NetWare

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Stands for: Novell NetWare, the network operating system of the LAN era, 1983 to 6.5 SP8 in 2009

Novell's network operating system, the file and print server of the LAN era: file sharing instead of disk sharing in 1983, hardware-independent NetWare 286 in 1986, NLMs with NetWare 386 in 1989, a directory service in 1993, TCP/IP as the core protocol in 1998, and a last service pack in May 2009.

NetWare is the discontinued network operating system Novell developed from 1983 to the final update, 6.5 SP8 of 6 May 2009, after which Open Enterprise Server carried its services on a SUSE Linux kernel. It evolved from one idea, file sharing instead of disk sharing: by controlling access at the level of files rather than whole disks it could lock files and enforce access control, when every competitor of 1983 shared raw disks, and IBM's 1984 endorsement of the approach helped it spread. It ran cooperative multitasking on a dedicated PC, spoke its own IPX protocol with NCP, the NetWare Core Protocol, on top, mapped DOS drive letters to server volumes through a resident client, and became hardware-independent with NetWare 286 in 1986, when any 80286 machine with a supported disk and network card could be a server. NetWare 386 (3.x, 1989) brought 32-bit protected mode and the NetWare Loadable Module; NetWare 4 (1993) brought NetWare Directory Services, an X.500-style global directory six years before Active Directory; NetWare 5 (October 1998) switched the core protocol to TCP/IP, a decision bitterly contested inside Novell, and 6.5 (2003) shipped with PHP, MySQL, OpenSSH and bash. Novell said its 90 million users would be supported until at least 2015.

The idea. NetWare originated from consulting work by SuperSet Software, a group founded by Drew Major, Dale Neibaur, Kyle Powell and later Mark Hurst out of their classwork at Brigham Young University from October 1981. Ray Noorda engaged them in 1981 to build a CP/M disk-sharing system for the Motorola 68000 hardware Novell then sold; in 1983, privately convinced that CP/M was doomed, the team built a file-sharing system for the newly introduced IBM PC instead, and wrote Snipes, a text-mode game, to test and demonstrate it, the first network application written for a commercial personal computer. The product, first called ShareNet or S-Net, was NetWare: file sharing instead of disk sharing, so that access could be controlled and files locked at the level of the individual file, when all competing products of 1983 shared raw disks. IBM's validation of the approach in 1984 helped it along.

How it worked. A NetWare server shares disk space as volumes; DOS clients run a terminate-and-stay-resident program that maps a drive letter to a volume after logging in, and print to the server's printers as if they were local. The protocol is NCP, the NetWare Core Protocol, a request-reply design that trusted the network: a request carries a sequence number and the reply is its acknowledgement, which cut transactions by two thirds against the protocols of the day; NCP ran natively over IPX/SPX. The server was a special-purpose, non-preemptive operating system that cached the whole file allocation table and directory in RAM and used every spare byte as file cache, which is where its benchmark advantage of five to ten times over Microsoft's and Banyan's products came from, and why an uninterruptible power supply was effectively compulsory.

The generations. NetWare 68 ran on Novell's own 68000 server; NetWare 86 and Advanced NetWare 86 (1985) moved it to Intel PCs; Advanced NetWare 286 of 1986 used the 80286's 16-bit protected mode to address 16 MiB, supported 256 MB volumes, mirrored disks (SFT), tracked transactions (TTS) and, decisively, was hardware-independent, with eighteen makers' network cards supported at launch and licences keyed to a card or, later, to serialised diskettes. NetWare 386 arrived in 1989, was renamed 3.0 in 1990 and reached 3.11 in 1991: 32-bit protected mode, 1 TB volumes, and the NetWare Loadable Module, which let disk drivers, network drivers, antivirus, backup, databases and web servers load into the server at ring 0 with no memory protection and the ABEND that followed a badly behaved one. NetWare 4 in 1993 replaced the per-server bindery with NetWare Directory Services, a global directory based on ISO X.500 concepts, renamed Novell Directory Services and in February 2004 eDirectory; Microsoft released Active Directory six years later. GroupWise, ZENworks and BorderManager were built on it. 4.11 of 1996 brought the first full 32-bit Windows client and the NetWare Administrator, and was bundled with a web server, TCP/IP and Netscape as IntranetWare.

TCP/IP and the end. Novell had used IPX/SPX from the start and was poorly placed for the Internet of 1995; limited TCP/IP support existed in 3.x and 4.x, and the IPX/IP gateway and NWIP eased the transition. With NetWare 5 in October 1998 the primary NCP interface switched from IPX/SPX to TCP/IP, a decision bitterly contested inside the company; chief executive Eric Schmidt's line was that the market had spoken and TCP/IP had won. NetWare 5 added a graphical console, Novell Storage Services, a Java virtual machine, directory-enabled DNS, DHCP and PKI, SAN support and Novell Cluster Services; 5.1 of January 2000 WebSphere and web management; 6.0 of October 2001 per-user licensing and 32-node clusters; 6.5 of August 2003 PHP, MySQL, OpenSSH, bash, iSCSI and a user portal. The last service pack, 6.5 SP8, came in May 2009. Open Enterprise Server, announced 2003 and first released in March 2005, offers the NetWare services on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, with the NetWare kernel an option until OES 11 in late 2011; general support for 6.5 SP8 ended in 2010, extended support at the end of 2015 and self support at the end of 2017.

The market, and why it ended. IDC reported a 53 per cent share of network operating systems for NetWare in 1988 against 17.1 for MS-Net and 8.5 for AppleTalk, and before Windows NT Server arrived Novell claimed 90 per cent of PC-based servers. Three things ended it, in the encyclopaedia's account: a text console at a time when Windows had won the administrator; the choice of IPX over TCP/IP as the Internet arrived; and Microsoft's bundling of file and print into the operating system every desktop already ran. The profession the product created, the CNEs and CNAs, has its own entry; the Novell record on the industry timeline carries the company from the Superset team to OpenText.

Also known as: novell netware, netware 3.12, netware 4.11, netware 5, nlm, nds, intranetware

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