I'm told I need to do a health check. What does it do and why is it needed? A health check is a process of reviewing a Novell system to determine if the "tree" is overall healthy. A big portion of the process involves the NDS database, which stores all user objects and other network resources. If the NDS database is neglected and becomes corrupt, you can experience major problems and outages. Generally larger networks are more susceptible to corruption because changes are made more frequently. A health check should be performed weekly for large networks and monthly in smaller networks. Abuse and neglect are the most common reasons an NDS tree might become corrupted, and a health check is a great way to make sure everything is up to par.

Marvin Huffaker MCNE

How many licenses do I need to purchase? This is an easy question that confuses a lot of people. All you have to do is count how many TOTAL users you have. That's how many licenses you need. It doesn't matter how many servers you have. So for example, if you have 400 users and 35 NetWare servers, you only need to buy 400 licenses. These 400 licenses allow all users to connect to all 35 servers in the eDirectory tree. Click here for our complete Novell licensing tutorial.

Do you have a question about NetWare or Open Enterprise Server (OES)? I try to answer all questions by email, and post some of the better answers here. Go to our Contact Page for email address information.