Novell NetWare
NAS Recovery - Novell NetWare
NetWare is a network operating system (NOS) developed by Novell. NetWare is based on file sharing concept. It is designed specifically to provide service to clients over a computer network. NetWare runs on any type of computer systems, from PCs to mainframes. The latest version of NetWare is v6.5 Support Pack 8.
NetWare provides transparent remote file access and other distributed network services such as printer sharing. It also supports applications such as electronic mail transfer and database access.
The most popular protocols in the Novell NetWare suite are: Network Core Protocol (NCP), Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) protocol, and Sequenced Packet Exchange (SPX) protocol.
NetWare was introduced in early 1980s. Its protocols were based on Xerox Network Systems (XNS) stack, which is based on client-server architecture. Clients (workstations) request services from servers. NetWare’s architecture supports remote access through remote procedure calls.
A remote procedure call occurs when a client-side program sends a call to the remote server. The server then executes the remote procedure call and returns the requested information to the local client.
All requests are provided with a sequence number. If the client didn’t receive a response in the stipulated time, it would resend the request with the same sequence number. If the server had already processed the request it would resend the cached response. If it had not processed the request yet, it would send a positive acknowledgement.
This method ensures that networks worked perfectly most of the time. Such a ‘trust the network’ approach results in a 2/3 reduction in network traffic and the associated latency.
