Novell NetWare

Once the network of choice for all but a few networks, NetWare's popularity has declined somewhat. However, NetWare is still widely used in many large organizations. The latest version of NetWare, version 6, has garnered a number of awards and continues to prove that can produce a world-leading

NDS (Novell Directory Services)

One of the features that really put NetWare on the networking map was Novell Directory Services (NDS), now called Novell e-Directory. Like 's , NDS (which has been around since 1994) is a directory services system that allows network objects to be stored in a database. This database can then be divided and distributed among differrent servers on the network. These processes are known as partitioning (the dividing up) and replication (the distribution among servers on the network). Although introduced as NDS with NetWare 4.x, Novell has now renamed the product e-Directory and has made it platform independent.

Like the other network operating systems, NetWare is a full-featured operating system that offers all the functions required by an organization, including file and print services, DNS and DHCP servers, and FTP and Web servers. NetWare also supports a wide range of third-party hardware and software.

NetWare file and print services

As mentioned earlier in this tutorial, NetWare has long been regarded as the king of file and print services, and indeed, for many years, it was the operating system of choice for this purpose. Although that might no longer be the case, many people in the IT industry still see NetWare as primarily a file and print server platform.

Of all the network operating systems discussed in this chapter, NetWare has by far the most comprehensive (and complex) file system security structure. In addition to allowing an administrator to assign a comprehensive set of rights to users and groups, NetWare provides file permission inheritance systems, as well as the ability to block the inherited rights if needed. All this adds up to a sophisticated file system security method that can take some getting used to.

In addition to file permission rights, files can also be assigned a range of attributes. These attributes work the same as file attributes in DOS and Windows, except that the Windows file permissions are limited to attributes such as read-only and hidden, whereas the NetWare file attributes include such possibilities as rename inhibit and copy inhibit.

Printing with NetWare can be implemented in a variety of ways. Traditionally, printers were defined on the server, and print queues were associated with those printers. In NetWare 6, a feature called Novell Distributed Print Services allows a more dynamic printing environment to be created, with increased functionality. NetWare 6 also includes a new feature called iPrint, which allows users to see graphical maps of the network and point and click to access network devices.

To access a printer on NetWare, clients capture the output that would normally be directed to a local printer port and send it to the network printer. In early versions of NetWare, this was a process performed by using a command- line utility, called capture. Nowadays, the process has been hidden behind the graphical interface of the client software and is largely unnoticed.

Although application support will always be a topic of much debate, the reality is that third-party application support for NetWare is not nearly at the same level as it is for the platforms. In terms of third-party application support, NetWare would even have a hard time competing against . However, many applications are available for NetWare, and you are likely to have a choice of applications for any given purpose.

Even though third-party support might be lacking, the applications included with the NetWare package leave little to be desired. Included in NetWare are a DHCP server, a DNS server, a application (and two of them in NetWare 6), and a range of other services. Pretty much any application that is needed in a modern networking environment is available in the network operating system.