We're starting to plan a migration from Novell NetWare 6.5 to Windows Server 2008. While we currently use the NDS in NetWare, we have no need to migrate it over to AD, as we have a separate server using AD; we've had a 2 system authentication for many years. All we plan to do is to migrate the file server role to a new server, complete with rights and hierarchial structure.

From what I can tell, there isn't any real way to migrate from NetWare to Windows Server 2008. Instead, I have to migrate to Server 2003, then migrate from 2003 to 2008.

The problem we're running in to is that there doesn't seem to be any documentation on simply migrating only the file server role, as mentioned above. Everything deals with migrating NDS to AD, then migrating files with permission and the likes.

Does anyone have any experience, suggestions, or hints to throw my way in hopes to ease the process? My mind is going numb from pouring over pages of technical documentation which doesn't seem to fully apply to our scenario. Any help would be greatly appreciated. As always, thanks in advance.

We're in a similar situation, switching from Novell to Server 2008. Our setup is very basic; all we will be using under 2008 is file services (and of course AD and all that entails).

As of now I haven't found anything that will let me migrate the file server role directly from NDS to 2008. If I don't find any such tool, I will probably just use robocopy to copy all the file server data to the 2008 file server ... and then use robocopy daily to do "incremental" copies leading up to the day of the actual cut-over. All while creating global groups etc manually on the 2008 AD.

More info on Robocopy here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2006.11.utilityspotlight.aspx

We do have the advantage of having relatively few users and groups, otherwise this manual approach wouldn't really be feasible.

Will Robocopy work within the Novell environment? I considered just performing a restore job with a file redirection to the new server, but the folder/file attributes associated with the backup would be tied to the NDS and not our current AD structure.

That being said, we're considering just copying all the files to the new file server (via GB connection on a weekend when we know for certain that all files will be closed) and then manually setting permissions based on groups. Afterwards, I'll spend the next month or so having users hit me up to grant them access when needed.

Another thing to note in our environment is that when connecting to a drive that is mapped to a Novell directory, the connection is instantaneous. Contrary, connecting to a drive that is mapped to a Windows directory on a different server always seems to have a delay, which is just going to have users complaining on a daily basis. We're toying with the File Server Role on the Windows Server 2008 to see if we can't speed up that initial connection. Anyone have any hints/tips on how to enhance this?

My approach is to log on to a Windows XP workstation which has the Novell client installed. Authenticate to Novell & map a drive to the appropriate Novell directory; then map a drive to the 2008 server share. Then run robocopy on the workstation to copy from the one mapped drive to the other. The advantage of this method is that once you work out the correct robocopy switches, you can put them in a batch file and schedule it to run daily.

Rock on. Thanks. I'll look into that method. Much appreciated, man.