NDS for NT

In networks using both Win NT and Novell NetWare, if users
want to share resources on both operating systems, they have to be given
separate accounts on both. This can be quite a task if the number of users is
large. It also means installing two clients on each machine–one for each OS.
Win NT has a built-in called Gateway Service for NetWare that lets you access
NetWare resources through NT. We’ve talked about this utility in a separate
article in this issue (see Two Networks in One, page 119, in this issue). Novell
has NDS for NT to do the job. This lets you manage users on a Win NT domain
through the same tools that manage NDS (Novell Directory Services)–the
database that stores all network resource information like users, printers, etc–in
NetWare. We checked out the Corporate Edition of NDS for NT.

NDS for NT has to be installed on an NT 4 Primary Domain
Controller having SP3 or higher. It supports NetWare 4.x or higher. Installation
is pretty simple, and gives you four options–Install NDS, Integrate Windows NT
Domains with NDS, Integrate MS Exchange domains with NDS, and Install Management
utilities. It includes NetWare Administrator, NDS Manager and Console One
utilities. You must have the NetWare client for Win NT installed.

If you choose "Integrate Windows NT Domains with NDS",
a domain object wizard will start up. This takes you through several steps and
for each user and object in your NT domain, you choose whether to move it to NDS
or not. This way, you can choose to restrict users only to the NT domain too.

You need to reboot the server for changes to take place. When
you open NDS through one of the three above utilities, you’ll see the NT
domain as an object in the NDS tree. You can open it further and see all the
workstations that are part of this domain. On the client end, all you need is
Novell Client 32 to be able to access resources on both operating systems.

The primary benefit of this utility is that when you create a
user in a Win NT domain, or in NDS, it gets replicated across both operating
systems. So, you don’t have to create separate accounts in NT and NetWare. You
can use your NT User Domain administrator or any of the three NDS management
utilities for creating a user account. All future changes in account information
also get automatically replicated. This way, users on your network don’t have
to remember multiple usernames and passwords.

Sachin Makhija at PCQ Labs