Certified Novell Engineer
| Developer | Novell, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Working state | Discontinued |
| Source model | Closed source |
| Initial release | 1983 |
| Latest release | 6.5 SP8 (last) / May 6, 2009 |
| Available in | English |
| Kernel type | Hybrid kernel |
| Default user interface | Command-line interface, Text user interface |
| License | Proprietary |
| Official website | www.novell.com |
NetWare is a computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol.
The original NetWare product in 1983, supported clients running both CP/M and MS-DOS, ran over a proprietary star network topology and was based on a Novell-built file server using the Motorola 68000 processor, but the company soon moved away from building its own hardware, and NetWare became hardware-independent, running on any suitable Intel-based IBM PC compatible system, and a wide range of network cards. From the beginning NetWare implemented a number of features inspired by mainframe and minicomputer systems that were not available in its competitors.
In the early 1990s, Novell introduced separate cheaper networking products, unrelated to classic NetWare. These were NetWare Lite 1.0 (NWL), and later Personal NetWare 1.0 (PNW) in 1993.
In 1993, the main product line took a dramatic turn when Version 4 introduced NetWare Directory Services (NDS), a global directory service similar to the Active Directory that Microsoft would release seven years later. This, along with a new e-mail system, GroupWise, application configuration suite, ZENworks, and security product BorderManager were all targeted at the needs of large enterprises.
By 2000, however, Microsoft was taking more of Novell's customer base and Novell increasingly looked to a future based on a Linux kernel. The successor to NetWare, Open Enterprise Server (OES), released in March 2005, offered all the services previously hosted by NetWare v6.5, but on a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server; the NetWare kernel remained an option until OES 11 in late 2011.
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