Novell NetWare and Pervasive PSQL

The Novell NetWare operating system provided numerous companies with years of faithful and reliable service. Unfortunately, the end is near for this awesome operating system.

Since Novell has already announced an "end-of-life" date for the Novell NetWare operating system on 2010, NetWare users should begin their migration planning to a currently-supported operating system. Ultimately, the options for a server-based operating system boil down to a few possible solutions: Microsoft Windows 2003, Windows 2008, and one of the flavors of Linux, including SuSe/Novell, RedHat, Debian, Ubuntu, and more. This web page was created to provide some initial guidelines to getting you started.

The first step is to choose your target operating system type, namely Windows or Linux. Novell has some attractive upgrade options to get to Linux, but Microsoft certainly has a formidable market presence that cannot be ignored. You may wish to try out both environments and see which has the features, cost, and performance that you need for your organization.

The second step it to select an exact operating system. Depending on your timing, you may wish to use Windows Server 2003, or you may wait for Windows 2008 Server. Further, you may have options as to feature set (like Standard vs. Enterprise vs. Small Business). In the Linux world, you have to choose your distribution and exact edition within that distro.

The third step is to select a bit platform. We are increasingly seeing hardware capable of running 64-bit operating systems, so if you're replacing hardware, be sure to consider this as a serious option. 64-bit platforms can offer relaxed memory limitations and (usually) better performance over their 32-bit counterparts.

The fourth step is to decide on your migration strategy. Basically, this means deciding if you plan on migrating data to a new box, or trying a rip & replace (also known as "in-place") upgrade. If the old hardware is somewhat dated in terms of disk space or memory, then installing the new server and migrating the data is bar far the safest and easiest method. An in-place upgrade should ONLY be done in cases where you have no choice but to reuse the same server, as they can be risky, and you can potentially lose all of your data in the process.

Once you make all these decisions, you can rest assured that Pervasive PSQL v10 will be there for you. PSQLv10 users will take solace in the fact that they can easily migrate their environment by simply moving the data files to the new Windows or Linux server (in many cases, no conversion is required) and pointing the application to the new database location. This is all made possible by the incredible amount of backward compatibility which has been offered by Pervasive for years.

So, although change is coming and change can be painful, it's time to view this change as a good thing, and a chance to increase your server's capabilities and performance. Still worried? Goldstar Software has helped several companies migrate their applications from NetWare to Windows over the years, and we'll be happy to help you, too! Contact us for details!