InformationWeek

November 9, 1998

http://www.informationweek.com/708/08olntw.htm

NetWare 5: Substance Matters

Unjustly overshadowed by Microsoft's upcoming Windows 2000, Novell's NetWare 5 proves itself to be a strong network operating system

By Logan Harbaugh

First Look

hile the eyes of the IT world have been focused on the ongoing soap opera of Microsoft litigation and on the promises of Windows 2000, Novell has been quietly getting its next network operating system out to customers. NetWare 5, the latest iteration of a long line of network operating systems from Novell, is a worthy entry.

NetWare is still an enterprise-class network operating system, despite the lack of attention paid to it. Its feature set, including the third major upgrade to Novell Directory Services, may make it the only truly enterprise-class network operating system available for the Intel platform today. And other features--such as the bundled Oracle8 database server, Netscape FastTrack Web server, and Java virtual machine--finally make NetWare an enterprise-class application server as well.

I tested NetWare 5 in InformationWeek Labs both as an upgrade to prior versions of NetWare and as a new installation. I installed the final-release version of NetWare 5 on two systems, first performing a new install on a clean system--a Racer PC PII/333--to get a feel for the basics of the installation process. The installation was clean, with no hang-ups; the operating system detected the installed SCSI and network adapters without error.

The only sticking point I hit was a compatibility issue between directory service software modules. The existing NetWare 4.11 server was running DS.NLM version 5.73, and in order for the NetWare 5 server to join the existing NDS tree, I had to upgrade the DS.NLM to version 5.99. This can be done without shutting down the server. Once that was accomplished, I was able to add the new NetWare 5 server to the existing NDS tree. Users with NetWare 4.10 servers will also have to upgrade to 4.11 before they can upgrade to NetWare 5.

There are a couple of new features in the install process that will make life easier for administrators. The installation CD is bootable, using the ISO 9660 (El Torito) specification, and Dr DOS 7 is included. This means administrators won't have to hunt around for the old DOS boot disk to boot the system and create the bootable DOS partition. If the server doesn't support the El Torito bootable CD-ROM specification, the license diskette is also bootable, and it contains the files necessary to create the DOS partition.

Neat Configuration
The installation process itself is also neater--once the initial configuration decisions are made, the rest of the installation doesn't require any intervention--so the administrator can walk away from the server and the installation will finish copying files and configuring the server automatically.

Once the installation on the new system was completed, I installed NetWare 5 as an upgrade to a NetWare 4.11 server, a Hewlett-Packard NetServer LH Pro Pentium Pro 200. I had more than the required 35 Mbytes of space available on the DOS boot partition, and lots of free space in the SYS: volume, so the upgrade was straightforward.

I loaded the DOS CD-ROM driver and ran setup from the CD. Once I told the setup program it was an upgrade, it detected the existing SCSI cards and network cards, loaded the appropriate drivers, and started the graphical user interface installation program. (One caveat for administrators: Few existing NetWare servers have a mouse on them. It's possible to get around the GUI without one, but it's a pain, so get a mouse before installing NetWare 5.)

The upgrade went smoothly, and the updated server worked fine, but Macintoshes on the network were no longer able to access the server. NetWare for Macintosh was still installed as a service, and AppleTalk was bound to the network board, but the AppleTalk File Protocol service was no longer loaded, and was not available.

It turns out Novell is no longer supporting Macintosh clients; the AppleTalk protocol is still supported, as is printing to AppleTalk printers, and Macintosh file names are still supported, but Mac clients will require additional software to access NetWare 5 servers.

Novell has signed an agreement with Prosoft Engineering Inc. in Pleasanton, Calif., to take over the Macintosh Connectivity Solutions for NetWare. In conjunction with this transition, Novell has removed Macintosh support from NetWare 5. This means existing networks will either have to purchase connectivity products from Prosoft or transition their Macs to MacIPX or TCP/IP stacks.

Once the server is rebooted, the most noticeable change is the GUI. It offers ConsoleOne, the new administrative utility, an installation utility, and tools for changing the screen. In many ways, the GUI is reminiscent of Windows 3.0: It is immature, slow, and often cumbersome, but also much easier and more accessible than the previous command-line interface. It's not as slow as it was in beta versions, but administrators who work with systems slower than a Pentium II/333 may find themselves unloading the GUI and using the text-based utilities instead.

Additionally, there are still some problems with the usability and consistency of the interface that have not been resolved since Beta 3. For instance, in some places, when entering data in a form, you can tab from one field to the next, while in other places, that doesn't work. Also, when you finish entering data, hitting the return or enter key does nothing. Instead, you must click on the OK button to close the window.

Similarly, when you have clicked on something, there is no hourglass or other icon to show that something is happening. Many operations take long enough that some people will think their commands are not being heeded and click again and again, not realizing this may cause other problems.

I found it to be a real pleasure to be able to administer NDS from the console, though, and if the hardware is fast enough, doing so is not much more cumbersome than using the NetWare Administrator from a workstation. It can be much easier to make changes from the server, rather than having to find a workstation from which to log in, especially with a new server that doesn't have any accounts established on it yet.

New Features
The biggest networking feature in NetWare 5 is native IP. IP is no longer just supported--it can be the only protocol running, and NetWare no longer encapsulates IPX within the IP; both client and server are running pure IP. This should result in better performance on all-IP networks. A domain naming system (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol server allows for full TCP/IP functionality and compatibility with other TCP/IP systems on the network.

Memory protection has been improved substantially in NetWare 5. There is less chance of having one ill-behaved NetWare Loadable Module crash other NLMs or the server.

DHCP is a service that automatically provides a TCP/IP address to devices on the network. Because information on the devices is stored in NDS, NDS must be extended to include the additional objects and types of information. This is done with a utility, NDIPINST.NLM, that is run on the server. Then the DNS-DHCP console must be installed on a workstation. Once this is done, the DNS and DHCP servers can be set up and configured with relative ease. The only thing lacking is a wizard that sets up subnets and subnet masks.

The Novell Storage System is new and very exciting. While my own testing was limited to a paltry 9-Gbyte drive with about 2 Gbytes of data, which mounted in about five seconds, I have seen an NSS volume of more than 200 Gbytes, with thousands of files on it, mount in a few seconds. The equivalent NetWare 4 volume would take 10 minutes to 15 minutes to mount.

Novell engineers have created and mounted a 2.5-terabyte (2,500 Gbytes) volume, and it mounted in about six seconds. In addition to providing enormously faster mount times, NSS allows for larger volumes as well as more than 1 billion files per volume, and file sizes of more than a terabyte. Unfortunately, the SYS volume cannot be an NSS volume.

There are a few drawbacks with NSS. Currently, NSS volumes don't support disk mirroring or striping (the RAID 0 and 1 storage that has long been supported in software by NetWare). You can, of course, create an NSS volume on a hardware RAID. NSS volumes also don't support Network File System (NFS, the standard Unix file system), File Transfer Protocol, file compression, transaction tracking, or data migration. If you need to support any of those functions, you'll have to use a standard volume.

If you have existing NetWare volumes, you can convert them to NSS volumes simply and easily (after making two backups and verifying them, of course). Converting them to NSS is a four-step procedure at the system console and takes a short time. This upgrade process cannot be used on the SYS volume.

Novell Distributed Print Services ships with NetWare 5 and allows for greatly simplified installation and administration of printers. If the printer supports NDPS (and many recent printers from most of the major players do), installing a new printer is a matter of plugging the printer into the network and creating one new object in the NetWare Administration console instead of three separate objects--printer, print queue, and print server. The whole process is automatic and takes seconds.

A five-user version of the Oracle8 database comes with NetWare. This will probably displace Btrieve as the database of choice for internal database functions on Novell servers, because developers can count on being able to use it for things such as backup records. More interesting, Oracle8 is heavily optimized for NetWare, which gives administrators an alternative to the SQL Server that is part of Microsoft's Back Office suite.

Zero Effort Networking (known as Z.E.N.works) is an attempt to ease the burden of supporting applications on hundreds or even thousands of desktop PCs. The starter pack included with NetWare 5 offers considerable functionality and second-generation features and stability, making the deployment of applications to hundreds of desktops simple, as well as allowing for the management of desktop operating system versions, service packs, driver sets, and so forth.

Web Server Capability
NetWare 5 also includes Netscape FastTrack server for NetWare, the entry-level version of Netscape's Web server. When combined with additional products such as Novell's BorderManager Internet security and proxy services, NetWare becomes a very viable candidate for use as a high-volume Web server. All of Novell's own heavily trafficked Web servers are running NetWare and BorderManager.

The Java virtual machine included with NetWare 5 is one of the fastest available, according to recent benchmarks--although you would never know it from ConsoleOne. It is certainly easy to install Java applications; they are installed into the SYS:\java\classes directory, and then loaded from the server console. The ability to extend the NetWare interface through Java may push more developers into the NetWare market, because writing in Java is substantially easier than writing NetWare Loadable Modules, which are the old standard for NetWare server applications.

NetWare's Directory Services
NDS is a stable directory product that has several years of development and debugging behind it. Also, for years, additional applications have been developed to leverage it, such as Z.E.N.works. NDS is not as exciting and new as Microsoft's Active Directory, but most network administrators don't want their networks to be exciting.

There are a number of new features in NDS. These include more granularity, support for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol version 3, catalog services that make it easier for developers and administrators to write applications that access NDS, improved replication services, and new security features. NDS now provides role-based management, so administrators can designate which users will have responsibility for specific duties, such as password administration. This lets lower-level technicians be given specific duties but not access to all the supervisory functions. Of course, this extends the existing role-based duties, such as being able to designate a user as manager of a particular printer or print server.

LDAP is a data exchange protocol that makes it possible for different directories from different companies to exchange information intelligibly. It is similar to SQL, in that it provides a way for products from competing companies to work together. LDAP provides a way for applications written for the Internet to interoperate with NDS.

NDS's catalog services provide a flat-file interface for NDS, letting developers or administrators define a subset of the whole NDS database and access it with relatively simple programming techniques.

Replication services allow for NDS to propagate itself across LAN and WAN links, maintaining consistency and accuracy across an enterprise. Improvements have been made that reduce network traffic and increase flexibility by changing how replicas interact with each other. For instance, if a server on the network is not available, only one of the remaining servers will look for it and try to update it until it comes back, rather than all other replica servers trying to update the missing server and failing. Another new feature allows administrators to specify when replication will occur across WAN links, allowing them to keep bandwidth free during busy times.

Security features new to NetWare 5 include support for Secure Sockets Layer in conjunction with LDAP, public-key infrastructure support (which provides for the storage of the keys used for encryption and decryption of encoded messages in NDS), and secure authorization services (which allow for identification of users by biometric or token recognition, rather than passwords).

Biometric devices include fingerprint scanners, video cameras that recognize someone by the shape of his or her face, and voice-recognition systems. Tokens are hardware devices such as smart cards that provide authorization with a card reader, or in some cases, by simple proximity. They can be radio-frequency devices that allow access when the user is within a few feet, and automatically log the system off when the user leaves.

In all, NetWare 5 is an extremely worthwhile upgrade for any 3.x or 4.x server, and should be the platform of choice for any new servers that support more than 25 users. Time will tell if the new features--such as faster native IP, Java virtual machines, and NSS--will draw users back from other operating systems, but NetWare 5 is a solid and dependable file and print server, which is still the backbone of the network.

Features such as the ability to reconfigure network interfaces without rebooting the server have been available for years, and it's not uncommon to find a NetWare server that's been online for six months or more without a crash or reboot, which can't be said for everything out there.

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