NetWare 6

Code named 6 Pack, NetWare 6 is the next big version of Novell’s OS after NetWare 5.1. The expected release for the OS is sometime this year, and it targets large organizations with 1,000 or more users. The highlights are 32x32 node clustering capability, Novell Storage Services (NSS 3), and a multiprocessing-enabled (MP) kernel, which can distribute multiple threads from applications to different processors for simultaneous execution. It also features a new type of printing service, and multi-platform client support, including the Web browser. Let’s look at some of these features.

Multiprocessing support

Simply put, the ability of an OS to recognize and utilize more than one processor in a server is known as multiprocessing. NetWare 6 can recognize up to 32 processors in the same machine. Support for multiple processors was introduced in the NetWare 5 kernel itself, and continued in NetWare 5.1 with some enhancements. NetWare 6 enhances further upon the MP-enabled NetWare 5.1 kernel by adding MP support to several core components and key services. The more prominent ones include the C-Library (CLIB), RSA encryption, routing functions, IP-Stack, NetWare Core Protocol Engine, Web engines, and finally the NDS eDirectory (see box for a complete list).

Clustering capabilities

In addition to the SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) support that allows an OS to distribute application threads to multiple processors in a machine, an enhanced version of NetWare Clustering Services 1.6 has also been included in NetWare 6. This allows the creation of a minimum of two and a maximum of 32 node clusters with NetWare 6. This ensures that critical server-based resources like connection licenses, volumes, services, and applications remain continuously available even if any of the servers go down. Another benefit of this for network administrators is that they can down any of the servers at any time for maintenance. Of course, whether this sort of fault tolerance will work even for a two-node cluster will have to be seen. The NetWare Clustering Services nodes transmits heartbeat packets every second to ensure that cluster nodes are working smoothly, and to detect potential problems. 

Novell Storage Services

NetWare 6 will also feature Novell Storage Services (NSS) 3 as the default storage and access system. NSS can support billions of volumes and directories, with each volume being up to eight terabytes in size and capable of holding billions of files. This size is made possible because of its 64-bit interface. The arrangement is such that logical volumes resting on top of hard drives act as a pool of storage space, and applications use as much space as necessary from the pool. The benefit of this service is that it eliminates wastage of hard drive space. Another benefit is that you don’t have to bring the server down to add more storage space. In fact, according to Novell, an NSS volume can be mounted in less than 60 seconds.

NSS was introduced with NetWare 5. The new version that will ship with NetWare 6 provides more features. It will support SYS volumes as opposed to just DATA volumes in the older version. It will also support file compression, whereby infrequently used files will be compressed and kept aside to help save storage space. User and directory quotas are another feature in the new version. Here, you can limit how much space a user can consume in a directory, and also limit the space that a directory itself can consume in an NSS volume. Finally, another feature known as Transaction Tracking System is also supported, which allows applications to protect their transaction data. 

Coming to NSS accessibility, all major file system protocols are supported. These include:

•  NCP (NetWare Core Protocol): The protocol used by earlier versions of NetWare 
• CIFS (Common Internet File System): Used by Windows clients
• NFS (Network File System): Used by Unix machines
• AFP (AppleTalk Filing Protocol): Used by Mac systems
• HTTP/WebDAV: This is used through a Web browser.

The last protocol in the above list brings us to another interesting feature of NetWare 6–its ability to provide file-system access over the Internet. So a user doesn’t need a desktop with a client installed to be able to access files stored on a NetWare server. All that’s needed is a Web browser. 

Finally, NSS is MP-enabled, allowing it to scale up as you increase the underlying hardware. It will also provide native support for software mirroring, thereby improving upon its fault tolerance.

Internet Print Services

Novell Internet Print Services is another new feature in NetWare 6. Normally, in the NetWare world, you needed the NetWare 32-bit client to make use of its print services. However, all you need now is a Web browser. This makes it more convenient for users to find a printer. Network administrators can place printers according to their location in an office and users can easily find these using a Web browser. After that, all you have to do for sending a print job is to right-click on the printer and download the IP-Printing client. This client will also download and install the printer’s drivers on your machine. The IPP client also provides another benefit. In normal Internet printing, once you give a print job, it can’t be tracked thereafter. This is because of the nature of the Internet. However, the IPP client lets you track your print jobs as well.

Security for IP-Printing is provided through NDS, so a user can’t send a print job to a printer without the requisite rights. For a pure IPP setup, you’ll need an IPP-enabled printer as well. Since this may take some time to become popular, you can also use it through the Novell Distributed Print Services (NDPS). This will take all Internet printing requests and translate them according to the appropriate printer. 

iFolder

Besides being able to print over the Internet, you’ll also be able to access all your critical data, whether it’s lying on your office desktop, your laptop, or your home PC using a Web-based client called the iFolder. You’ll download it from a Web browser, and form what’s called an iFolder on the computer. Whatever files are stored in this iFolder will get replicated on the server. The benefit of this is that you can access all your files from anywhere across the world. The other major benefit is that you don’t have to download a complete file every time you make a change in it.

iFolder will just update the file with the changes you made. So suppose you have a 10 MB presentation, and you made a few changes to it worth a few kB. iFolder will not send this entire updated 10 MB presentation across the Internet to synchronize. Instead, it will just send that incremental change you made. This helps to provide anytime anywhere access to your files. It also provides administrators the ease of backing up critical data sitting on users’ laptops and desktops. As far as security is concerned, iFolder contents are stored and transmitted in the Blowfish encryption scheme. iFolder is also available for NetWare 5.1. 

To sum up, the key benefits that NetWare 6 will have to offer are higher scalability and reliability due to its 32x32 node clustering. SMP support will allow you to put up to 32 processors in one server box, and Cluster Services will allow up to 32 such boxes running NetWare 6. It will offer anytime, anywhere access to your files and printers, since it will no longer require Client32. All you’ll need is a Web browser.

Anil Chopra