Oh look, GW7 released

By SysAdmin1138 on
I see that Groupwise 7 has released. I wonder if the migration to GW65 from GW5.5 is complete at OldJob? Probably not, all things considered.

After digging through the GW7 documentation, I've noticed a few things (not the full list of fixes/improvements, just ones I find interesting):
  • Still no functionality that looks like Exchange quotas. Just Expire/Reduce, same as we had in GW5 and earlier.
  • Still the same WPCSIN/WPCSOUT message flow
  • Still the same database back end
  • Much better integration with Outlook than before
  • Exchange to Groupwise migration tool actually exists, nifty
  • End-users can edit distribution lists, nifty
  • All-day events in the calendar are supported
  • Can set your default read/write views, long overdue
  • GWIA now can talk to the MTA by TCP/IP, instead of file-level access. Double nifty.
  • Configurable deferred message processing
  • All agents now support explicit binds to IP addresses, rather than the generic 0.0.0.0 bind. Very nifty if a backup network is in use.

I wonder if the Groupwise client still renders HTML content in the Internet zone? That sucked. Outlook has had the option of rendering HTML content (if told to render it at all) in the Restricted Zone for several years now. I know I submitted an enhancement request or three over the years at OldJob for just that ability. I hope it made it into this version.

However, hopes of a migration of WWU to GW are the stuff of pipe-smoke:
  • No user-quota implimentation. I don't care if it 'doesn't need it'. The Quota meme is so ingraned into TPTB that if it doesn't have quota management, with built in consequences for bashing your head into it, it doesn't have the ability to manage storage growth. No amount of automated stats runs on the GW databases and nag-mails to get religion about archiving will help. 3rd party solutions that fix this just prove that GroupWise is not mature enough. Or so goes TPTB. Clearly, this is a deal breaker.
  • It doesn't use a recognized high capacity database for mail storage. T'ain't relational at the guts, cain't support lots of users. Period. Another psychological barrier.
  • No concept of 'public folders'. Public Folders are an abomination, but sadly we have them and have to support them.
  • Our current mail administrator had a bad experience with GroupWise at a previous job. Which, really, is the real kiss-of-death. Except for this one thing, he's a strong Novell supporter.
  • GroupWise seems to run best on NetWare. Sadly, it does seem that NetWare is getting less development attention. The AV support for GroupWise does not come from any of the Big Three. So the AV will have to come from an in-line appliance of some form.
There are a couple of features of GroupWise that I wistfully miss:
  • GroupWise clusters can go Active/Active. Every major Exchange downtime we've had in the last year can be attributed to failures of Exchange's cluster model and how we had to put it together. Resources permitting, GroupWise has the ability to have two services cohabitate quite happily.
  • Resources. A simple concept, but sadly missed in Exchange. Public Folders are close, but not it. What do you do for the group that wants to send mail from "admissions@wwu.edu"? A Resource would formalize that function in a way we can't do in Exchange.