NetWare 6--sleeping NOS giant awakes
We tested the final beta version (Beta 3) of NetWare 6 on a Dell PowerEdge 1300 with dual 450MHz Pentium II CPUs and 384MB of RAM. Installation took slightly over an hour and went fairly smoothly, with only a few small glitches along the way, as one might expect with beta software. We started with a "clean" (unpartitioned) system and included all optional products in our installation. Administrators familiar with previous versions of NetWare should have no difficulty with the installation.
NetWare correctly detected our hardware, and we had a fully functioning system upon completion. Some of the optional products, such as iFolder and Native File Access Protocols, required additional configuration before we could access them. The preliminary documentation for setting up these features was sketchy and required some detective work on our part but, ultimately, we were able to set up the features successfully.
Multi-platform directory service
One of NetWare 6's most exciting features is eDirectory. Previous releases of NetWare supported Novell Directory Services (NDS), but eDirectory takes NDS a step further as a true multi-platform directory service. eDirectory is essentially NDS renamed with additional features, enhancements, and schema extensions. Installing eDirectory will automatically migrate information from NDS to eDirectory.
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Following files
With previous versions of NetWare, to access files from a remote location you had to buy additional software. For example, a company could set up a VPN gateway to its local area network (LAN) to provide secure file access, but many companies have found VPNs difficult to set up and maintain.
NetWare 6's iFolder includes a client application that installs on a Windows PC, but people can access their iFolder with a browser too, assuming the Web Access is configured correctly (more about Web Access later). The client works with the application to synchronize a local hard disk directory (usually C:My DocumentsiFolder) with a directory on the file server. Files can be synchronized automatically or manually.
The agent automatically uploads files in the local directory that aren't on the server. Likewise, the agent downloads files in the server directory but not on the local hard drive. Users accessing files over the Internet can encrypt their files before transmitting them, and can save files locally without backing them up manually on the file server. The program has no special interface, so you can use Windows Explorer to move files into the synchronization directory.
Printing via the Internet
Novell's iPrint is an implementation of the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), an industry standard for printing documents to remote printers over the Internet and via other remote connections such as VPNs, frame relay WANs, and so on. Even users on the LAN can use this feature. A company can use IPP on all or some of its printers in both its LAN and WAN environments to provide consistency between environments. For example, employees printing to an IPP printer on the LAN from their desktop could theoretically also use that same printer over the Internet when on the road with a laptop.
On the NetWare server, you configure a printer into the eDirectory as an IPP printer. Your specific network configuration will determine whether you have to make additional network changes, such as opening ports on an Internet firewall. After you start the IPP server on the NetWare server, users can connect to the IPP Web service via their Web browser and download the drivers necessary to connect to the IPP-enabled printer(s). As long as Netware can access it, any printer can be an IPP printer because Netware routes print traffic through a print queue. No special capability is required. The IPP printer appears like any other Windows printer, and can be accessed from any Windows software as if it were a local printer.NetWare Web Access makes available features such as iFolder and iPrint that the network administrator predefines and configures. These "gadgets," as Web Access calls them, appear in the end user's browser. The user has to log in to use them.
These gadgets give users access to features in Exchange, Groupwise, and Notes, as well as to POP mailboxes via Web mail and an address book of users in eDirectory. Only those gadgets that the administrator has configured will appear.
Easy remote management
Previous releases of NetWare relied on management tools--NetWare Administrator and Console One--that were installed or executed from a client workstation. Now a browser-based management tool, NetWare Remote Manager, handles these functions. True to NetWare's Web focus, system admins can now perform routine system monitoring and administrative tasks from a Web browser.
NetWare Remote Manager is an excellent tool filled with surprising features, such as the Health Monitor. This simple screen gives a graphical overview of server performance, including information on current and peak usage. It also measures static system information, such as memory utilization, and displays an alarm. When it detects that a system parameter is out of spec or resources are low. The remote manager duplicates a lot of the information processing done by the Monitor.NLM (NetWare Loadable Module). The benefit here, though, is that you don't have to be at the NetWare console or connected through the remote console to view activity. You can access it using any Web browser on the network.
File access
With Native File Access Protocols (NFAP), which was introduced earlier as an add-on product for NetWare 5, you don't need to load Novell's somewhat bloated client software to access files directly from your native operating system.
Users running Windows can access their files directly with Microsoft's built-in networking, Common Internet File System (CIFS). The component loads an NLM, CIFS.NLM, on the NetWare server, which allows the NetWare server to communicate with the CIFS (SMB) file sharing protocol. Windows users only have to work with one set of tools--Microsoft's--to attach network drives and manage their files.
If you work in a Windows-environment, you'll see tremendous benefits in NFAP. You can eliminate the additional network overhead of running IPX and TCP/IP, which can be costly when adding IPX features to equipment like WAN routers.
Users on Unix and Linux platforms will likewise benefit from NFAP. NetWare's network file system (NFS) add-on product used to limit integration with these platforms. NFAP has tightened integration with these platforms; NetWare has integrated native NFS and network information services into eDirectory. However, NetWare administrators will need to become more Unix-savvy if they intend to integrate their NetWare systems into a UNIX environment.
A major step forward
NetWare 6 offers full support for up to 32 CPUs in symmetrical multiprocessor hardware, as well as Novell Storage Services 3.0, which lets you dynamically create storage pools of up to 8TB, with as many as 1 million files open simultaneously.
Novell Cluster Services works with a network attached storage (NAS) device to provide automatic fail-over of services to another node in case of failure. Though not required, the NAS component is recommended for access to highly critical data. NetWare 6 includes support for a two-cluster site, and can be extended to as many as 32 nodes with additional licenses.
Enhanced features and greater functionality make NetWare 6 a major step forward from NetWare 4.1 and NetWare 5.1.
Though enhancements such as iFolder and iPrint can extend functionality outside the LAN, they don't sacrifice NetWare file and print sharing network reliability. Novell even extends that print and file services capability with two-node clustering support, which increases both the availability of critical data and the reliability of the network file server. Coupled with the Native File Access Protocol capability, NetWare 6 becomes the de-facto, industry-leading network operating system for any corporate environment.
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Michael P. Deignan is a freelance journalist and frequent contributor to ZDNet Tech Update.