Move from NetWare to Windows 2000 Boosts Reliability and Performance, Cuts TCOPublished: July 2002

The premier healthcare provider in northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia, Wellmont Health System had a Novell NetWare environment supporting an increasing number of Microsoft® Windows NT® Server 4.0–based application servers, but it was not supporting them very well. Users had frequent problems with logon, accessing resources across the network, and desktop and server crashes—problems that consumed administrative resources. To solve these problems, Wellmont designed and implemented its own migration to Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server and its Active Directory® service. In addition to minimizing network problems, Wellmont found that the migration was straightforward thanks to built-in migration tools in Windows and the healthcare provider’s in-depth testing.

SituationFounded in 1996, Wellmont Health System is the premier healthcare provider in northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia. The integrated healthcare delivery system consists of five medical centers and hospitals, 40 clinics, an assisted living center, a hospice, and a wellness center. Wellmont's broad scope of services ranges from community-based acute care to highly specialized tertiary services including neonatal intensive care and two trauma centers. Wellmont is one of the region's largest employers with a staff of 4,500 dedicated professionals. Nearly 600 physicians deliver care at Wellmont facilities.

Wellmont’s technology infrastructure was a mixture of network protocols and directories, including unmanaged desktops with high total cost of ownership (TCO). The organization had started with a pure Novell NetWare 4.1 and 5.0 network and then began adding servers running Microsoft® Windows NT® Server network operating system version 4.0, first to migrate from Lotus cc:Mail to Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5 and then to support additional, industry-specific solutions running on the Microsoft Windows® operating system. Before long, Wellmont had more than 60 Windows NT–based servers.

“The market drove our move to Windows,” says Darren Ramsey, Senior Specialist for Networking, Wellmont Health System. “From no Windows servers, we quickly went to installing a Windows server a week to support our growing range of healthcare applications.”

Solution OverviewCustomer ProfileFounded in 1996, Wellmont Health System is the premier healthcare provider in northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia.

Business SituationWellmont’s infrastructure was based on Novell NetWare, with Microsoft® Windows NT® Server and UNIX. Password synchronization problems multiplied with the number of platforms. The help desk was flooded with calls from users who couldn’t access their network resources.

SolutionWellmont replaced its NetWare network with Microsoft Windows 2000 with Active Directory® service. Active Directory replaces NDS to provide a single, unified directory structure that offers authorized access to the entire enterprise and supports Wellmont’s implementation of HIPAA.

Benefits Both users and administrators

are more productive, freed from dealing with frequent crashes and access issues

Streamlined management reduces TCO

Group Policies enable desktop lockdown, boosting security, preventing loading of unauthorized software, and minimizing desktop crashes

Software and ServicesMicrosoft Windows 2000 ServerMicrosoft Windows 2000 Advanced

ServerMicrosoft SQL Server™ 2000Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server

HardwareDell PowerEdge serversDell Optiplex desktops

Microsoft Windows 2000 ServerCustomer Solution

With a mixture of operating systems and directories, Wellmont began to experience password synchronization problems. Its help desk was flooded with calls from users who couldn’t access all of their directories, applications, and other network resources such as printers. The organization tried to solve these problems using Novell’s NDS for Windows NT software. But user authentication remained spotty, administrators often couldn’t locate user groups, and the product had scalability issues that made it less than ideal for Wellmont’s more than 3,000 users and more than 1,000 Windows NT groups. Wellmont decided that NetWare was at the core of its continuing problem.

Solution“To solve our problems, we decided to pull out all of the Novell network and move completely to Microsoft Windows 2000 Server with Active Directory service,” says Ramsey. “We wrote the plan and did the migration ourselves. The migration went smoothly, and we’re delighted with the results.”

Wellmont migrated eight NetWare servers—running file, print, Btrieve, Radius, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), and NDS—to Windows 2000 and upgraded Windows NT domain controllers to Windows 2000. Now the organization runs 70 servers on a mixture of Windows NT Server 4.0, Windows 2000 Server with Active Directory, and Windows 2000 Advanced Server, which is used to support clustering and multiprocessor server hardware.

Active Directory replaces NDS to offer a single, unified directory structure and single logon and password that provide authorized access to both the Windows-based environment and Wellmont’s remaining legacy applications. Active Directory is also key to Wellmont’s efforts, now underway, to comply with the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Active Directory serves as a great mechanism for Single Sign-On—to in-house and third-party applications, network gear, and UNIX applications—to help Wellmont address HIPAA’s security requirements.

Wellmont now is piloting a desktop move to Windows XP and planning an upgrade to Microsoft Windows .NET Server and Exchange 2000 Server, which will enable it to gain more granular control over Active Directory, take advantage of its integration with Exchange 2000, and further boost reliability, scalability, and performance.

During planning for the migration to Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory, Wellmont put a premium on minimizing user downtime and the cost of migration. That led to a distinctive approach in which the Wellmont team—including Ramsey and systems specialists Mickey Locke and John Wininger—first uninstalled NDS for Windows NT in order to move the Windows NT security account manager back to the Windows NT primary domain controller. They verified that user accounts and groups existed in NDS and in the Windows NT domain. Then they moved all file and print resources from NDS to the Windows 2000 Server infrastructure. With these steps in place, they implemented the in-place migration from Windows NT Server to Windows 2000 Server.

With the Windows 2000 Server domain established in native mode, the team used a script based on Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) and LDAP that it had created in the Microsoft Visual Basic® development system to identify user data from the existing NDS directory database and populate Active Directory. The process also moved users to containers and organizational structures in Active Directory that corresponded to their previous status in the NDS infrastructure.

“To solve our problems, we

decided to pull out all of the

Novell network and move

completely to Microsoft

Windows 2000 Server with

Active Directory service….

The migration went

smoothly, and we’re

delighted with the results.”

Darren RamseySenior Specialist, NetworkingWellmont Health System

The team practiced the migration many times in a test lab before implementing it in the production environment. When the migration was complete, Wellmont had an Active Directory organizational unit structure that exactly mirrored its former NDS structure.

“We found that the tools that Microsoft provides in Windows for in-place migration, combined with the script we created in Visual Basic, enabled us to implement the migration to Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory without any major downtime or problems,” says Ramsey. “We tested the migration until we were confident it would work successfully. So when we did it for real, it was very easy. We did it ourselves and potentially saved up to a million dollars on outside vendors and third-party migration tools.”

BenefitsGreater Performance and Reliability Please Users, AdministratorsSpeed on the Wellmont’s desktops immediately jumped by 20 to 40 percent, and processor utilization on some networking gear dropped by up to 15 percent, as soon as the team took the NetWare clients off its PCs and replaced the NetWare Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) protocol with the Windows Internet Protocol (IP). The team also found that the migration eliminated 150 KB of unwanted IPX, Routing Information Protocol (RIP), and Service Advertising Protocol (SAP) traffic on the network—not a big deal on 10/100/1000-MB Ethernet and T1 bandwidth lines perhaps, but a significant factor on the 256K lines that Wellmont continues to use to some outlying facilities. On those lines, the unwanted NetWare administrative traffic had been consuming the majority of available bandwidth.

“Users were quick to tell us how much faster their PCs ran after the migration to Windows,” says Ramsey. “From the user perspective, the network probably operated twice as fast as before. And that’s on top of the greater speed that users saw when they initially logged in—we eliminated a four- to five-second delay. With Windows, users log in and they’re on the network instantly.”

Along with the greater performance resulting from the switch to Windows from NetWare, Wellmont is seeing greater reliability. System crashes that came once or twice a month under NetWare have been eliminated since the move to Windows, according to Ramsey. Trouble calls on file and print sharing—one of Wellmont’s key problems with NetWare—have plummeted by 95 percent. Issues related to NetWare logon have been eliminated. Availability is expected to get a further boost when Wellmont completes its migration to Exchange 2000 Server. Because the software supports clustering, Wellmont should be able to conduct scheduled maintenance and respond to critical incidents without creating any downtime for users.

Wellmont has implemented Active Directory with a domain controller and global catalog at each major site, so authentications and other services can be implemented locally, without having to go over the wide area network. Users benefit both in increased speed and greater reliability.

Streamlined Management Reduces TCOMuch of the reduced TCO that Wellmont enjoys with Windows 2000 Server comes from the streamlined information technology (IT) management that the Microsoft platform enables. For example, seven NetWare servers needed for file sharing have been reduced to just two under Windows 2000 Server. Wellmont saves 70 percent of the cost of maintaining those servers.

Platform consolidation is just one example of Wellmont’s streamlined IT management. With just one operating system to support, training costs have been slashed by 50 percent. And with a

“Users were quick to tell us

how much faster their PCs

ran after the migration to

Windows. From the user

perspective, the network

probably operated twice as

fast as before. And that’s on

top of the greater speed that

users saw when they initially

logged in—we eliminated a

four- to five-second delay.”

Darren RamseySenior Specialist, NetworkingWellmont Health System

single Active Directory structure replacing the patchwork of NetWare, Windows, and UNIX directories that the organization formerly required, it’s faster and easier—and thus less costly—for Ramsey and his colleagues to set up new accounts and maintain them. The result is a directory that is more useful to users throughout the enterprise.

Group Policies and remote installation services—used in conjunction with Active Directory and now being piloted on Windows XP–based desktops—enable IT administrators to lock down desktop configurations. That helps prevents users from inadvertently corrupting desktops and reduces the help-desk or technician time needed to respond to such incidents. These services also enable IT administrators to prevent users from downloading third-party software—and viruses—from the Internet, thereby helping boost security and helping to ensure that all software is used legally. The use of Microsoft IntelliMirror® management technologies will enable the IT staff to redirect users’ My Documents folders to a central file server, facilitating backup and minimizing the inadvertent loss of files that can happen when users back up to their hard disks.

Microsoft Windows 2000 Server is the multipurpose network operating system for businesses of all sizes. One of the latest versions of the best-selling server operating system, Windows 2000 Server lets you:

Share files and printers reliably and securely. Choose from thousands of business applications compatible to run today on Windows 2000

Server. Build Web applications and connect to the Internet.

This combination and flexibility deliver a strong business value proposition for today's IT customer.

For more information about Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/

For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/ For more information about Wellmont Health System services, visit the Web site at: http://www.wellmont.org/

© 2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Active Directory, IntelliMirror, Windows, Windows NT, the Windows logo, and Visual Basic are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.