Novell Rolls Out NetWare 5 Support Pack
By Stuart Glascock
Provo, Utah
3:53 PM EST Wed., Feb. 03, 1999
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Novell Inc. Wednesday issued Support Pack 1 for NetWare, offering significant enhancements such as a Network Address Translator (NAT) and an accelerated utility upgrade.
The 60-Mbyte upgrade is expected to be posted on the company's Web site by the end of Wednesday, said Brian Faustyn, Novell product marketing manager for NetWare 5.
The pack adds a bunch of enhancements to NetWare 5 which has been shipping since September. That product is Novell's latest network operating system, built on the NetWare foundation by enhancing Novell Directory Services and volume management while providing state-of-the-art tools such as Zero Effort Networks that allow resellers to enforce policies and mange networks centrally. NetWare 5 also added ConsoleOne GUI on the server and an ability to run NetWare over pure IP.
"A number of customers said they were going to wait for the first support pack to deploy, and we have put a great deal of effort to make sure we have the most reliable, solid, stable product out there with this support pack," Faustyn said.
The NAT feature is probably the largest single element of the upgrade. It is a utility that allows a company to front-end their organization with a single IP-authorized address and behind that deploy whatever IP addresses they would like, Faustyn said.
"It assists companies greatly to get around the IP shortage issue," he said. "It basically helps people deploy IP faster."
Also significant is an accelerated upgrade utility that speed up the process of upgrading a server from a previous time of about 45 minute to between 5 and 15 minutes. The utility is targeted at year 2000 compliance.
"Y2K is clearly a driving factor here in that time is clearly a factor for people to get their deployments done before their Y2K lock downs," he said.
Other enhancements include better migration agents, tighter integration with the directory for plug and play devices, and other minor fixes and enhancements.
"We think this is the most stable and reliable version of NetWare that we have ever shipped," he said. "We've taken away a major upgrade barrier. We have moved off the [version] dot-0 syndrome. A lot of corporations won't deploy a dot-0 software. We have moved beyond that."
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