Question : Recomemndations for migratiing from Netware 6.5 to OES2 using 32 bit cpus

Hello,

We currently have a large Groupwise architecture using Netware 6.5 SP5 and Groupwise 7.02 using a mixture of Dell single and dual cpu systems, most of them with 4GB of RAM.

Has anyone have any expeience in migrating from netware to SUSE (OES2) using existing 32-bit hardware with any numbers on performance (better/worse) and other technical issues.

The direction from Novell seems to be move to OES2 and we are in our planning cycle right now, so I am trying to get a feel for staying with Netware 6.5 at least for one more year or begin to slowly move to OES2 in a m ixed environment,

Does Novell have any good white papers on this issue (I did not find any earlier this year)?

Answer : Recomemndations for migratiing from Netware 6.5 to OES2 using 32 bit cpus

I agree with your approach of deploying OES2 and gradually migrating services to it, and slowly phasing out NetWare. I've led an OES deployment and set up just such a mixed environment.

With respect to GroupWise specifically, I'd start by migrating, say, a Gateway. GWIA is a good candidate. Then a Secondary Domain, or perhaps GWWA.

Remember that NCS (Cluster Services) can freely failover services between Linux (OES2) and NetWare nodes. There are some caveats specifically with filesystem services, but GroupWise won't care.

And yes, Novell's stated direction, for the past 2 years now, has been towards Linux and OES-Linux.