange box. It ran our location of about 1000 users flawlessly for the entire time I was there. Provided of course the backups went off and didnt fail

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: spike spiegal

MS stole (just like they always do, and I love MS products) the entire directory concept from novell. I

BS. For that to be true, please show me the 'Netware Desktop OS'.

eh, I don't think he was talking about the "desktop os", he was talking about NDS (Novell Directory Services) and the directory model...out weeeeelllll before AD. I went from Novell to AD, and the transition wasnt' too bad, because I understood the ovaraching concepts (like...dum dum dum....LDAP)


Running MS environments are eaiser to staff, but when the proverbial Fecal matter hits the fan, it hits hard. When the same exploit hits all your clients and servers at the same time, it's hell. I know, I was sitting in the lab, when all the PC's and Server (ddin't hear the servers) all shutdown from a worm within about 45 seconds of each other. I still cringe when I hear that 2K shutdown music.


Also, how many MS servers can have literally YEARS of uptime? I know of several novell ones. There was one locally here that got drywalled into a room during a remodel. They were doing inventory, trying to find this old print server for weeks, when they finally realized what had happened. The remodel had happened over 3 years ago.

 

[Nothinman]

BS. For that to be true, please show me the 'Netware Desktop OS'.

You have that backwards. MS stole the directory ideas from Novell, not the desktop ideas. Hell when you run dcpromo it sets up a SYSVOL share, how much more obvious can they get?

From it's existence Netware is nothing more than a directory replication system for servers, with desktop integration as nothing more than a prostetic 'strap-on' that never ran correctly anyways.

Directory replication is the main piece of AD as well, considering that the directory holds all of the user information and crap it makes sense that it would be the core feature.

Older versions were problematic but the novell client runs fine now, we even have it on our Citrix servers. But I would be part of the problem is MS' GINA architecture for replacing the login stuff which is ironically going away with Vista.

What loser runs 'LDAP' for their entire backbone?

Everyone who uses AD or NDS? No matter what database is used for the backend they both speak LDAP.

Didnt Novell piss a bunch of people off when they made an older version basically incompatible with the newest?

Not that I know of, but I haven't paid a lot of attention either. IMO the main problem is the fact that they actually enforce their licensing. If you get 100 user licenses for your NDS user 101 won't be able to login. But with MS you can buy 5 licenses and everything will still work.

 

[networkman]

Forget it - I misread the statement.

Yes, Novell was pretty strict with their licensing but on the plus side it kept people honest.

 

[Rilex]

Microsoft AD is nothing short of what has already been done better and more interoperable by other companies

MS' implementation of LDAP is standard. There is nothing non-standard about it. People bitched about MS using the standard-supplied Kerberos vendor-specific field, but hey, that is part of the standard.

the "real work" is done by mainframes and large unix boxes - supply chain, logistics, web and database servers, ERP, etc.

Which is why Microsoft & MSSQL have been stealing the marketshare of the dwindling Maintframe and "large UN*X boxes" over the past 6 years, right?

 

[spidey07]

Rilex,

What I'm seeing is a move away from multiple MS servers and towards large partitioned big iron unix.

And I have never heard of anybody using SQL for any real databases. It's alwasy oracle on unix.

 

[Rilex]

Even back in 2000, Windows was shipping more than UN*X/Linux:

http://www.oreillynet.com/manila/tim/stories/storyReader$56

And I have never heard of anybody using SQL for any real databases.

You must have tunnel vision, then. I'm not sure why anyone would use the swiss-cheese that is Oracle. They can't even fix security holes with their patches they elect to release 6+ months after having the security issue reported!

 

[ScottMac]

Originally posted by: spike spiegal

You think NT 4 was "hell", try NDS 4 and trying to route that crap with IPX, which took Novell forever to admit was an inferiour protocol to IP. I guess according to you Novell invented IP.

======================================

Novell came up with IPX/SPX (which works/worked pretty well, by the way) at a time when TCP/IP was still pretty much just a government/university/DARPA protocol; it wasn't "on the street" .... as opposed to Microsoft, which took their desktop OS, "strapped on" a NETBEUI/NETBIOS transport (which isn't routable like IPX/SPX) and evolved their patchwork, Frankenstein server OS (the new stuff is OK, the old stuff was/is crap).

At the time (and probably still true now) Novell was/is leaner, faster, more secure, more efficient and natively routable

They worked on all major desktop systems speaking in that syste's "native tongue"; Apple users saw an Apple server in their chooser, Unix users got NFS, Windows folks (Windows desktops came out AFTER Novell was using PCs for servers) got their GUI, and
MS DOS folks got a drive letter.

Microsoft NT worked with Microsoft desktops exclusively for quite a while.

At the time, people that came to us that wouldn't do Novell and wanted a peer to peer OS (running NETBIOS/NETBEUI, that's all NT was) I put 'em into OS/2 - the network transport was the same, but the OS 32 bit OS engine was more mature and much cleaner (and it worked .... mostly ... if you could get it to load).

Novell adapted to the TCP/IP environment years before Microsoft offered it for their servers (there was some third-party software, nothing from MS). It was an add-on, an expensive add-on, and it required an additonal box to act as a "protocol gateway" (a PC based router running the other Novell software), but it worked pretty well. It was my first serious exposure to TCP/IP.

With the "diversity" comment , I meant that there is no one OS or platform that is "The Best" at everything. Anytime you integrate desparate features, there is a compromise.

For example:
In the "small box" arena, *nix is still the best DB platform. *nix started life decades ago as a multi-user, multi-tasking platform it has always developed towards stronger multi-user, multi-tasking functionality, and the file system *tends* to favor the architecture needed by a database.

Being a person with a complete toolkit, if a customer needs optimum performance and has the backing and support that can handle multiple platforms, then you can come up with a much more efficient (though much more difficult to manage) network.

If you have a customer that can basically only use or handle one OS, chances are good that it'll be Microsoft (or, maybe Apple, or Linux ...).

I suppose the point is that breaking out of the "Microsoft only" box means you don't have to compromise unless you (or the customer) choose to do so. Don't get me wrong, compromise can be a good thing ... and if you're looking for absolute performance in a complex system, proprietary is not a bad thing either.

I'm not anti-Microsoft, I mostly like Microsoft ... right along with mostly liking *nix, and mostly liking Novell .... (although, I'm not a big fan of Apple computers) just because you like one of them doesn't mean you have to not like the alternatives.

They're just other tools for your bag of solutions.

FWIW

Scott

 

[stash]

And I have never heard of anybody using SQL for any real databases. It's alwasy oracle on unix.

This may come as an incredible shock to you, but you don't know everything about everything. Your anecdotal evidence repesents a tiny percentage of reality,

SQL 2005 already runs 25% of the worlds largest databases, and it's only been on the market for about a year. If you look at other DBs, a total of 35% of the largest DBs are running on Windows.

http://www.wintercorp.com/VLDB/2005_TopTen_Survey/2005TopTenWinners.pdf
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/03/microsoft_sql_s.html

This is in a year.

Oracle is still the big dog, but they are kidding themselves if they don't know they are vulnerable. Up until this week, when they finally admitted they have a problem with security, their stance was as arrogant as Microsoft's was a few years ago.

Then there are the things that you never even hear about. I wish I could show you some of the organizations that are using SQL, and what they are using it for. It would blow your condesending remarks about 'MS's little niche taking care of PCs and printers' out of the water.

 

[spidey07]

Well, I have yet to see in any large scale computing/network envirnoment run SQL for their main databases. That's just asking for trouble.


SQL is still a niche player in the market, and if you google some more you can see as well as from the link you provided. Unless of course you want to divulge some "inside" information.

-edit-
I'm not saying SQL isn't gaining. Just that it has a long, long way to go to compete with the top players.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I've talked to an application developer or two that said the only problem MS SQL has is that it doesn't run on a unix or unix-like system.

I've seen more large databases on mysql than on MSSQL, but I don't pay a whole lot of attention.

Apple uses LDAP for their directory services too, and they ship with kerberos so I'm guessing that may be part of it too. Unfortunately it's MIT kerberos.

 

[Rilex]

Well, I have yet to see in any large scale computing/network envirnoment run SQL for their main databases. That's just asking for trouble.

That is just plain ignorant and frankly, being unaware of real world use.

SQL is still a niche player in the market

Almost 17% in 2005 (3rd) isn't really "niche".

I've seen more large databases on mysql than on MSSQL, but I don't pay a whole lot of attention.

Must not be doing much on MySQL given it isn't a real RDBMS. It is closer to Jet Red than MSSQL/DB2/Oracle.

 

[spidey07]

I'll stand by the link posted by a MS employee.

Big/real databases are not run on microsoft.

/thread.

 

[Rilex]

So you did read that article that said 43 out of 170 "qualifying" databases (and qualifying means "equal to or larger than 1TB") ran on MSSQL, right?

Out of 170 entrants qualifying as managing a terabyte of data or more, 43 were SQL Server systems.

That's contrary to some of the one-liners and stories told by Microsoft's competitors about SQL Server. It's great for small applications at small and medium-sized businesses, they say, but it's not ready for the big time.

Do you feel silly yet?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Rilex
Must not be doing much on MySQL given it isn't a real RDBMS. It is closer to Jet Red than MSSQL/DB2/Oracle.

In the scheme of things, you're right (not doing much with it).

 

[ktwebb]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Well, I have yet to see in any large scale computing/network envirnoment run SQL for their main databases. That's just asking for trouble.

Well come on down. 30k+ users. We still have some "legacy" Oracle and Unix servers from the merger with another bank but we are 80% migrated over to windows. AD/DNS/Database/Fileservers and Application servers running all on good ole MS windows.

I've been with the company a little over 4 years. years in which we've doubled our employess/node base. never had a major problem due to viruses/trojans/worms, or complete server system failures. I'm not even arguing efficiency, performance, whatever. Just saying just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We're a 90 billion dollar company, will be 140 when the next merger goes through in 18 months. We're currently a windows shop. period and from what I am hearing we'll be as well after the merger.

As an aside I did hear something funny yesterday. The bank we are now merging with and our AD brass had a meeting yesterday. They are still in a 2000 native AD environment and actually asked our guys if we could go backwards with ours. Er........not only would we not, we can't. So their staff took a bit hit in the reputation and knowledge world.

Something tells me we're not the only enterprise company on the planet that relies on Windows do to the workload.

Again, it's not about "well you should be" as an argument. I prefer windows because that is the world I was brought up in. We have linux servers here and there. Firewall solution is *nix. But the user workload is banging windows boxes. And frankly I couldn't be happier about it. Job security with 400+ for our 5 person group at the data center I work at.