Day 2 for me now and time to get to the sessions after oversleeping. I did want to mention that all the session presentation files should be available for download from the Novell site at www.novellbrainshare.com. I have been giving the session identifiers so you can find them faster.
Along with breakfast, I sat in the Novell downtown area and listened some to the general session. I will admit to working on other things but I did see some cool/fun commercials. I loved the one with a takeoff on Joe Millionaire. He was down to two network product vendors. The male butterfly from another vendor lost out to the women with the Novell shirt!
My first session of the day was Interpreting Packet Trace Files(TUT281) with Laura Chappell. This is always a great session and well attended. Laura is respected and feared because of the tendency of the show network to be "unstable" after she gives our tips and tools in these sessions! Several good analysis points were brought up. Laura is a big advocate of looking at your network when things are "good" and having a baseline. She also likes to take a hub and go to the users and not sit in the wiring closet. I have not often heard a consultant that recommends talking to the "most verbal user" but it makes sense to hear what the squeaky wheel has to say. One of the links that she mentioned in this and another session was for a law enforcement security group. She says they need help from technical people and would probably welcome people that can pass a background check. The link is WWW.HTCIA.ORG if you are interested. Laura also discussed using an "application analysis form" that she has and gave a great example of excess traffic from an old ZENworks Beta session. It seems this version had a serious communication problem!
Using Mac OS X in a Novell Environment(TUT115) was unexpectedly good. In years past the answers were always we don't have that yet, or it is coming, or no plans yet. This presenter was a Novell employee that knew the issues and options for the products. Native file access and interacting with the Mac was discussed extensively with links to good documents and details of properly setting up things like IPP. The support with the latest versions of OS X with Native File Access is quite good. Password issues and how to resolve them were also brought up. The most interesting thing was the GroupWise "client" in GroupWise 6.5 This is a java based GUI interface for the webaccess component. It is for the Mac and I believe Linux platforms. Although it is not a full client at some point it may get a local database component on the client side more like the current Windows client has. Stay tuned!
iSCSI:Implementing Affordable SAN Solutions(TUT210) was a cool session describing the advantages of this new standard and the architecture and options with Novell products. The full software tools will be available in NetWare 6.5 and the initiator side will be available for download on NW 5.1 and NW 6. The options to put together a SAN based system without the cost and training needed for Fibre channel is great and I have a smaller client that I will be encouraging to try this. Besides I think a TCP/IP based communication to your storage system is just to cool for school! With the release of the Initiator component and hardware target components from companies like Cisco you can get this up and running on your systems before you know it. When Novell 6.5 ships you can also set up a software target on older hardware to create an iSCSI volume for use in your SAN. I hope the NW 5.1 and 6 initiators come out soon!
Novell eDirectory in Depth(TUT358) was 2 plus hours of the guts of eDirectory. As always I enjoy this junk but it was intense. A friend was in the session and I did notice them zone out once or twice! Not to mention a recurring theme but as always iMonitor was the demo tool of choice. It is clear that if you don't use it you are a piker if you call Tech support. Although you can use it when you only have one eDir 8.5 server in your tree. My impression from BS and elsewhere is you really should try to be on eDir 8.6.1 or better. See the notes if you want some up to date information on the synchronization of external references, the schema and replicas. In addition lots of details on the background and other processes. I have had a lot of courses but this session was a great review with updated information for 8.6/8.7 versions of eDirectory. Well time for the alumni dinner and conference party. Huey Lewis and the News this year and I am old enough to remember them but just barely, I was quite young after all!