Novell Inc will today announce plans to enter the beta test phase for a new version of its NetWare operating system, called 6 Pack, which the company says is designed to work on multiprocessor systems and provide internet-class salability and performance. The Provo, Utah-based networking giant says the new OS is designed to work with the latest version of its directory services, release 8.0, announced Monday.
Brian Faustyn, Novell’s director of product marketing for NetWare says the new OS will go into beta testing in April, although he added Novell has no plans to release availability, pricing or packaging details for the final release just yet. Faustyn said 6 Pack will build upon the strengths of Novell’s NetWare 5 and include enhancements that will enable boost network performance, salability and server management by multi-processor enabling all of NetWare’s core networking services. While Novell hasn’t got any benchmarks tests yet to prove its claims, Faustyn said the OS would enable a much larger number of connections to be made per server, and the individual connections will be a lot faster than before, he added.
As well as improving the management capabilities of Novell servers, the company also plans to add functionality, in time, to enable organizations to manage other, non-Novell servers through the OS. Faustyn said Novell has already seen a lot of interest among computer hardware vendors for 6 Pack and Compaq Computer Corporation will be showcasing its upcoming 8-way server technology at Novell’s technology and user conference, BrainShare, in two weeks time. While rival Microsoft’s NT platform can support up to 250 users on two and four way processor systems, Faustyn said 6 Pack would provide near linear scalability with each processor added.
The company will also use the show to demonstrate its 64-bit version of NetWare, code-named Modesto, on an Intel IA-64 simulator platform. The OS was originally announced at last year’s BrainShare conference, but this will be the first time Novell has actually shown the technology in operation, Faustyn said. He added that Novell has been actively working with Intel for the simultaneous release of Modesto with Intel’s 64-bit processor, Merced. We’re extremely excited about the possibilities [for Modesto], he said, for ISPs running huge portals with tens of millions of users, this is the ideal platform.
