Upgrading from Netware 411

[Iffyshabbi]

Hi,

I have just started work at a new place and before I started they had scheduled to upgrade the existing server from Netware 411 to Netware 5. However we then decided to just transfer over to the new server but stick to 411. We have contracted a company to do this for us. However it seems that these guys are having a lot of problems doing this transfer to the new server and are telling me that the reason is that the hardware made by HP is no longer compatible with the older operating systems. They say the transfer is possible but that it requires a huge effort and also that it will be a job full of lots of patches. They are suggesting upgrading to Netware 6 or Windows 2000 small business edition.(Their emphasis is on Windows 2000).

I am not sure as to what I should do. We are running a very small network with only 10 workstations and netware 411 has been running very well without any problems. We just wanted a new server with and increase in memory and speed.

I would really appreciate some advice from people that are more experienced in these matters. I am the one currently adminisering the network and as we dont have any extremely complicated procedures here everything seems to be going fine and I am managing fine......what would be the best move under these circumstances

 

[DrGreen26]

First off, NW 4.11 will work on any platform (486 or newer). Its just a matter of the persons performing the upgrade to pull their heads out of their butts and do it. Upgrading to NW 6 would also work, I dont ever recommend a MS solution unless you had something special that required it. If you want, they should perform a migration from server A to server B. If I recall Novell's migration wizard is designed to migrate a server from one box to another and even maintain all the same attributes etc.

So if you want to migrate 4.11 to 4.11 it will work. If you want to migrate 4.11 to 5.x it will work and if you want to migrate from 4.11 to 6.x it will also work.

This is not a hard thing to do, and items such as drivers etc. are usually already covered by Novell.

Feel free to contact me if you need to. markgreenwood@yahoo.com
or you can call me at 402-233-7626 (office) to discuss further.



Mark C. Greenwood, CNE
m_jgreenwood@yahoo.com

CNE 4.11 and CNE 5 certified. BS Degree in MIS. Working in the industry for 8 years.

I work with NT servers, NDS for NT as well.

 

[Guest_imported]

NW4.11 will work on the new HP equipment. I have 72 4.11 servers all on HP equipment ranging from 6 year old Pentium 75's to new LC2000's with raid arrays.
I think what they are running into is the HP automated install CD-ROM does not have 4.11 as an option on so they are stumped (and they want to sell you NT anyway). HP dropped 4.11 as an option only on their automated install CD-ROM and instead put 4.2 which is 4.11 with the latest service pack in it.

Honestly, the easiest way to upgrade is to spend $300.00 on powerquests server magic. Install the hard drive of the new server in the old server as a slave or the next SCSI drive. Spend about 2 hours or less doing a verified bit by bit copy of the dos partition and sys and any other volumes from the old drive to the new drive with server magic. Down the old server. Install the new hard drive back into the new server. Power the new server up and the only thing you will need are the SCSI drivers and the LAN drivers which if they are not already there you can make a floppy of them from the automated install CD-ROM that came with the new HP Server. It actually has a floppy creation program on it where you select nw4.2 and the specific model of server and it will creat the floppy including all off the drivers for you.

It's really that simple.

If you have a good copy of Ghost you could also use that although I like server magic.

I do this all the time. I actually do this across a WAN link remotely.
My opinion is that other than Novell will not give tech support for 4.11 anymore cause it's reached end of life, if it's working then why change it. Your old to new server changeover should take about 4 hours and thats including time to run into driver issues if you do. You just need to find someone locally that has doesn't have their head up their butt.
There won't be any NDS issues because your new server will come up as an exact copy of the old server so mothing in NDS had changed. You also have the added benefit of having your old server in pristine condition should you ever need it again in exactly the moment that you cloned it.

 

[Iffyshabbi]

Thank you very much for your input guys, I really appreciate it. I think you will be very surprised to learn that they have already clocked up 56 hours so far on this and have achieved naught. Lets see what happens .....thanks very much once again.

Regards

Shabnam

 

[SuperDaveDCF]

I totally agree with Mark and manly. This is not a difficult job. I'm in the middle of server replacement in our organization. I like to do things from scratch and try not to use any of the OEM's "quick install" software.

I spend approx. 4 hours installing new memory and drives,
flashing the firmware on all the hardware and installing DOS. In the next 8 hours I have installed Netware 5.1, Java, Zenworks, Powerchute, Backupexec and all related patches/service packs. It then took about another 24 hours to migrate a 100 user office. This included creating new accounts, copying share & home directories, moving NDPS printers, ccmail post office, etc.

It really sounds like these guys are in over their heads.