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In the 90s it was difficult to imagine Novell ever fading away in the enterprise server market. There was no alternative comparable to Netware and NDS. Microsof

by bl4k 16y ago

In the 90s it was difficult to imagine Novell ever fading away in the enterprise server market. There was no alternative comparable to Netware and NDS. Microsoft completely killed them off with NT Server and then Active Directory with Win2k. We had around 50 clients running Netware, and within 12 months of Active Directory being released, we had switched almsot all of them over to Windows (usually with Linux servers alongside for web stuff). Some customers were so desperate to move over that we actually installed and rolled out preview releases of Win2k - since it allowed them to manage their network using the GUI and it was a total cost reduction. Novell simply never responded. They were still stuck on DOS when Win2k provided a familiar GUI and much easier management. In our bespoke rollouts, even we recognized that Win2k wasn't the best at everything, which is why we would almost install some Linux or BSD servers as well (with Samba) (we did so much of these hybrid installs that I ended up writing NDS drivers for Squid, Apache and a bunch of other open source apps - I think that same code is still being used today). Running Windows also meant that you had one unifying network protocol - TCP/IP, instead of IPX/SPX on the network and TCP/IP on the outside. RFP's from government and large corporations flooded out with requests for Windows rollouts to replace Netware. It was amazing how quickly this happen. A lot of consultants made a lot of bank at that time ripping Novell out of the enterprise and replacing it with Windows, and often Linux as well. By the time Novell picked up SuSE, it was too late - they had blown the massive lead they had in the enterprise server market and never regained it. Sorta sad what happen to them, since Netware was a great product for its time. Enterprise Windows, and to an extent, enterprise Linux, owe a lot to the poor strategic decisions Novell made (or didn't make) I hope Ximian find a good home, there is no mention if they (and Mono etc.) are part of the Linux deal. I wouldn't be surprised if the second buyer is IBM, but Microsoft have also poured a lot of money into Novell the past 5 years, so it could be them.

hga 16y ago
Hmmm ... I had no difficultly imagining that Netware would die a hard death in the early 90s. My memory of the exact details are a bit fuzzy at this remove (I might be e.g. confounding versions 2 and 3), but its fatal flaw was no memory protection. And as I recall, at least early on, the entire directory structure was in memory (this was an issue for my company in provisioning them for document imaging storage). So if you wanted to run any 3rd party software on your Netware servers you were making a big bet on both its stability and safety (in not scribbling over the rest of Netware, including most especially whatever memory it was using to keep track of files and directories, no matter whether it had all of the latter in memory or not). As soon as NT became stable enough (which didn't take very long at all as these things go, that group really had its act together from launch to 3.51 SP1) the value proposition was pretty clear and simple: run Netware for file and print services or run NT for both plus whatever other server software you might want (NDS was never a big issue for the sorts of systems I was involved with so I don't know the story there). So as I recall the bleeding started before Win2K, although I can see becoming critical with the release of Active Directory. Of course, all this assumed that Novell wouldn't make the proper strategic decisions in time, but it didn't take too long to realize they just didn't have what it took in that area.
- munchhausen 16y ago
  > My memory of the exact details are a bit fuzzy at this remove (I might be e.g. confounding versions 2 and 3), but its fatal flaw was no memory protection. You are correct, Netware 3 ran everything in Ring 0, which also made it so fast. Memory protection was added in Netware 4, but you can still opt for running applications in non-protected address space all the way up to Netware 6.5 (latest, and almost certainly the last version).
  - hga 16y ago
    Interesting. Wikipedia claims "In 4.x and earlier versions, NetWare did not support preemption, virtual memory, graphical user interfaces, etc. Processes and services running under the NetWare OS were expected to be cooperative, that is to process a request and return control to the OS in a timely fashion. On the down side, this trust of application processes to manage themselves could lead to a misbehaving application bringing down the server." If true, memory protection without preemptive multitasking is still basically unacceptable (just not something you can base a healthy server ecosystem on; we had enough "fun" of that sort with non-preemptive 16 bit Windows client). The article also notes that TCP/IP was a second class citizen at best until Netware 5.x in October 1998, "during a time when NetWare market share dropped precipitously...." In general it notes Netware's kernel had a big speed advantage which became less important as systems steadily became faster (and I suspect its tunable caching became less useful).

by bl4k 16y ago

hga 16y ago

Hmmm ... I had no difficultly imagining that Netware would die a hard death in the early 90s. My memory of the exact details are a bit fuzzy at this remove (I might be e.g. confounding versions 2 and 3), but its fatal flaw was no memory protection. And as I recall, at least early on, the entire directory structure was in memory (this was an issue for my company in provisioning them for document imaging storage). So if you wanted to run any 3rd party software on your Netware servers you were making a big bet on both its stability and safety (in not scribbling over the rest of Netware, including most especially whatever memory it was using to keep track of files and directories, no matter whether it had all of the latter in memory or not). As soon as NT became stable enough (which didn't take very long at all as these things go, that group really had its act together from launch to 3.51 SP1) the value proposition was pretty clear and simple: run Netware for file and print services or run NT for both plus whatever other server software you might want (NDS was never a big issue for the sorts of systems I was involved with so I don't know the story there). So as I recall the bleeding started before Win2K, although I can see becoming critical with the release of Active Directory. Of course, all this assumed that Novell wouldn't make the proper strategic decisions in time, but it didn't take too long to realize they just didn't have what it took in that area.

munchhausen 16y ago
> My memory of the exact details are a bit fuzzy at this remove (I might be e.g. confounding versions 2 and 3), but its fatal flaw was no memory protection. You are correct, Netware 3 ran everything in Ring 0, which also made it so fast. Memory protection was added in Netware 4, but you can still opt for running applications in non-protected address space all the way up to Netware 6.5 (latest, and almost certainly the last version).
- hga 16y ago
  Interesting. Wikipedia claims "In 4.x and earlier versions, NetWare did not support preemption, virtual memory, graphical user interfaces, etc. Processes and services running under the NetWare OS were expected to be cooperative, that is to process a request and return control to the OS in a timely fashion. On the down side, this trust of application processes to manage themselves could lead to a misbehaving application bringing down the server." If true, memory protection without preemptive multitasking is still basically unacceptable (just not something you can base a healthy server ecosystem on; we had enough "fun" of that sort with non-preemptive 16 bit Windows client). The article also notes that TCP/IP was a second class citizen at best until Netware 5.x in October 1998, "during a time when NetWare market share dropped precipitously...." In general it notes Netware's kernel had a big speed advantage which became less important as systems steadily became faster (and I suspect its tunable caching became less useful).