------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOV-BR95.DOC -- 19950920 -- Two people's notes on a trip to BrainShare'95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to add or edit this document and then email it back to faq@jelyon.com Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 02:33:14 EST From: "Thomas E. Costigan Jr." Subject: Attention BrainShare '95 Attendees Reminder: On Wednesday evening at 9pm at the Shilo Inn (206 South West Temple across from the Red Lion, the hotel with the gaudy red neon lights on the outside, you *cannot* miss it) we are having an informal get-together of NSIG members. If you have not already confirmed that you plan to attend, please drop me a message. I have it on good authority that "the man" himself, "Joe D." will be attending the conference and hopefully will attend the Wednesday evening get-together. If this is your first time to attend, here is some advice: 1) Dress casual during the day. Bring something warm (it snowed last year). Suits and dresses are only permitted at night if you have a non-conference meeting with a client, Novell person, etc. Anyone caught violating this dress code will be forced to load OS/2 Warp on a Lan Manager server with AppleTalk connectivity. 2) Bring an extra piece of luggage like a canvas bag or something to haul back all the "stuff" that is given away. 3) On Monday, "Vendor Hospitality Night" go to the Borland room FIRST (assuming they are there). I'm not kidding; wait on the line with me (we can get each other a beer from somebody's else's hospitality suite while we wait). 4) Be prepared for an intense and very worthwhile week; pay attention: something "big" will almost certainly happen (they announced the WordPerfect merger at the conference last year). Therefore, get some rest now and forget about that "last minute" project you are working one (you will want to change it after you come back from the conference anyway). ------------------------------ Summary of Day 0 of the Novell "BrainShare '95" conference. Greetings from Salt Lake City, Utah, site of the eleventh annual Novell technical developments conference known as "BrainShare '95." Today is "Day 0" or registration day, if you will, of the conference which begins in officially tomorrow and continues until Friday, 25 March 1995. The conference is being held at the University of Utah with evening special events at downtown hotels. It is organized into daily "general sessions" to which all participants attend to hear a "keynote address" by a Novell or network industry illuminary followed each day by five specialized "breakout" sessions that allow attendees to choose from about 270 different topics that cover subjects of interest to each participant. I traveled out yesterday from the Washington, DC, area along with my work colleague Norman Spirt. After a delayed departure and a rather bumpy download into the airport (Norman is still green), we arrived rather late to do any significant damage. Generally speaking, Norman is concentrating on network management, services, security and problem analysis & resolution issues while I am concentrating on workstation/client software implementation, application software selection / configuration / support and customized software development and management issues. This more or less parallels our job responsibilities with PAHO but I will be doing some cross-over into network management and security issues in order to obtain maximum coverage of topics that are of interest to the Organization. This morning (shocking news: Norman shaved his mustache; must have been the bumpy landing) we checked-in for the conference and picked up our conference materials. The breakout session I had registered for entitled "NetWare Programming in Visual BASIC" and the session Norman had registered for "Enterprise Issues and Answers: Putting It All Together" have both been deleted from the conference. Aside from these two, all of the other breakout sessions that we registered for are available. All participants have been given login names and e-mail addresses on a special "BrainShare Network" that will use Novell's "GroupWise" product. You can reach me at: thomas920@brainshare.novell.com and Norman at: norman927@brainshare.novell.com They have setup several locations around the campus from which we will be able to access the network so drop us a note if you wish. This is the first year they have tried setting up a conference LAN so we shall see how this "thing" works. This evening there is a "BrainShare 'YES' Partners Showcase and Reception" beginning at 6pm local time. Tomorrow's keynote addresses will be given by Mr. Robert Frankenburg, the President of Novell and by Mr. Tom Evslin, Vice President of Network System Software-Business Multimedia Services for a little company known as AT&T. The keynote speaker for Tuesday is a nice young man named Drew Major, Chief Scientist and Senior System Architect of Novell ("el papa de NetWare" as we say at PAHO). The Wednesday speaker will be Mr. Marc Andreessen, Vice President for Technology of Netscape Communications Corporation (Mr. Andreessen was a principal member of the team that created the Internet World-Wide-Web browser software known as "Mosaic" at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the Univ. of Illinois in Champaign). On Thursday we will hear from Mr. Don Tapscott, the CEO of New Paradigm Learning Corporation who will speak about how the information superhighway is transforming the way businesses and organizations operate. On Friday, Drew will be back along with a gaggle of other Novell executives who will do a "Q & A" session. On Monday I will be attending sessions entitled: NetWare Clients: Overview and Strategy Optimizing Clients for NetWare: Windows & Hardware Novell Collaberative Computing Environment Migrating to NetWare 4.1 for Increased Connections VLM 1.2 -- Tuning and Configuration As I have previously written about, I have been having problems with DOS sessions under Windows "hanging" when exiting from them back to Windows while using the "official" VLM 1.2 release of Novell's client software (December 1994); this problem was not experienced with the "pre-release" version of 1.2 (October 1994) nor any of the other previous releases. I am hoping, therefore, to get some assistance from Novell as a result of the first and last session listed above. On Monday evening, there will be "Sponsor Hospitality Night" that will allow several dozen companies that make products that compliment NetWare to show us their products. Also on Monday night, Norman and I are having dinner with Mr. Joe Doupnik, the famous "Joe D." of the Novell Special Interest Group list on the Internet. I am very much looking forward to meeting Joe after reading all his materials and therefore benefiting from his wisdom these last several years during which I have subscribed to the list. To contact me directly via this e-mail account: costigat@cserve1.ccmail.compuserve.com ------------------------------ Summary of Day 1 of the Novell "BrainShare '95" conference. The eleventh annual Novell technical developments conference began today at the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City, Utah. The conference hosts this year are Ms. Christine G. Hughes, Senior Vice President for Corporate Marketing and Mr. Gary H. Mueller, Vice President for Developer Relations (both of these individuals are hosting their first "BrainShare" conference and both worked for Xerox Corporation before recently joining Novell). Without stating attendance figures yet, they mentioned that the new "BrainShare" network has over 5,000 accounts. They also mentioned that there will be a "BrainShare" conference in Australia this year (19-21 July 1995) in addition to Europe and Japan as in past years. Mr. Hughes stated that he had just joined Novell with the specific task of solidifying developer relations and he therefore was soliciting input from the developer community. The hosts then introduced Novell CEO and President Mr. Bob Frankenburg. He began his presentation by reviewing what had happened in 1994. He called it a "back to basics year for Novell" that saw the roll-out of NetWare 4.1 as the "boss NOS" and he stated that NW 4.1 now counts for 30 percent of sales. He stated that the release of Perfect Office to "raved reviews" was outselling Microsoft's "MS Office" and Lotus Development's "SmartSuite" combined. He cited that Novell's "GroupWise" messaging software was now performing 15 percent of this category of software sales, up from four percent a year ago. He stated that Novell met its 1994 shipment goal for UNIXWare 2.0 by shipping to developers on 29 December 1994. He continued by stating that Novell was working to improve product quality and provide premium support (7 days by 24 hours) to large clients who demanded this level of service. He said that Novell would have "no more stealth marketing" of its products, that is, marketing would emphasize the capabilities of NetWare and it related products instead of hiding them. He continued by talking about Novell's strategy to have "NetWare everywhere" that would build on the present strengths of 2.5 million servers, 50 million end-users and 50,000 CNE's world-wide. He stated that today Novell was announcing NetWare Distributed Print Services and that NetWare running on an Apple PowerPC was to be demonstrated at the conference networking laboratory. With AT&T and regional phone operating companies, Novell was "taking NetWare public" to make NetWare the choice of business to business connectivity within the "trusted global information structure" that was coming about. For mobile computing, he stated that Novell desired to remove the hassles involved with connecting back to one's home LAN by exploring technologies in wireless connectivity. He talked about NEST (NetWare Embedded System Technology) that will allow NetWare to talk to any microprocessor device that has at least 50 KB of RAM. Thus typical office devices like facsimile machines and photo copies, personal data assistants, vending machines and cable TV boxes can be hooked into NetWare. Thus, with the cable TV box, NetWare can become the operating system for a two-way, interactive cable system. He added that AT&T's services would compliment NEST by providing long distance connectivity and that a "global directory" based upon Novell's NDS would be the means by which all the devices on the network could be easily located. He added that all 24 of the largest PBX manufacturers will support NetWare in some form. He then went on to discuss Novell's strategy for the next several years. He saw NetWare as the means for "upsizers" and UNIXWare as the means for "downsizers" to eventually "meet in the middle" as Novell develops the SuperNOS combination of NetWare and UNIXWare that will share a common code base. He mentioned Novell's Tuxedo transaction processing service as a means of providing the enhanced transaction processing demands that will be required to support global commerce using NetWare / UNIXWare. He said that Novell has to make NetWare easier to install, manage and use. He talked about two fairly new "buzzword" products that Novell is working on: "Corsair" and "Ferret" which are intended to fulfill the goal of a more easy to use NetWare. The "Corsair" product will be a NetWare information publishing and reading tool while "Ferret" is a browser utility that will enable users to maneuver between NetWare and the Internet. He also stated that Novell wanted to maintain the "freedom of choice" among network applications and clients and the Novell was committed to providing excellent client software for Windows, Windows 95 and Macintosh. He also stated that Novell's "PerfectOffice" and "GroupWise" products will lead the application charge with the latter product demonstrating Novell's commitment to combining data types like e-mail and voice-mail into a single-source repository of information. He began the conclusion of his address by stating that participation in the network business "makes you humble" and requires the need to develop "great partnerships" to solve the needs of customers. He stated emphatically what Novell will not do: vertical market applications, desktop OS, global network service provider or database developer. He stated that he wanted to see one billion NetWare users by the year 2000 and he said that NetWare can make it possible, applications can make it practical and partnerships can make it a reality. During the Q&A session that followed, he stated that he believed the future of Novell in the networking industry was very bright; Novell has added 100 thousand servers and experienced a 19 percent increase in users over last year's figures. Regarding a question on technical support, he cited Novell's premium support program for large customers as a means of meeting their needs and that the days of 800 "free support forever" are gone because the cost of these services are born by new users of the product and it has just become too expensive to proceed in this manner. Regarding the future of NetWare 3.x, he said that Novell would continue to correct bugs and make basic improvements but the "future of new functionality is in NetWare 4" because "improvements of the NDS" will be the core to improving NetWare. Regarding Windows '95, when someone stated that the release of Windows '95 will be "the biggest business process this year" he responded "for sure this year?" Regarding Novell's strategy, he stated that Novell "will have great clients, one of which is Windows '95" and that the Novell implementation of NetWare connectivity for Windows '95 will offer better performance and functionality to fully exploit the capabilities of NetWare for Windows '95 (or '96 or whenever). Regarding Novell and the Internet, he stated that while he did not want to steal any of the thunder of the next speaker but that AT&T connect services for NetWare will provide both internetwork and network to Internet connection services from a single provider. Novell's "Corsair" and "Ferret" products would also improve NetWare users' ability to access Internet services. Regarding "great clients" another question regarded the poor OS/2 client for NetWare. He stated that it was better and getting better and that Novell was committed to fully exposing the capabilities of NetWare, particularly NDS, to all clients. Regarding a question on how to assure that applications would be more network-aware, he stated that Novell needs to evangelize the commitment to the network, to provide better SDK kits to make applications "network intimate." Regarding UNIXWare, he stated that this product is not an intermediate product on the way to SuperNOS and that tomorrow (21 March 1995) the complete version of UNIXWare 2.0 would be shipping and the Novell would be increasing the publicity for this product. Regarding cable TV, he said that Novell was exploring specific partnerships so that NetWare would be the technology used by people wishing to provide interactive systems. Regarding Novell's "Corsair" versus the Ray Noorda company product, he said that Noorda's startup company was putting together a desktop OS "with Corsair capabilities" and that Novell will cooperate with anyone to improve access to NetWare. He concluded the Q&A session by stating that anyone with questions could reach him at: bfrank@novell.com The second keynote address of the day was given by Mr. Tom Evslin, Vice President for Network System Software -- Business Multimedia Services at AT&T. He said that he left Microsoft in December and "walked around to the other side of the RJ-11 jack" to join AT&T with responsibility for network application development. He spoke about AT&T's "NetWare Connect" service that allows NetWare users to use AT&T sservices as the means of internetworking. He cited the alliance between AT&T and Novell as evidence of a natural convergence between companies that provide communications and computer products. The basic idea of the alliance is to provide mutual customers with a means of combining such things as internetwork connections (both IP and SPX), remote connectivity, Internet access and e-mail / voice-mail into a single service and to facilitate the process of application development needed to match these services by providing a "common directory service" to the process. He used the analogy of "the cloud" that would allow users and developers to just worry about connecting to "the cloud" and it would perform the work of providing the connection with adequate security, thus allowing developers and users to concentrate on features and content. He concluded by saying "nobody builds an application that does not work with NetWare" and the AT&T NetWare Connect service is certainly not an exception. Here are some "tidbits" from the breakout sessions I attended. The Novell 16 bit client will be the VLM technology for the next 5 to 7 years; the 32 bit client, under development and known also as NIOS, is slated to be released within 30 to 60 days *after* the release of Windows '95, unless this product is significantly delayed. Most of the new functionality work in the client software is being done for the 32 bit client in that this technology allows Novell to overcome many of the memory and related limitations of the 16 bit client. Novell hopes to maintain a single 32 bit client code base with only small differenes between the Windows '95 and other (e.g. DOS, OS/2) 32 bit versions. The 32 bit client will allow developers to also exploit the improved performance of this client software (including down to the NIC connection for which a 32 bit driver will be available). The minimum workstation requirement for the 32 bit client will be a '386 with 8 MB of RAM, 4 KB of conventional memory and 500 KB of free extended memory; a 32 bit NIC is not required but will be exploited if available. Decompression and encryption procedures in the client software will not be included in the first release but is planned for later. In summary, the presenters said that Novell under Frankenburg had changed its focus to elevate client software to a new level of importance in the company. One thing I did not know is that I assumed that the NetWare connectivity in Windows '95 (or whenever) was engineered by Novell; not so: it is reverse engineered by Microsoft. Hence, to fully exploit the NetWare connectivity of Windows '95, you will need this Novell 32 bit client, which as reported earlier will be out a month or so after Windows '95. The participants in the session stated that this was a bad idea and that it might be better to get the 32 bit client out before Windows '95 so that experience could be gained by it and so that it could be used in the initial configuration attempts with Windows '95. The Novell presenters doubted that 32 bit would be released before Windows '95 unless it was significantly delayed again. I attended a session on Novell's strategy with "GroupWare" and you will begin to hear the Novell "buzzword" ECLIPSE to describe Novell's attempt to combine together a number of technologies into a single product line for messaging, voice mail, calendar & scheduling. Regarding fine-tuning and optimization of VLM's, etc., make sure to get a copy of the March 1995 Novell "Applications Notes" for the article on "Support Issues for NetWare DOS Requester (VLM) 1.20" especially paged 30 to 32 regarding the files needed to make sure you are using the latest. Also, the April issue contains an article on Windows configuration issues. One thing I learned is that with the 1.2 version of "vlm.exe" you can use the "LOADHIGH" command on it (before you could not). You can also run the command "VLM /d" to see where the various VLM components are being loaded into memory. Norman Spirt adds the following observations: Sessions attended: Keynote - Bob Frankenberg, Novell CEO and Tom Evslin, AT&T 1) Accessing Network resources using NDS 2) Implementing NetWare 4 in a large Enterprise (Novell) 3) Managing NetWare 3 with NetSync 4) Optimizing the NetWare 4.1 Environment 5) In-Depth Server Performance Tuning Tom is summarizing the keynote speeches, so I will leave those alone this week. I will mention the "buzz" word of the conference, however, which is "Pervasive Computing," which basically means the ability for users to access "everything from everywhere" (see Tom's summary). As far as the breakout sessions for today, the three which provided the most significant information for our purposes (impending move to 4.1) were sessions 2, 3, and 4. Implementing NetWare 4 in a Large Enterprise (which turned out to be Novell) was taught by Tom Ivie and Todd Powell, who actually headed the team to build Novell's production 4.1 environment. They provided tips and tricks for upgrading from 3.x, designing and building the directory, WAN implications on the overall design, partitioning and replication of the directory database, time synchronization, naming standards and utilities to aid in the transition (specifically a user upgrade utility they wrote which they will make available on the Internet). While Novell is considerably larger than PASB, there are many similarities and the lessons learned from their own upgrade are invaluable. Managing NetWare 3 with NetSync was particularly interesting in that NetSync is a tool which allows for much better compatibility between operating systems (3.x and 4.1). This is important because it will allow PASB to gradually incorporate our 3.11 servers into the 4.1 environment, allowing for a much smoother upgrade then would have been possible before the release of 4.1 (NetSync is bundled with the 4.1 OS). The main lesson learned here is to back up the bindery with the 3.x bindfix utility before starting the upgrade, in case there are complications. Optimizing the 4.1 Environment was a general 4.1 performance tuning seminar (there are more specific breakout sessions) which touched on all aspects of 4.1 performance tuning. File server optimization in the various subsystems (memory, file system, Disk I/O, LAN I/O and CPU) was covered in some depth, and Network optimization (fine tuning topology, use of routing advances, reduce overhead and balance security) was addressed as well. Workstation optimization (memory management, disk caching, MSWindows and VLM technology) was also touched on, although Tom will certainly cover the workstation issues in his coursework. All-in-all, a very intense and worthwhile first day. I even exchanged some Internet mail with Mr. Benzi [PAHO person back in Washington] on the demo LAN using Groupwise and PerfectOffice. Send Internet mail to this address: NORMAN927@brainshare.novell.com to get to me during the day. ------------------------------ Summary of Day 2 of the Novell "BrainShare '95" conference. The second day of "BrainShare '95" began with a short presentation by Mr. Richard W. King, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the NetWare Systems Group of Novell. Richard began his presentation by stating that as a ten-year veteran of Novell, he had observed a tremendous change in the capabilities of hardware and software. He stated that Novell 4.1 represented a "new dimension of computing" with its capability of distributed operations and ability to serve as a network repository of services with the NDS as the key element. The basic gist of his speech, as I see it, was to encourage the "NetWare faithful" in attendance to adopt NetWare 4.1 sooner rather than later. I have been frankly surprised, via various show-of-hands at sessions here and there, that so few people are actually using NetWare 4.1 so far (at PAHO, we are not, in a production basis anyway): hence, Mr. King's presentation. Well, he went on to emphasize the importance of such features in NetWare 4.1 as NWAdmin, the ability to add one's own objects, schema elements, and DLL code that will allow even small LAN's to take advantage of NetWare 4.1 and NDS. He said that 4.1 and NDS represented a "rock solid" release which provided an "environment and fabric" which will provide users with the network platform they need for many years to come. Mr. King then introduced Mr. Drew Major, Chief Scientist and Senior System Architect of Novell (and a member of the original "SuperSet" team of programmers that developed NetWare over a dozen years ago or more; boy how time does fly!). To be perfectly blunt and honest, this was not one of Drew's more informative or inspirational speeches. He reemphasized some of the points made the previous day by Bob Frankenburg along the "pervasive computing" theme: NetWare as providing the "role in the middle to connect things" and that NetWare "must continue to follow the model of open network support." He outlined three areas in which NetWare operates 1) client software; 2) infrastructure; 3) back-end application services. He said that he would talk on the first two topics today and save his comments on the third item for his talk on Friday. He went on for some time on how NetWare fits into the networking picture by outling three different types of network / NetWare applications: 1) those that merely have some of their services (e.g. print) redirected by NetWare; 2) those which have some form of "NetWare aware" features and 3) the "distributed application" (which he differentiated from the "client / server application" that take fuller advantage of the NetWare environment. He then went on to describe the importance of "transaction monitoring" and went into a fairly lengthy period of time during which he described the importance of Novell's "Tuxedo" technology. He then went on to describe NetWare near-future goals: to provide better API's for NCP services, to make improvement to the NDS and to fully embrace the OpenDoc standard that Novell and other major companies (not including Microsoft, naturally) are promoting. He concluded by stating that in the three years since the final development and release of NetWare 4, there have been big improvements in access, infrastructure services, etc. and that Novell is now in the premiere position to drive the networking industry with the help of people like those who were attending the conference (or reading this e-mail message, for the matter). The first "breakout" session I attended covered the topic of "Developing a Trusted Workstation for NetWare Security Architecture" at which the presenter, Mr. Doug Hale, described Novell's efforts to gain "C2" security compliance for NetWare 4.1. He described a "security hole" in the client authentication process of a workstation (that I am not going to redescribe here; sorry) that would be addressed as part of Novell's "C2" certification process. This "security hole" is the result of the lack of basic security components in DOS which, by design, make DOS lacking as a "trusted computer base" operating system. The requirements for a secure distributed network policy cover four areas: 1) M - Mandatory access control; 2) A - Audit; 3) I - Identification and authentication; 4) D - Discretionary access control. He described how the server can provide "AID" security to meet the "C2" requirements but not the "M" component which could only be provided through various schemes in the workstation. To summarize, the "C2" certification will require at least a "warm reboot" of the workstation to authenticate the access of a new user to the network because of the lack of security / authentication in DOS. If you wish to obtain a copy of the "Orange" and "Red" books which define and interpret how to make computer systems secure, contact: INFOSEC Awareness Division Attn: X711/1AOC Ft. Meade, MD 20755-6000 Contact: Barbara Keller (410) 766-8729 The next session I attended was "Implementing An Integrated Messaging System" under NetWare, presented by Gary Saddington of Novell's Consulting Services Division. He began his presentation by pointing out that there are two aspects of technology involved here: application software and transport software and that sometimes you can or cannot separate one for the other. He pointed out that NetWare 4.1 was a message-enabled OS by including MHS Services (a transport service) as part of the OS directly that application programs could use. With Global MHS, an add-on that he said would soon be available, applications could exchange messages with other applications via a gateway. He went on to reemphasize that "messaging does not equal e-mail" and he discussed the pros and cons of MS Mail (which can be supported on a NetWare 4.1 network via the MHS transport mechanism) versus Novell's "GroupWise" product that, besides being fully supported by NetWare 4.1, also provides integrated messaging services for calendaring, scheduling and (in the near future with something called "Collabra Share") group discussions. The other advantage of "GroupWise" over other products is as he pointed out the use of NWAdmin as a single point of configuration and administration in a NetWare 4.1 environment for both the network and e-mail directory. For the "near future," he said that NetWare 4.1's messaging services would provide an even tighter convergence between MHS and "GroupWise" to provide collaborative information services (e.g., like Lotus "Notes") and better scheduling, workflow management and information replication services that will be fully integrated with NetWare. The next session I attended was entitled "Business Process Reengineering: Automating Business Workflow with GroupWare". The presenter, Mr. Carl Hansen, provided a theoretical but practical overview to approaching the task of business process reengineering (BPR). The most important point I gained from his presentation is that BPR is not simply an "information technology driven" project but instead must consider and involve all aspects of the "business landscape practices and methods." He naturally demonstrated and promoted Novell's new "Eclipse" technologies that combine together today's "GroupWise" product with other software that was gained by Novell in the WordPerfect merger and other acquisitions (SoftSolutions) of last year, including: electronic forms, workflow management, document management, electronic mail, scheduling and calendaring, shared information databases, mobile & remote computing and wireless computing into a "Universal In-Box" of information store. He, like other Novell presenters, emphasized the single-point of management and administration for this technology under the framework of NetWare 4.1. He concluded his presentation by demoing the capabilities of the "Forms Design" tool and showed the myriad of functions and capabilities of this product, including the ability to read and write data from outside databases like FoxPro. Hence, this product could be used to develop customized forms routing, correspondence management system and workflow applications (like a "help desk" program) that would fully exploit the features of the network, all from the confines of friendly confines of the basic suite of applications programs all of which are under the single point of administration provided by NetWare 4.1. I then attended a session on "OpenDoc" for MS Windows and OLE Interoperability" presented by Mr. Chris Andres, Software Engineering Consultant for Novell. This session was a bit too futuristic for me but the basic idea here is that Novell, Lotus, Borland, IBM and others (not Microsoft) have gotten together to form a group called CI Labs which it promoting the "OpenDoc" standard as a means of combining different forms of information (including not just text but voice and video) into a single document format. The idea here is to "specialize the components" and emphasize the document as information, not the application, to achieve a seamless means of accessing information. The final session of the day was also futuristic in nature: "The Future of Novell File Services" presented by Phillip Karren, Manager of Software Engineering of Novell. He talked about the Novell Advanced File Services (NAFS) that will be required to handle the increasing number and sizes of files that NetWare will have to process. The basic goals of NAFS are to provide improved file management for NetWare 4.1 and the future "SuperNOS" (combination of UNIXWare and NetWare) that, as described in the previous session I attended on "OpenDoc" had the intention of making the component document (information) the center piece of the application, not the application itself. When he concluded his presentation, the first questioner stated that this was all very impressive, "but when?" to which he replied "I can't tell you." In follow-up discussion, we can expect to see elements of this file management technology in the near future releases of NetWare 4.x, that is, before the "SuperNOS" nexus takes place. In the evening, I attended the alumni dinner for those who have attended five or more times (this is my seventh conference). I just happened to walk into the hotel where the dinner was being held with Drew Major and had a chance to chat with him and Joe Doupnik (Professor and NetWare all-around guru from Utah State University) before we ate. Drew said that he felt really good and positive about NetWare 4.1 and wished its present quality had been included in the original release of NetWare 4 (which would have delayed its initial release). He also stated that he had been in "more control" during his talk today and promised a more free-wheeling approach for his Friday talk. Tomorrow (Wednesday, 22 March 1995) the keynote address will be given by Mr. Marc Andreessen, VP of Netscape Communications. I will be attending two breakout sessions on network security, a session on multimedia on the LAN, a "tutorial session" on Windows sockets (whatever they are) and a session on leveraging the NDS for a corporate environment. I had the opportunity to check out my account on the conference LAN using "GroupWise" and I had several message waiting for me from the outside. Others have related that they are getting bounced mail when trying to send to thomas920@brainshare.novell.com but you can always try again. The setup has a very nice feature called "Windows Login" that allows you to log into NetWare from Windows that is already running to therefore run the "GroupWise" application environment. A Novell person said he believed this utility would be made publically available via NetWire and related services in the next month or so. I'm sure you will all be broken hearted to know that the weather is terrible, no snow, but a cold and steady rain during the afternoon made the umbrellas they gave us very useful. ------------------------------ Summary of Day 3 of the Novell "BrainShare '95" conference. The general session of the conference began with a short presentation by Mary Burnside, Chief Operating Officer of Novell, who presented an award to the 50,000th CNE and the 3,000th CNI. Steve Markmann, the Vice President and General Manager for Information Access and Management Group of Novell then came out to introduce the keynote speaker. He used an active Netscape browser to connect to Netscape's home page on the Web and looked up the biography of Marc Andreessen, the Vice President for Technology. Marc is only 23 years old but as many of you may know was a key member of the team at the Univ. of Illinois that worked on the "Mosaic" research project that has provided us with the graphical means of browsing the World Wide Web. Steve Markmann mentioned that today, despite the fact that Netscape was founded by Marc and Dr. James Clark only last year, 65 percent of Web browser traffic on the Internet uses the Netscape product and the Novell's LAN Workplace 5.0 will bundle in the Netscape browser. Steve then formally introduced Marc who began his address entitled "The New Generation of Internet Software." He stated that the basic objective of Netscape is to make the Internet open for both public and private users; the company had grown from three to 144 employees since it was founded and had developed strategic alliances with many important companies including Novell, MCI, MasterCard, Delphi and Bank of America to name a few. He announced "Netscape Japan" as an alliance between his company and about a dozen major Japanese firms which will provide the Netscape browser technology in the Japanese market. He described Netscape as providing a "new class of client / server software for the Internet" that will provide a new class of services such as electronic publishing, retrieval of information, etc., through a transparent and consistent access using the simplicity of the hypermedia technique. He emphasized here and in other parts of this talk that the Netscape technology was equally applicable to both private (i.e., access within the confines of one's organization's own LAN or WAN) and public (i.e., access using a dialup connection or by using the Internet to allow outside-of-organziation access) network. The Netscape software and concept can be scaled from the individual right up to the workgroup, organization and public for the development of collaborative work, electronic publishing, communications and even as the front-end access point to a relational database. The Netscape client software therefore provides a common, single-interface (to learn) base of capabilities on the front-end side that can be tied to a myriad of back-end services. He emphasized that Netscape is based upon open standards, interoperability that will help to grow the marketplace for interactive data services. Regarding security, he said that Netscape (and others) approach the problem from the point of view that all network connections are insecure and that adequate safeguards need to be added to provide the level of integrity needed to make the use of the network a viable commercial venture. He said that Netscape would provide encryption, multiple layers of access control in both directions in a "painless as well as tamperproof" means that will allow "private actions to take place across public networks." He said that this would be implemented using Netscape's "SSL" protocol that will allow "security to be dropped into an application without changing performance" and he added that Novell, Microsoft and other companies were also committed to supporting this particular method. He continued that by using tools provided by Netscape, security could be added at a lower level to allow for e-mail security and authentication that would allow for financial transactions to take place across the Internet. He continued by describing how Netscape's "core server software" will make it easier for people to build application on top of back-end database services. He promised new and better API's to provide such things as the ability for developers to swap out or extend upon components of Netscape's core programs at the desire of the developer, seamless document indexing and searching and "agents" (triggers of events) that will allow the program to take action based upon certain changes in the data. He said that this would allow for the development of such things as "Secure News Services" with validated replication and various levels of read-only, limited-write and full-write access to the data store. He also promised links to other programs and database servers that (returning to the theme of security) would provide fire-wall protection and the "caching of data" that would allow multiple users to access the same information that entered an organization through a single point, thus saving on access time and cost. Finally, he discussed how Netscape is working on Internet application geared toward public applications like product sales storefronts," information distribution and affinity group / electronic community applications that can be built on top of relational database systems. He asked us to watch for announcements for Marketplace MCI that would be coming out soon to offer business customers access to the Internet built on top of Netscape products. In conclusion, he said that Netscape was committed to help with the task of building and deploying applications that are information and document centric to bring people together on the Internet. During the Q&A session, he was asked about the Clipper issue to which he responded that if systems used encryption more widely, the whole security threat would be minimized and thus the need for government intervention in the process would be reduced. He took several comments and questions from people who had been having problems with various aspects of Netscape and he seemed both generally surprised yet concerned that these problems existed. In response to the question of whether Netscape will be able to run on top of NetWare, he replied "soon" and that this meant "in Netscape '95." The first breakout session I attended was entitled "Multimedia on the LAN" presented by Alan Mark, Corporate Integration Manager of Novell. This presentation was both entertaining and informative as to the challenges of deploying multimedia applications on the LAN. The basic gist here is that the storage requirements and bandwidth to support multimedia on the LAN require certain sacrifices that in most cases are acceptable. For example, audio at 11 KHz mono versus 44 KHz stereo (the later being CD-quality sound) is generally acceptable for your typical multimedia computer presentation. Using 12 frames per second instead of 15 saves both storage and bandwidth at a non-perceptible loss in quality of the picture. He demonstrated that the human mind can more easily make up for short coming in the visual quality of a presentation than in the audio content and he showed how Novell's "NetWare Video" could adjust the flow of data over the network to exploit this human characteristic. The next session I attended was entitled "Understanding How NetWare Satisfies Business Security Requirements" presented by Rich Lee, Senior Research Engineer of Novell. This session was very much a complement and partially a duplication of the security session I had attended yesterday and again spoke of how Novell is seeking a "C2" security rating for Novell NetWare 4.1 (which goes beyond what PAHO needs from a LAN system). In summary, Mr. Lee stated that users want a single point of secure network logon that provides simple yet effective protection from an "attack" from the outside. Novell and system administrators must make security simple enough to use and he pointed out that security also covered such concepts as redundant services and backups. He made the obvious point that the importance of security is related to the potential damage that can be caused by a "pervasive impact" that will always seek the weakest link. The next session I attended was "Novell Windows Sockets Tutorial" by Mark Shapiro, Senior Software Engineer of Novell. This session was geared to those doing development work for WinSock applications, not those supporting them, so most of this session was beyond my level of interest. He stated that WinSock 2.0 would be available soon and suggested that interested parties check with FTP site ftp.stardust.com or Web site http://www.stardust.com The next session was "Securing NetWare Against Viruses" by Morgan B. Adair, Technical Support Research Engineer of Novell. Some important points learned or relearned from this session are that your typical computer virus cannot infect the Novell file system because the underlying structure is not a DOS system. However, viruses can be spread across the LAN via executable files and that the practice of loging in as supervisor or supervisor-equivalent increases the risk of rapid spread because this class of user has files rights that your "normal" user does not have that will allow NetWare system files to become infected, hence hastening the spread of a virus. Another point made was that if a workstation is suspected to have been infected, DO NOT log out: shut off the machine and when you reboot DO NOT log in, especially as a supervisor-equivalent user. The final session I attended today was "Leveraging NDS for the Corporate Network Through Scheme Extensions" by JD Marymee, System Engineer of Novell (he said he's heard all the jokes about his name already). He described the schema as the "blueprint of the NDS" that can now be easily modified using customized C/C++ libraries, GroupWise applications extensions or ALM's used by Appware. Modifying the schema can allow organizations like PAHO to store a lot of its basic organizational data right with the basic building-block of the network, which can be in turn linked to external databases. For example, the FFMS (the financial management program that PAHO uses in its field offices) or applications in HQ that do such things as travel authorization could read the extended schema of the NDS for PAHO employee information instead of having to maintain a separate database which many times is not adequately updated or current. Thus the point of this presentation is that a properly planned and extended schema of the NetWare 4.1 NDS extends the concept of using NetWare as a centrally maintained and dynamically updated data store that can be made available using predefined security arrangements to other applications. Mr. Norman Spirt has adds the following thoughts and observations: BrainShare '95 - Day 3 Sessions attended: Keynote - Marc Andreessen, VP Technology Netscape Com. Corp. 1) Using DS Standard for NetWare 4.1 Migration 2) NDS Tools 3) Implementing NetWare on a Fault-Tolerant HW/SW Base 4) Effectively Managing SAP/RIP Traffic 5) Strategies for Troubleshooting NDS The sessions today went much more smoothly than the prior two days. I was able to get into all the sessions I wanted to. Apparently, there are over 6000 attendees this year (in 1992 there were about 2000). All the sessions were filled with valuable information (leading to what we here at BrainShare call "Braindrain"). DS Standard (Preferred Systems Inc.) is an interesting NDS tool which "discovers" bindery information and lays it out in an NDS format. You can then manage/audit/model this information (off-line), and when you are ready, "configure" a real NDS tree with this information, selectively if you choose. It is available to major accounts, Novell offices and hopefully CNE's free of charge. Version 2.0 is the current beta code. NDS Tools was a well presented (Gary Hein, Carl Seaver), informative session that basically broke down the steps necessary to identify, troubleshoot, and solve NDS problems and the tools available to facilitate this process. One of the underlying themes was to use DSrepair as a LAST resort (even though the latest version has many new features beyond just repairing the NDS database. A step-by-step methodolgy was presented to; 1) Identify the problem; 2) Gather information; 3) Document and organize the information; 4) Research findings; 5) Develop a strategy; 6) Resolve the problem. The DStrace utility, servman.nlm and the NCS toolkit CD were presented as good tools of the trade. Effectively managing SAP/RIP traffic was another extremely informative and well presented session (Paul Turner) which described in some detail what SAP/RIP is, how they work and how their options can be set. The new NLSP (NetWare Link Services Protocol) was detailed as a new and better solution, and was also described in some detail (both in terms of Bindery and NDS environments). Various routing configurations were examined and some utilities (inetcfg and ipxcon) were discussed. The presentation finished with a brief examination (using Lanalyzer for Windows) of the various packet structures. Strategies for troubleshooting NDS was an interesting session which discussed (in some detail) partitions, replicas and using (contrary to the NDS tools session) DSrepair to analyze and fix problems. Keynote tomorrow by Don Tapscott, CEO of New Paradigm Learning Corporation. ------------------------------ Summary of Day 4 of the Novell "BrainShare '95" conference. On the fourth day of "BrainShare '95" the keynote speaker was Don Tapscott, CEO of New Paradigm Learning Corporation and author of the book "Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology." He told us that a "paradigm" is a set of assumptions that is so strong the you hardly know it is there. As time and history change, events cause a shift in the basic assumptions that make up a paradigm. He cited how the new geopolitical situation over the last five years, months and even weeks has brought about significant changes and a volatile situation that creates both threats and opportunities. For example, the fall of communism and moves toward peace in the Middle East and Ireland are contrasted by problems in places most of us have never heard of before like Bosnia and Chechnia. Change is also evident in the business world; he cited that 40 percent of the Fortune 500 companies from 15 years ago do not exist any longer in the same form. He stated that we are moving into a "knowledge based economy" with such things as the Internet which he said, according to the latest figures, is at 50 million members and growing at 20 percent per month. He talked about "virtual aliens" who are highly educated people who are fully employed in the U.S. economy on a remote basis and earn significantly less than those who actually live in the U.S. He said that we are going through a change in the "command and control hierarchy" into one that is based on a more open flow of information among members of society and the survivors are those who can adjust to this shift. He talked about the three components of the information age: Content, Computing and Carriage. He showed how interactive multimedia services that run on these three components successfully "allow individuals to be treated as an individual" instead of merely a data element and this was leading to the decline of the "role of the middleman" on all levels. For example, he cited how Hertz rental car can greet and serve people by name via their information system and place like Wal-Mart do not need warehouses because their information system can track sales and demand on a daily basis, allowing them to ship directly to stores. He said the technology of computers had certainly changed from the host-based to the microprocessor based and that anyone buying a mainframe these days "was certainly out of their mind" because the new technology has provided the "power to empower" the whole of the people instead of the few. While he said that he does not have any direct affinities with any companies other than his own, he did cite Novell and its partners as fitting the new paradigm by promoting changes toward an open architecture. He stated that there are problems with the new technology "but this is not a reason to delay, but to address the problems and move on." He concluded by staring that "leadership is your opportunity" and that it can come "from any level" to move an organization into the new paradigm. The first breakout session I attended was "NDS and X.500 -- How Close Are They" presented by Ed Reed, Software Engineering Consultant of Novell. He stated that Novell's move toward the NDS structure of NetWare 4.x came from the 1988 X.500 specification with the basic idea being to allow users to access information in a hierarchical system that can be replicated and redistributed throughout an organization. He said that Novell had to anticipate changes in the X.500 specification during the development of NetWare 4.x so that NDS could be a fully-fledged directory services that goes beyond the X.500 concept of being merely an e-mail directory. Hence, although NDS does not match the 1993 X.500 specification, he stated that this would not be practical in that NDS is designed to support administration of servers, users and services in the tightly integrated means with the network O.S. that happens to also do e-mail services. For the future, he stated that the NDS needed to develop better authentication and authorization via the development of a public/private security component. In summary, he said that "to make directory services useable, it must be administerable" (unlike, in his opinion, the full-spec X.500) and this is what Novell was achieving with NDS. The next session I attended was "The Future of Computer Software: OpenDoc" which discussed Novell's choice (along with Lotus, Apple and other companies) of technology for compound document creation. The presenter, Neil Williams of Novell, said that pure application software as we have know it is being replaced by compound documents that allows the features of several different programs to be combined together to make a single piece of information. He compared and contrasted OpenDoc with Microsoft's OLE technology and demonstrated how OpenDoc was technologically superior in such ways as OLE being a single-layer of complexity while OpenDoc could provide multiple and hierarchical layers of document construction with much better cross-platform (i.e, DOS to Macintosh) availability. The next session was "Designing and Implementing an Enterprise Document Management System" presented by Todd Abney who worked for SoftSolutions when it was acquired by WordPerfect which was in turn acquired by Novell. He talked about the development of a "25 elite person technical group" called "SWAT" that was being put in place to support all of the products of the Novell applications group (business applications [PerfectOffice], consumer applications and the GroupWare products that include "GroupWise", the "In-Forms" forms design and management software and the SoftSolutions document management technology). The team can be reached at "swat@novell.com". He went on to describe the SoftSolution document management technology and stated that it can be used for all types of files, not just word processing documents. Through its Open Document Management System, the SoftSolutions product created a database of documents that can be fully indexed and searchable. He stated that both DOS and Windows clients can be used to archive and retrieve the documents. One interesting feature of the system that a participant told me about after the session is that when a document is save to the system, it can make a copy on both the server-based database as well as place a copy on the local hard drive, thus created a two-place store of the document. The next session I attended was "Configuring NetWare 4 for the Mobile User" by Marcus Williamson that provided a number of interesting tips on configuration that can be applied to both the mobile and stationary user. Due to time constraints this morning, I will have to come back to this subject in greater detail in my final report. The final session I attended was entitled "Migrating from Legacy LAN Mail Systems: Upgrading to GroupWise" that covered conversions from the old WordPerfect Office, cc:Mail and MS Mail systems. It was presented by Mr. Andrew Ehat and Ms. Karen Buckner. Regarding cc:Mail to GroupWise conversion, there is a Novell product called the cc:Mail / GroupWise Gateway that allows for both a migration to GroupWise (with all folders, messages, etc.) and a coexistence with cc:Mail (until the migration process is complete). The gateway requires the cc:Mail Import/Export programs and the cc:Mail Automatic Directory Exchange program; you establish one computer on the LAN as the gateway machine between the two mail systems. You can specify which side, or both, will be the "master" of the other during the migration/co-existence period (in other words, you can use cc:Mail Administration to make changes that are then exchanged into the GroupWise system via the gateway or visa-versa). Users can be migrated on an individual basis or a postoffice basis; the priority of exchange of data via the gateway is mail messages first, directory synchronization next and migrate user requests last. An organization converting to GroupWise could continue to use the gateway to pass messages from GroupWise back to cc:Mail and then via the cc:Mail SMTP to the Internet until the migration was completed in order to not loose this functionality during the conversion. In speaking with these individuals later that evening at the "Meet the Experts" session, Norman and I learned that GroupWise does not require the laborious "check-stat / reclaim" procedure to be run in the GroupWise has a dynamic, background recover and repair mechanism that takes advantage of the NetWare 4.1 file structure. Mr. Norman Spirt adds the following thoughts and observations: BrainShare '95 - Day 4 Sessions attended: Keynote - Don Tapscott, CEO New Paradigm Learning Corporation 1) Abend Recovery Techniques for NetWare 3 and 4 2) NDS Security - Access Control with NWAdmin 3) Novell MultiProtocol Router in the Novell WAN 4) NDS Partitioning and Replication I know that Tom will be detailing the keynote speech, but I would just like to mention how invigorating and exciting a speech it was on the "New Promise of Information Technology". It was easily the best keynote speech this week. If the new book Mr. Tapscott co-authored (Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology) is even 50 percent as entertaining as his talk, I would highly recommend that you read it. I know I will. Easily the most exciting breakout session of the day was moved to the vast Huntsman Center and brought in almost as many people as the morning keynote speeches draw. Abend Recovery Techniques (Dana Hendriksen) enlightened many LAN Administrators to the little documented NetWare debugger. The consensus among the participants that I talked with was that when a server abends, there was little recourse but to power it down and back up. Well guess what. A series of keystrokes ( ) will invoke the NetWare debugger, which will allow the now well armed administrator with a tool to trace the offending process. Besides loosing the feeling of helplessness as we resign ourselves to the reboot process, we are now armed with the ability to restart the server long enough to allow it to finish all disk writes, and to down it in an orderly fashion, reducing the need for vrepair, lost data and wasted time. This point was strongly emphasized, so let me also do the same; do not use the debugger to restart the server and leave it running. It should only be used to determine the source of the problem, finish the disk writes, and down the server in an orderly fashion. Continuing operation without downing the server can lead to serious repercussions. One more caveat. It does not always work. Abends caused by interrupts often leave the keyboard disabled, and only a reboot or extreme hardware patch can fix this. More information and a description of the debugger commands is to be released soon as an Appnote. Novell MultiProtocol Router (Jeff Marchese) was an interesting alternative to third party router solutions (Novell uses both in their Network) and the session was centered around Novell's use of MPR to solve many of their WAN routing problems. NDS Security (Bryan Walton) was a nice synopsis of the security features built into NDS and how to implement them. NDS Partitioning and Replication (Steve Jackson) was a very detailed explanation of the partitioning and replication feature of NDS. The session was made particularly interesting by the participant questions and the vast knowledge base of Mr. Jackson. Today is the final day of the conference; Drew will be back to hopefully redeem himself from the Tuesday sleeper. ------------------------------ Summary of Day 5 of the Novell "BrainShare '95" conference. On Friday, 24 March 1995, the last day of "BrainShare '95," another three inches of snow coated the city and the surrounding mountains. Today's keynote speaker was once again Drew Major and this time his address was vintage Drew: it was enthusiastic, informative and inspirational. Entitled "Raising the Bar: Novell Today and in the Future" he began by outlining his top-twelve items at "BrainShare:" 1) Network Directory Services (NDS). He said that everyone was realizing the value that it provides to the infrastructure of a network and the much of Novell's new development work would be in improving NDS. I would agree and I am sure that my colleague Mr. Norman Spirt would agree since he attended many of the NDS sessions which were all packed beyond the capacity of the assigned room. This was not the case a year ago when, with so few organizations having converted or even contemplating conversion to NetWare 4.x, the NDS sessions had only average attendance. 2) The 32-bit Client. Drew said that the 32-bit client (for '386 machines with 8 MB of RAM or better; DOS, Windows, Windows-95 and later OS/2 and other implementations) would also receive considerable attention from Novell's development efforts. He emphasized that the greater memory capabilities of this client would allow for a more powerful client that will provide better file directory and in-workstation file caching features. He said that a very important feature would be the "client assist in server failure" capability of the software that will allow for restoration of the entire state of the workstation upon failure of the server, allowing upon reattachment to the network for the client to find services (perhaps on another server of the network) and to rewrite/update changes on the network that were processing in the client when a server went down. In my opinion, this is all very nice; my only complaint is that Novell is delaying the delivery of the 32-bit client until after the release of Windows-95 and is not making any significant efforts to support the 32-bit operating system which is available today (OS/2). The other "discovery" I made at the conference with regards to the 32-bit client is that the Novell NetWare connectivity that will be part of Windows-95 was developed by Microsoft and that users will have to wait for the release of Novell's 32-bit client a month or so after the release of Windows-95 to employ optimal NetWare connectivity for Windows-95. 3) Telephony / ACNS. Drew reemphasized Novell efforts with AT&T (as was presented on Monday) to provide wide-area networking connection capabilities via AT&T's ACNS services (which will be offered sometime later this year). Drew talked about "point and click phone calls," heterogeneous voice and data connections and better integration of LAN and PBX capabilities. In my option, this type of combined WAN / voice service is appealing but it is a future that may be very costly. 4) The Power Server demo. This was a multiple workstation network setup in the cafeteria of the conference that was putting out 30,000 packets per second using high-speed EtherNet connections. Personally, since I spent almost no time in the cafeteria (I never sat down to eat lunch all week), I only saw this setup in passing. 5. NetWare and UNIXWare. He said that he was impressed by the improvements in UNIXWare and that "competion" between development teams at Novell was helping to achieve higher transaction processing capabilities through such technologies as "Tuxedo" that would be of benefit to NetWare over time. 6. Novell Distributed Print Services. This was a new product that Novell announced at "BrainShare '95" that Drew said would provide better ties among network printers and other business devices such as fax machines. 7. UNIXWare 2.0. He once again mentioned his delight with this particular release of UNIXWare that just recently began to ship. 8. GroupWise. Drew emphasized that aside from e-mail, this product provides personal calendaring and colleague scheduling that "I actually use." In my option, this product bring a lot to the table for organizations that are committed to NetWare: single point of administration, good product features and integration with Novell's other business application programs such as "In-Forms" and the "Perfect Office" suite of products. 9. Mobile client. Drew emphasized that Novell was making strides to improve the connectivity capability of the mobile NetWare user. 10. NEST. Drew reemphasized this future Novell technology and its intention to create "a new class of users and devices" that can be connected via NetWare. 11. OpenDoc. Drew emphasized Novell's commitment to this technology as a means of developing compound / distributed document preparation. He said that OpenDoc was more efficient than OLE in that it "cut down packet transfer" across the network. 12. NetWare for Windows. Drew mentioned that the latest release of NetWare can be run as a client under Windows. Personally, I am not a big fan of such an approach in that a crash in the client software (Windows) can cause a crash in the network software. Regarding Novell / NetWare futures, Drew mentioned the following items: -- Improved developer support; he emphasized that Novell was committing significant new resources to assist and promote NetWare development; this is to include better API tools and greater stability of the CLIB program. -- Continued emphasis by Novell on the "core business" functions of an organization; he promised to further "open up" the infrastructure of NetWare. -- Regarding "BrainShare" he (and other Novell executives) promised better session scheduling for next year and Drew called for the removal of the "Bob & Tina" conference mascots that have been around since 1992. He then went on to talk about how Novell would assist developers and integrators to more fully exploit NetWare's infrastructure in three ways: 1) by making the operating system fully available and open to developers; 2) full access to the capabilities of the server platform; 3) significant enhancements to the fully-distributed server platform. He continued by discussing technology trends. Regarding "client / server" he said that the success of this basic technology also relies on the "server to server" component of the overall network, the ability of the client software to work as part of a "common team" and the concept of the "single source" of the network for information that, to the user, is viewed as a single, logical entities rather than a collection of servers. He wanted to see the network be able to add services and increase capacity but not at the expense of greater complexity of use. He mentioned that the value of distributed services is greater fault tolerance, scalability of resources and improved ability to share resources across the network. He then continued his discussion of networking futures by talking about the next-generation "advanced file system" that is being developed for NetWare. He said the NDS would play an ever more critical role in NetWare's future file system and that all subsequent accesses to network files would pass through the NDS. He spoke of a "new logical view of files" that can be more easily replicated and monitored allowing people to use the "new, logical view" of files. He mentioned that this will include the ability to use the local hard drive of the workstation for file caching and storage in encrypted format. He revisited the theme of how the client will participate in the process of error recovery and resource allocation across the network. For example, in the event of the failure of one server in the network, the client will be able to reconnect and redirect its work to other servers and the data stores on those servers will be updated by the client software, all with the objective of reducing the failure of the network when one server thereof fails. He also added that the server could work as a replication of the client hard drive. He cited seven major benefits of this approach: 1) reduced cost of network management; 2) improved ability to provide backup solutions in the event of failure; 3) placement of the data closer to the client via migration and replication (e.g., if the users application is constantly using a particular data store or component thereof, a copy of this data store can be replicated in encrypted format to their hard drive); 4) hence, the local hard drive becomes a part of the network file caching system; 5) the server strategy can emphasize the server-to-server connections; 6) higher level of client involvement in the network process; 7) better server performance and less need to run utilities such as VREPAIR. He then went on to discuss Novell's two principal networking platforms: NetWare and UNIXWare and how they are expected to be combined over time into a "SuperNOS." He discussed the various strengths of both systems and said that both would be moved to being based upon a "microkernel" architecture. He said, however, that this move would not be at the expense of performance on the NetWare side and that Novell's commitment to providing better support for API's and the ability to run VLM's in this future "SuperNOS." He said that the principal benefit of the combination of NetWare and UNIXWare via the development of common microkernel will be better memory protection and the selective use of virtual memory at the server. He again revisited the theme that the client software side of the equation would be improved by putting some of the services which are found in the server into the client (e.g., file caching and file replication/migration). While he was making to formal announcement as to when "SuperNOS" would be a reality, he stated that Novell "know how to do it" and was already running prototypes of a combined NetWare / UNIXWare microkernel in its development labs. He concluded his remarks by stating that Novell needs help from many partners in order to realize the "vision of pervasive computing" by the year 2,000 (i.e., quantified as 1 billion NetWare connections by this date). He said that "Novell now knows where it is going" and he called on all of us attendees to help Novell deliver on the goals of pervasive computing. In my opinion, the two most significant items discussed by Drew Major this day regarding the future of networking with Novell are the growing importance of the role of the 32-bit client software component of the network that will be taking over some of the functions (e.g., file caching; reconnection) that have been preserved for the server. The second involves subtle changes in direction that Novell is making in the development of the combined NetWare / UNIXWare "SuperNOS" (which is something that was discussed at last year's "BrainShare") being the commitment to the common microkernel and willingness to use memory protection and virtual memory in the server to bring "SuperNOS" into the realm of the more traditional mainframe or midrange computer systems. This day I attended just two breakout sessions, the first being "Accessing Network Resources Using NDS" presented by Karl DeBrine. He talked about how network design in general was more complex in a server-centric model but with NDS, the design could emphasize the network-centric model where the physical layout of the network is less important than the logical layout. In order to take effective advantage of the capability of the NDS, he said that one needs to understand NDS tree design, access rights as they are controlled by NDS objects, resource / object naming and the use of login scripts in the NDS environment (particularly in the case of a WAN environment). General considerations in these regards include the organizational chart, geographic location of the organization and its subsidiaries and the overall resources of computing and telecommunications that the organization maintains. He outlined access rights and emphasized that rights should be assigned as high up in the tree as possible in that a User Object, for example, has security-equivalent rights of the Container Object(s) above it. He also emphasized the ability to use Printer and other resource objects and to make sure their names for equivalent-function objects is the same in different branches of the tree. The second session I attended this day was entitled "Planning & Designing an Enterprise GroupWise System" presented by Sean Kirby. He stated that of the four basic steps to a successful "GroupWise" installation (planning, configuration, maintenance and trouble-shooting) the one that should be emphasized because it is often overlooked is planning. He stated that GroupWise "is not a trivial application to implement" and that planning, aside from mere product education, requires the installer to know the needs of the client, the network architecture into which the system is to be installed and the how the logical components (user and resource objects, postoffices, domains [groups of postoffices] and gateways) are to tied together. He outlined the different architectures and clients that are available for GroupWise (e.g., DOS, Windows, Remote [Async and X.25] and telephone [for voice-mail] and he mentioned that the ability to customize the client is good for Windows and somewhat lacking for the others. He concluded by outlining available resources for GroupWise system integrators including a methodology that his group is working on, the monthly NSE Pro Novell CD-ROM resource publication as well as Novell authorized training and other publications (e.g., "Instant Experts" guides) that are being made available. The remainder of the day I spent reviewing the conference computer laboratory and working with the conference LAN connection that featured "GroupWise" and other components of Novell's business applications programs including "Perfect Office" and several "In-Forms" applications. The integration between the components of the "Perfect Office" suite and "GropuWise" is good (you can directly send the document you are working on in WordPerfect via e-mail) and the "In-Forms" product allowed me to fill out and send a conference survey form that could have easily have been any typical business form (e.g., travel authorization) that would then be routed via e-mail to the next appropriate recipient. Norman Spirt adds the following thoughts and observations: BrainShare '95 - Day 5 Sessions attended: Keynote - Drew Major, Chief Scientist and Senior Systems Architect, Novell 1) Building Large-Scale IPX Internetworks 2) NDS Design Cookbook 3) NetWare Communications Architecture 4) Taking Advantage of Fault Tolerance in NetWare 4 Well, day 5 of BrainShare has come and gone, and another wonderful week of brain overload is behind me. I will try to pump some life into the one remaining brain cell and give you a quick recap of the day. Both Building Large Scale IPX Internetworks (Radia Pearlman) and NetWare Communications Architecture (Paul Turner) were centered around the use of IPX on WAN's, a concept that has peaked my curiosity for some time. Session 1, expertly taught by Radia (who has a sort of "valley girl" delivery) dealt with the issues of IPX address space, routing, SAP and RIP overhead, NLSP enhancements, and security in a WAN topology. She basically showed us that it is possible to design and implement IPX as an Enterprise protocol that is suitable for WAN's. NetWare Communications Architecture was also a well presented session that dealt with IPX, RIP, SAP, NLSP and Burst mode protocol; their interaction in the login sequence, with routers, servers and workstations. The various packet structures were also examined in some detail. NDS Design Cookbook (Blair Thomas and Orland Seaver) was an entertaining and very informative methodology for NDS tree design, partitioning and replication and time synchronization. Mr. Seaver was the author of the 100+ page document found on the NCS Tools CD which gives a detailed step-by-step guide for NetWare 4 implementation, and the session reflected the vast experience the speakers had in the above mentioned facets of this implementation. The best information I can give besides this brief summary is to tell anyone interested this; you can get the latest NCS Toolkit CD by writing to "NCS_TOOLKIT@novell.com". Finally, Fault Tolerance in NetWare 4 (Randy Stevens) satisfied my curiosity as to the viability of SFTIII as a solution to a companies need for high level fault tolerance. SFTIII has always been on of those Laboratory experiments that looks great on paper but never seems to result in a usable product. SFTIII is essentially a configuration of mirrored servers and takes the implementations of disk mirroring, disk duplexing , TTS (transaction tracking), redundant FATS and hot fix to the next level. With the release of NetWare 4, it seems that SFTIII has finally achieved the ranks of a truly feasible solution to fault tolerance. It also comes at a fairly reasonable cost; $1995.00 for 100 or less users and $3995.00 for > 100 users (plus MSL hardware - NIC like cards that provide a high speed link between the servers for sync purposes). In summary, while there were no block-buster announcements at this year's "BrainShare" conference like last year when Novell announced the merger with WordPerfect, the time spent at "BrainShare '95" was worthwhile and demonstrated to Norman and me not necessarily how much we know but how much we do not know about Novell, NetWare and Novell's various add-on products like "GropuWise." I believe that we are both convinced ("brainwashed" might be a better word) that NetWare 4.1 finally has the benefits that Novell has promised for sometime regarding the performance and management features of the operating system. The challenge now is to apply what has been learned to a successful conversion process. Thomas E. Costigan Jr. Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) PAHO ACS Unit / User Support Group 525 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, DC USA tel: 202-861-3357 fax: 202-861-8441 work e-mail: costigat@paho.org personal e-mail: tcostigan@mcimail.com