Novell Gives Sneak Peek Of NetWare 6.5

NetWare 6.5, code-named Nakoma and currently in closed beta testing, offers a new Virtual Office interface that consolidates the existing iFolder and iPrint Web services with new portal and team workspace capabilities, executives said during a preview of the forthcoming upgrade this week. It is due to move into open beta testing this spring and ship in mid-2003, executives said during an interview with CRN Monday.

Some of the new features allow solution providers to offer their clients a more robust product than past generations, Novell executives said.

For example, Virtual Office, which is far more extensible than the existing NetWare Web Access capabilities, will allow solution providers to build a fully customized, browser-based desktop that enables users to print, access and manage all documents and to collaborate from a browser, said Rob Seely, NetWare product line manager.

The new "virtual teams" feature, which is similar to Microsoft's SharePoint Team Services, enables users to collaborate on the same files from a browser. In addition, the advanced portal capabilities let users create a Web-based desktop that exposes print, file, team services, calendar, news, chat and discussions, and project management from a single interface.

The eGuide 2.1 capabilities allow developers to expose all directory information to the browser.

"The browser becomes the workplace of the future," said Seely. "From a channel standpoint, there's tremendous value they can add in a single upgrade."

But the Virtual Office is just one major aspect of the upgrade, which was first discussed at Novell's annual Brainshare conference last March.

NetWare 6.5 also offers support for Web services, new business-continuity features, support for Microsoft's PocketPC, synchronization for all folders via the iFolder feature as well as increased scalability of the iFolder feature, now enabling support for as many as 100,000 users from a single server. Previously, iFolder served up to 10,000 users per server, executives said.

The company also integrated Silverstream ExteNd application server, which will give customers an enterprise J2EE-based application server for deploying Web services out of the box, Seely said.

The upgrade also features support for important Web services standards, including SOAP and UDDI.

Novell, which made moves toward open source by integrating the Apache Web server in its last NetWare upgrade, has enhanced that support by adding mySQL database, Tomcat open-source servelet engine as well as the upgraded Apache, PHP and Perl open-source tools and Java Virtual Machine 1.4.1 code.

Novell also worked to improve the business-continuity features as well as server consolidation. The NetWare Server Consolidation Utility, for example, allows users to consolidate all data in a centralized environment and gives them the ability to drag and drop files, directories and data onto a new SAN. Uses can create a clustered SAN environment and cache all data from branch offices to a centralized location via an open-source synchronization tool Novell integrated into the product.

NetWare 6.5 also will offer a snapshot backup utility that essentially takes a snapshot of corporate data and backs up those volumes of data to centralized storage. This will enable users to access copies of their files, executives added.

Built-in support for iSCSI, an Internet standard that enables the creation of full-featured SANs on commodity hardware, will appeal to solution providers, Seely said. For example, resellers and partners can create a low-cost SAN for small- and midsize-business customers by using legacy Intel hardware and create a clustered SAN with as many as 32 nodes. It eliminates the neeed for a WAN, he added.

The cluster will extend multisite failover and mirroring capabilities to a new class of cost-conscious customers, he said. It can be offered at a fraction of the cost of Fibre Channel. No additional management training is required. "This a complete disaster-recovery system and offers resellers the opportunity to offer a full solution," Seely said. "

The upgrade's new iManage capabilities include intrusion-detection features, enhanced server diagnostics, improved reporting and auditing of printer use. It also allows IT administrators to remotely upgrade servers. Moreover, the integration of Novell's dirXML connectors enable built-in synchronization of Novell's eDirectory with Microsoft's Active Directory and NT directory, executives said.

This will allow for single sign-on capabilities for all users, even if a corporation has two separate directories. The enhanced management features also include a dashboardlike, browser-based console and the ability to drag and drop servers and network resources using color-coded mapping capabilities.

The NetWare 6.5 servers can be a single additive to an existing network of older NetWare servers and can extend its Virtual Office services to any browser-based user.

Partners can also deploy NetWare 6.5 as a single-purpose server. For example, executives envision customers and partners deploying Nakoma as a network operating system upgrade or as a dedicated, single-purpose server including J2EE Web services server, LDAP Identity Management server, Apache server, iFolder server, a SAN server or an iPrint server.

Pricing has not yet been announced, but it will fall "in the same neighborhood" as the existing NetWare 6.0 server, executives said

Novell's channel lauds significant strides made by the company over the past year to regain support of partners, including handing over some of its direct accounts to Platinum partners, launching a demand agent program and reducing conflict with Novell's consulting arms and sales force.

While Microsoft continues to gain ground with Windows 2000 and Linux advances as the No. 2 operating system, Novell, once thought bound for extinction, continues to enjoy strong support from its most loyal installed base, observers said. In 2001, NetWare represented 11 percent of all new server OS units shipped, according to research firm IDC.

While the client operating system market is dominated by one vendor, there's plenty of room for competition on the server operating system side, one analyst said.

"It's ridiculous to think that one operating system would be considered the best platform for all applications, all functions, on all hardware platforms, by everyone, everywhere," said Dan Kusnetzky, vice president of system software at IDC. "Windows, Linux, Unix, z/OS and NetWare will each be part of large organizations' IT infrastructure for the foreseeable future."