Novell NetWare

Novell Netware is a Computer Network operating system that was in the early 1990s the most popular Operating system dedicated to serving files over a Local area network (hereafter referred to as a LAN).

History

^{(note: for more information on Novell's history see the history section of the Novell article)}

NetWare came about in answer to a brand new market in Computer networking: file sharing. A centralized NetWare server would be dedicated to sharing files over a LAN to other clients running their own client operating system (clients could be UNIX-based, DOS/Windows based, etc). This centralized model made backups easier, and the server could be made redundant to provide for hardware failure.

NetWare's Decline

As Microsoft's Windows Server based operating systems grew in popularity, NetWare saw a sharp decline in popularity. Novell has changed its strategy and bet the company on "Open Source"-based products, and its server architecture itself is now Linux based .