The final update release was version 6.5SP8 of May 2009 NetWare is no longer on Novell's product list. The successor to NetWare, Open Enterprise Server (OES), released in March 2005, offers all the services previously hosted by NetWare 6.5, but on a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server the NetWare kernel remained an option until OES 11 in late 2011.

The directory service, 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.īy 2000, however, Microsoft was taking more of Novell's customer base and Novell increasingly looked to a future based on a Linux kernel. In 1993, the main NetWare product line took a dramatic turn when version 4 introduced NetWare Directory Services (NDS, later renamed eDirectory), a global directory service based on ISO X.500 concepts (six years later, Microsoft released Active Directory). These are NetWare Lite 1.0 (NWL), and later Personal NetWare 1.0 (PNW) in 1993. In 1991, Novell introduced cheaper peer-to-peer networking products for DOS and Windows, unrelated to their server-centric NetWare. From the beginning NetWare implemented a number of features inspired by mainframe and minicomputer systems that were not available in its competitors' products. 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 able to utilize a wide range of network cards.

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. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol. NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. Computer network operating system developed by Novell, IncĦ.5 SP8 (last) / 6 May 2009 12 years ago ( )Ĭommand-line interface, Text user interface

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