To: LANSRV-L@VM.MARIST.EDU
cc: aurora-beta@voice.os2ss.com
Subject: Crisis: IBM and 95/98/NT - Urgent help required

Hi All,

I apologize for the following long e-mail but I would be very grateful for any assistance or comments anyone would have to offer. I am a network manager in crisis! I have a sad tale to tell.

We are a College serving 16-18 yr old students. We have used Warp Server since the days of PCLP and OS/2 LAN Server. We have 350 workstations and 4,000 user accounts. All of our workstations are diskless and use the remoteboot (RIPL) feature of WarpServer to deliver a secure Windows 3.1 environment to our users. Our users enjoy roving desktops, licensed metered LAN applications and networked internet access. We have 160 shared LAN applications including many multimedia and CD-ROM titles. We pay an expensive IBM support fee; despite our impressive track record of hitting, identifying and having resolved the majority of OS/2 LANServer 4 and WarpServer defects - resulting in over 40 APARS that are attributable to myself alone.

The problem? How to recreate this perfect, secure and cost-effective environment using either Windows 95 or Windows NT as the desktop platform. Hence we were very interested in the WorkSpace for Windows, or Win32 Feature Client for WorkSpace On Demand 2.0. WSOD 2.0 provides a roving user, locked down environment. It uses the standard WarpServer public LAN application mechanism for application support and therefore provides application license metering and a secure environment. Over a period of 18 months we had several IBM salesmen and consultants visit the College, understand our requirements, and hail the forthcoming Win32 support of WSOD as the answer to our problems. We battled hard with the College's management who were not sure that Warp Server was a wise choice, but in the end the College decided to wait the lengthy period of time for the Win32 code to arrive.

One problem. The Win32 Feature Client (W32FC) does NOT provide any functionality, despite the fact that the glossy WSOD 2.0 leaflets do not mention that the W32FC is nowhere near comparable to its OS/2 cousin.

Compare the WSOD 2.0 glossies to what the Win32FC offers. The Win32FC relies heavily on the local hard-disk of the workstation. Yet this is not secure - users can write and destroy the local hard-disk in seconds. Even traditional Warp Server features - such as public LAN applications - do not appear in the documentation as the way to put an application on a users desktop. There is no license metering of Win32FC applications. In fact, every application has to be installed on a common alias as the user makes a permanent connection to all of their applications at logon - so applications have to be either on the same alias or on a small set of alias assigned different drive letters.

It gets worse. Much worse.

The Win32FC introduces very little code from IBM. There is no nice GUI on the servers as there is for OS/2 counterparts. A dreadful NETWIN command line interface is the way the system is administered, and the process is complex and obtuse. So what does the Win32FC do? It is a thin veil over the standard Microsoft Unattended Install process available for Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98 and Windows NT. Yes - Unattended Install. There are no systems management functions. The Tivoli TMA front end is built into the client image but this is incompatible with the OS/2 TME10 Netfinity Server or the IBM SystemView programs. There is no TMA server available for OS/2.

As soon as the unattended install is complete, the workstation then RIPLs to the server, looks to see if its entire image needs to be re-downloaded, and, if not, restarts the boot process off the local HDD. The Win32FC does not examine the local HDD to see if it is intact. There is no way of delivering minor updates or application updates (such as shared Windows DLLs) to workstations unless the entire unattended install is restarted. But IBM tells me that this is what their customers have demanded. Have you lot our there really demanded that in order to install a print driver on a workstation, or even just to point an existing print driver at a different spool queue, that you must completely re-install the workstation? I'd like to hear from you if you have. A complete download of workstation image, including service paks etc can take a good 40 minutes.

So, okay, public LAN applications are not implemented on the Win32FC desktop, the hard-disks can easily be trashed, there is no way of rolling out updates or configuration changes, the software is hard to understand and is cumbersome to configure, and not even the Warp Server Netfinity Services client can be installed on it. I'd love to find out how the Win32FC can reduce my cost of ownership. In fact, it is hard to stop some Win32 apps defaulting to save to the C: drive on the workstation. By default, this is the PERSONAL folder of the logged on user. One problem. When the next user logs on, the PERSONAL trees are purged on the C: drive, deleting any work that exists there, even if it is the only copy in existence.

Even more funnily, the IBM implementation of the Microsoft Unattended Install does not support multimedia adapters or other fancy hardware in workstations, even if Windows can auto detect it. Only the real Microsoft Unattended Install can support this using UDF (Unique Defintion Files) and SysDiff for each workstation.

When I get back in touch with IBM, they say that the product is suitable for the majority of their customers (even banks change printers or use Warp Server LAN applications, IBM..). So they then tell me that I am not "commercially viable" for them to produce a working solution for me that comes close to the WSOD 2.0 product announcements.

Indeed, one of the IBM executives I spoke to was confused and did not even realize that Win32 applications such as Microsoft Office or Word 97, could be served off an OS/2 server, despite the IBM web page carrying instructions on how to to this for a good while some time back. He thought we wanted to integrate an NT server into an OS/2 environment. Does he expect all his customers to do this? I hope not. Once they've seen the Win32FC, I doubt they'll see Warp Server as anything more than a dead-end product. IBM tell me that it is possible the Win32FC might be refreshed one day. But they don't know when. But they have visited the College and promised us so many things in the past to our management that I doubt our management would ever believe this anyway.

The end result is that the IT Services team at the College has lost all credibility with our management, our Warp Server system, token ring network and IBM workstations (all our workstations are old and are due for replacement) will be replaced by a clone vendor, and the chances of having a Win32 desktop implemented in time for the start of the new academic year is remote. We have also wasted many hours of time researching and testing the product. IBM have lost the respect of the College and a 13 year customer.

If you still feel that the Win32FC really does meet your needs, then I wish you well. The almost-gold code that we tested locked up at random during logon on NT workstations, manual attempts at using RUNLSAPP failed on dynamically assigning drive letters, Windows 95 workstations cached passwords and required you to occasionally enter your password twice during logon. Also, the code did not reliably install 3-rd party display drivers, such as those on the IBM 300GL, even if the driver supports unattended install. If you have any display drivers that do not support unattended install then these cannot be used at all and the workstation must run in VGA.

So my questions are: What options would you recommend? What did you think the Win32FC was going to do? Would the Win32FC fulfill your requirements? How would you deliver a secure Win32 environment, and what tools would you use to do it? I'd be very grateful for your comments or thoughts.

TIA,

Steve.