Question : Windows 7 and Novell Roaming Profiles

I'm afraid I already know the answers, but one can always hope someone else has a brilliant solution.

Current setup: Netware 6.5 sp5 server, ZENworks 3.2 (I know, I know!), and student computers running Win XP SP3. The only thing we're using ZENworks for is roaming profiles for the students using the computer lab. Nearly all the directories have been redirected to the users' home directories on the Netware server so only a small, volatile profile is loaded when they log in. We have less than 150 users, one Netware server, one tree.

Problem: We would like to upgrade the student computers to Windows 7 (never even considered Vista seriously). However, as I understand it, our current Novell Client (4.91 SP2) won't work with Win 7, so we will have to upgrade to the Vista version of the client. But when we upgrade the client, the old ZENworks (even if we were running ver. 7) won't work for roaming profiles. So we have to upgrade to ZENworks 10. But ZENworks 10 doesn't run on Netware, only Linux or Win 2003+ servers. In fact, from my research, it appears that ZENworks 10 won't have anything whatsoever to do with Netware. But we still need Netware for some other apps. Also, eDirectory is running on our Netware server and I suppose that would need to be migrated to the new, ZENworks-10-compatible server.

Ergo: If we upgrade the student computers to Win 7 AND want to keep roaming profile functionality, we'll have to setup either a Windows 2003+ server or a Linux server with ZENworks 10 and move eDirectory to that server.

Questions: Are the above assumptions correct? Can the users' home directories still reside on the Netware server, or will they have to be moved as well? I actually have a zillion questions, but we'll start with these first and open new ones as needed.

Answer : Windows 7 and Novell Roaming Profiles

You do not have to migrate eDirectory to another server in order to run ZCM.  You don't have to get rid of NetWare at all, and shouldn't have to install eDirectory on Linux or Windows to do it either.  ZCM will use the LDAP interface to integrate with eDirectory.

Do you specifically have NetWare 6.5 SP5 or do you have OES?  Just curious, because OES (both 1 and 2) give you the ability to run NetWare services (NSS, iFolder, eDirectory, iPrint, etc) on Linux.  If not, just get yourself a copy of whatever version of SLES ZCM is supported on (SLES10 SP2 for sure),  install it on a server, and install ZCM there.  Quick note:  since most, if not all, new Intel- or AMD-based servers have AMD X86_64 architecture processors and chipsets, double-check the docs before you install SLES, to make sure if ZCM will work on X86_64. If not, you'll have to make sure the SLES installer installs the 32-bit version.

You'll want to do the ZCM rollout before you consider upgrading to Win7, because you can use ZCM as a migration/upgrade tool for going from XP to Win7.

The user's home directories should be able to stay on NetWare.  The current Novell Client for Vista/7 will handle that for you, and if you don't want to install the Novell Client for Vista/7, you can set up CIFS on your NetWare server and let them access it as though it were a Windows server.  ZCM isn't as tied to NetWare or even eDirectory as ZENworks was, so it doesn't rely on the presence of a Novell Client on the workstation.  It has its own agents that handle workstation authentication and such, so you could use CIFS and install the iPrint and ZCM clients and continue to use NetWare file and print services  without having the Novell Client on the workstaitons.  If you want to.  If I were in your shoes, I'd want to use the Novell client... but that's me.