NetWare 6 from Novell has been released as a beta and promises to free users from the confines of the LAN, allowing them to access data from anywhere using a standard browser.
NetWare 6 is more than just file and print services, says Paulo Ferreira, technical business strategist at Novell.
Ferreira says the most significant change in the forthcoming release of NetWare 6 is that the software has been built around the Internet, giving users access to their information from wherever they are.
While previous versions of NetWare had users tied to the LAN, says Ferreira, NetWare 6 sees users tied only to the Internet. NetWare 6 has been released as a downloadable beta version and the full release is expected to be available sometime in September.
Ferreira says the new Net economy means that corporations demand high availability as well as performance from their software solutions and he is confident that NetWare 6 will meet these needs. He notes that a significant portion of NetWare 6 has been re-worked to take advantage of multi-processor hardware, including TCP/IP, and a full range of Ethernet products, including support for gigabit Ethernet.
For high availability, NetWare 6 is built around Novell Cluster Services 1.6. Ferreira says the basic NetWare package will include a two-node cluster licence, which can be upgraded to support up to 32 nodes by purchasing the full-blown cluster product. With clustering installed, applications are easily migrated between machines allowing for maintenance to be performed or in the case of server errors.
As part of the move to an Internet-centric product, the administration of NetWare 6 has been completely Internet-enabled, allowing users to access their data using a standard browser interface. With support for the Internet Printing Protocol, users are also able to print to any attached corporate printer using the browser interface, no matter where they are.
System Administrators will likewise be able to manage and maintain the NetWare system through the browser interface. Full administration services are available through the browser interface, including access to the console and reboot procedures, as well as full usage monitoring.
For users of the system, however, the change most likely to attract their attention is the introduction of iFolder, a simple method for users to synchronise and access their data across different computers.
"Think of iFolder as a plug-in for your browser," says Ferreira. The contents of the iFolder are accessible from any Internet device allowing users to see their data from the road, home or in the office. Access to the data is password protected as well as encrypted using a user-specific 'passphrase`.
While previous versions of NetWare were built around a client architecture, the latest version does away with the need for client software, and natively supports access to NetWare storage from Linux, Unix, Windows and Macintosh systems.
"There is no need to install 20MB of code onto the user`s machine before they can access the shared storage network," says Ferreira.
The beta versions of Novell`s NetWare 6 have just been released and the company expects to release the final version sometime in September.
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