University of Tasmania

Macintosh File and Print Serving will continue to be available via CAP on UNIX, and NT Server, as well as on Netware servers. Novell have recently announced the release of Netware 5 Macintosh services in pure TCP/IP environments, indicating their continued support for the platform. Earlier versions of Netware already offer Macintosh services. As the Desktop management project will be hosted primarily on UNIX and NT Server, we already offer Macintosh services on these server platforms.

The Desktop Management Project has two major components:

(i)                   Centralisation of all authentication including Windows login, MacAdministrator login, Email, File Server login and Corporate Data Systems.

(ii)                 Centralised File serving for departments, schools, groups and individuals.

Novell Single Sign On (SSO) is expected to be implemented as part of (i) on Windows systems as a convenience issue, but it is not required to make any of the individual components actually work. Its function is purely to remove the need for users to re-type their username and password every time they connect to another system or service.

As SSO is not available on the Macintosh platform, users will continue to enter their normal username/password combination when they need to access other resources eg FMIS and email, as they do presently. The advantage to these users will be gained in the fact that their username and password will be the same for all systems, and will only need to be changed in one location for all locations to be updated. This will be a major time saving and will greatly reduce systems and helpdesk calls on password issues. All Corporate Data systems will continue to be available to the Macintosh platform to the extent that they are currently.

Component (ii) - File Serving - will be fully available for the Macintosh platform and we will also offer some cross-platform file sharing areas where required, for example student labs. Staff and student home directories will be accessible from three platforms - Unix, Macintosh and Windows, allowing personal transfer of files between platforms.

Application remote installations will not be possible using ZENworks, however the existing infrastructure for deploying of software updates on the Macintosh platform is more flexible and capable than that currently on the Windows platform. Student labs have long been maintained by RevRdist and Assimilator and they will continue to be maintained in this fashion. Assimilator and potentially MacAdministrator could be utilised further for automated distribution of Macintosh packages to staff machines, or the current systems could be continued and possibly expanded using KeyServer 'tagged' applications, a historically successful formula.