Benefits of Using the Server Consolidation Utility

The benefits the NetWare Server Consolidation Utility 2.5 provides can be better understood through the following two consolidation scenarios.

In the first scenario, suppose you have five existing NetWare 5 servers and you recently purchased two multiprocessor servers and the necessary hardware to create a two-node cluster complete with a Storage Area Network (SAN). You have decided to install NetWare 6.5 on the two-node cluster because NetWare 6.5 is fully multiprocessor enabled and comes with Novell Cluster Services^TM software and a two-node cluster license. You want to migrate the data from each of the five servers to the SAN on the two-node cluster. Rather than manually moving all the data and Printer Agents or backing up the data and restoring it to the SAN, you can use the NetWare Server Consolidation Utility, which automates the data migration process.

The following figure shows how this consolidation scenario might look.

Figure 1
Cluster Server Consolidation

In the second scenario, suppose you have three existing NetWare 5 servers and you recently purchased a multiprocessor server that you want to make a NetWare 6.5 server. You want to migrate the data from each of the three servers to the single NetWare 6.5 server. Rather than manually moving all the data and Printer Agents or backing up the data on each of the three servers and then restoring it to the NetWare 6.5 server, you can use the NetWare Server Consolidation Utility to automate the data migration process.

The following figure shows how this consolidation scenario might look.

Figure 2
Multiprocessor Server Consolidation