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This page contains announcements covering the company, its products, and its WEB Site. |
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TaskMaster v5 Release Status TaskMaster v5 has been officially released into general distribution.
Product Development Plans For Avanti's TaskMaster (Last Updated: 29 September 2010) Avanti's TaskMaster was originally released in 1994 as a NetWare Server centric utility. Since then, support for network centric (Server-to-Server) operations, DOS/Long/Mac/NFS Name Spaces, and the NSS File System, as well as many other features, including Replication and Synchronization capabilities, have been added to the product. TaskMaster's support for the myriad of NetWare specific File System features, including multiple Name Spaces, Extended Attributes, and Trustee Rights on both the TFS and NSS volumes, have been widely embraced by Novell users. However, these NetWare specific features have also tied TaskMaster closely to Novell's proprietary API set. TaskMaster v4 is highly dependent upon the legacy CLIB based NetWare API which provides its base of support but also limits it to supporting the Code Page based file naming conventions (i.e., no Unicode-16 or UTF-8 characters) and 32 bit File I/O (i.e., files under 4GB in size). It is our intention to offer a version of TaskMaster for OES2 (SLES), and possibly other OS platforms, and we are working aggressively towards that goal at this time. We began work on this first step several years ago following a direction suggested by Novell's developer support engineers which proved to be wrought with API delivery delays and bugs that hindered our progress. After it became apparent that the direction was not ideal for our objectives and would significantly limit portability of the final product, we stepped back and re-evaluated the project. Unfortunately, we easily lost 12-18 months of productive development time in the process of having to start over. After careful consideration, we determined the project was best approached as a multi-step process. The first step in the process is to incorporate support for both UTF-8 file naming conventions (i.e., global name support) and 64 bit File I/O (i.e, files greater than 4GB in size) while also converting as many of the NetWare specific APIs as possible to more portable APIs in the NetWare version of the product. The second step is to create an OES2 (SLES) agent that is compatible with and an extension of the NetWare platform. The final set is to then merge and port the combined code set, once proven stable through testing in the field, to the OES2 (SLES) platform. Attempting to convert from legacy NetWare APIs and port to OES2 (SLES) in one step would create so many potential design and debugging issues as to actually delay the final release much longer than if approached in stages. Unfortunately, this has proven more challenging than expected as the port is far from a simple recompilation as represented by Novell. One of the first issues faced is that fact that there is no direct map (or port) between some of the NetWare Legacy APIs and the newer ANSI/Posix API set which requires code design and logic changes, often requiring multiple ANSI/Posix APIs and additional code to be substituted in place of a single NetWare Legacy API. In addition, though many of the NetWare Legacy APIs do have a corresponding ANSI/Posix API counterparts, they do not perform identically or require changes in the parameters being passed. Further complicating the process is the requirement to use Novell's new zAPIs for full NSS and Name Space support, especially for the Macintosh AFP file system. Most of the zAPIs are poorly documented and lack code examples while some others do not work as the documentation implies. These new APIs utilize a completely new methodology for accessing files (keys versus handles) which requires additional design, coding, and testing which is complicated by a critical lack of documentation and examples for the bulk of these new zAPIs. Further compounding the zAPI issues is the fact that Novell has relocated its NSS development and support offshore creating crippling delays in communications on technical support matters. In TaskMaster v5, we have managed to replace the bulk of the Legacy NetWare CLIB APIs with the more portable ANSI/Posix subset of the LibC based APIs for NetWare where possible or Novell's new zAPIs where necessary. TaskMaster v5 continues to provide the full DOS/Long/Macintosh/NFS Name Space support that users have come to rely upon in the product with the added benefits of 64-bit file system (i.e., file sizes over 4GB) and Unicode-16/UTF-8 character set compatibility for dir/file entry names. TaskMaster v5 will receive limited enhancements as development focus shifts towards a TaskMaster v5 Agent for Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) OES2 SP2 (or later), in advance of a full port of TaskMaster to the OES2 (SLES) platform. Unfortunately, we do not have a specific release date to which we can commit at this time for the release of the full port due to the multi-step process involved. As part of the ongoing development efforts for TaskMaster, Avanti is conducting a survey of current TaskMaster users seeking feedback on prioritizing existing and adding new features to TaskMaster, including potential platforms for porting and possible new utilities. The survey should not require more than a minute or two to complete and will help to focus efforts on the areas of most importance to our users. Your participation in the survey would be greatly appreciated: Note: It is an anonymous survey which we would appreciate if you only complete once. We appreciate the confidence in TaskMaster for NetWare and interest in TaskMaster for OES2 (SLES) expressed by its user base. We look forward to working with TaskMaster users towards further enhancing TaskMaster and broadening its platforms of support. ASM subscribers should keep an eye on the eMail In Box for further announcements in this regard. Census revs up 10,000 systems Bureau spins IT web for 2000 count Government Computer News February 7, 2000 (Volume 19, Number 3) Excerpts: Each of the 520 local offices, opened over the past year, has one Dell 2300 server... .... Twelve regional Census centers supervise the local offices. ... Each regional office has a Dell PowerEdge 6100 server running NetWare for production processing, plus a PowerEdge 4200 failover server. Another PowerEdge 2300 distributes software to the local offices. .... A Novell NetWare 4.11 network connects the regional and local offices to headquarters. ... "It's a very large Novell installation," Doyle* said. The bureau manages NetWare 4.11 with Novell ManageWise and ZENworks 2.0 products. TaskMaster 3.0 from Avanti Technology Inc. replicates the servers every night and guards against unauthorized activity such as posting games on the bureau's servers," Doyle* said. * J. Gary Doyle, Census 2000's manager for systems integration TaskMaster v3: The NetWare Task Scheduling Tool (White Paper) A document covering TaskMaster v3, some of its uses and how it is being used at some sites, is available for download.
WEB Site Hits Gold! Avanti WEB Site Awarded GOLD Site status by NetGuide. The Gold Site Award recognizes Web sites that meet stringent criteria for overall excellence. NetGuide screened over 100,000 URLs and reviewed more than 50,000 sites while making their selections. "Thanks for giving us a great site to review." NetGuide 
WEB Site Is Hot! Avanti WEB Site Placed On InfoWorld'S WEB HotList. This site was reviewed and selected by InfoWorld as a "site worth checking out" on their WEB HotList (as of July 8, 1996). TaskMaster v2 TaskMaster hailed as impressive by Networking Solutions Magazine. "The TaskMaster server task scheduler automates virtually every task normally peformed at the server through a powerful, easy-to-use scripting language" wrote Patrick Corrigan, a prominent author, columnist, consultant, and speaker on NetWare management issues. Mr. Corrigan went on to say "If Novell executives were smart, they would license Avanti Technology's TaskMaster and include it with every copy of NetWare and IntranetWare sold." 
NConsole v2 wins award!
Avanti technology, inc., developer of network management utilities for NetWare, received one the highest honors when PC Magazine selected its Server Trends Analysis utility, NConsole v2 for NetWare, as one of "The Best Products Of 1995" in the Networking and Communications Software category. |