Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Not with a bang, but with a whimper

We turned off the last of my firm's Novell NetWare servers this morning at 11 AM. That marks the final, real end of an era for me as a Novell network administrator. Now I'm just a Windows network guy, with some Linux and VMWare management tasks as well. The occasion feels like it merits a eulogy of sorts for NetWare, but I grew weary of defending NetWare for so long that I just don't have the energy. It was a great OS in its day with a superior directory system, but it couldn't weather the lack of support from 3rd party software developers, who preferred Windows and its ease of integration with the desktop. With the advent of Linux as a viable alternative to Windows on the server side, NetWare was finished as an OS. Novell figured this out and bought SuSE Linux a few years ago, so my firm will continue to use some Novell products. But NetWare and its directory are gone now.

Maybe I'll listen to Verdi's Requiem this afternoon in memoriam.

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