Server Manager 7

Warsaw University Success Story

Key benefits:- real-time analysis of server performance and improved network availability
- increased productivity of an administrator, especially in file and user management
- better access for students and university staff to the LAN and internet

"Intuitive graphical interface, plus the way to quickly manage users, NLMs, server parameters and configuration means that now I can keep a tighter hold on the network and the growing number of users."

Maciej Winter
Network Administrator
Department of Management, Warsaw University, Warsaw, Poland

Customer Background

Warsaw University is the largest publicly funded institution for higher education in Poland. 51,000 students are currently enrolled at the University which offers a wide selection of degree programs delivered through its 20 departments. Since its inception in 1816, the University has produced many prominent scholars, personages and schools of thought. Currently Warsaw University plays an important role as the center for international cooperation in science and technology research. The University network maximizes knowledge transfering and scientific opportunities by providing a university-wide mail system, and connecting multiple LANs with external operators.

The Challenge

Maciej Winter, network administrator at Warsaw University's Department of Management, is tasked with ensuring the highest quality access of department students and staff to network resources and internet. In recent years, the Department saw a steady increase in student enrollment accompanied by the demand for higher availability and quality of IT services. Therefore, adopting a tool that would help Mr. Winter manage 3 NetWare servers and over 6000 users on 150 workstations was only a matter of time.

What he was looking for was the opportunity to transfer various user management operations carried out directly on the server's physical console to a graphical environment. This would enable him to eliminate the need to use Novell's text-based Monitor.nlm. Equally important for Mr. Winter was the ability to analyze server performance in real-time and troubleshoot server and network issues head-on.

The AdRem Solution

"Server Manager is a fast handy tool kit for troubleshooting NetWare servers. To me it is the perfect complement to Novell® ZENworks™ for server content and configuration management," relates Winter. "This piece of software has been my life-saver on a daily basis in various basic tasks, such as analysis of key aspects of server performance during the last 10 minute period, or a quick view and consolidation of NLMs. That way I can keep my finger on the pulse of the servers and react to anything that's hammering their performance."

Winter found out that Server Manager lends itself well to monitoring user activities. "Before Server Manager I used Novell Monitor.nlm for this purpose," Winter continues. "The downside of this option was that I had to wrestle with the text interface that was available only on the server's physical console. Besides, back then there was no way I could quickly identify persons using a certain file. By contrast, now from my workstation I'm free to view the long list of all current users of the file. That spares me the hassle of checking users one by one in order to hit upon the one who's actually using the file in question. Another great benefit of having this tool is the control over users – I can filter, sort and search them by a surprisingly varied criteria. When I need to update a certain file, I can easily find out what students use this file essentially blocking it, send them a message to close it, or even disconnect them from the file."

Just like most Server Manager users, Winter highly rated the graphical user interface for it ability to display well-ordered statistics on server configuration and performance, and providing him with answers to such questions as who is hogging the server disk space, what is the current connection utilization, or who generates the most traffic on the server. What's more, being able to set server parameters and configuration in a graphical environment allows Winter to not have to execute these tasks on the server's unfriendly text interface.

Conclusion

"From the NetWare administrator's point of view, Server Manager is the long-awaited key to the benefits of the Windows environment," Winter maintains. "In my case this means less time spent using text-based tools at the server's console. Intuitive graphical interface plus the way to quickly manage users, NLMs, server parameters and configuration means that now I can keep a tighter hold on the network and the growing number of users."