Novell debuts slew of Linux wares

Novell Tuesday at LinuxWorld announced a slew of Linux offerings that are expected to bolster its status in the open source community.

The company announced that its new flagship operating system, Open Enterprise Server (OES), will be available next month. The company also announced an agreement to resell PolyServe's Linux clustering software, contributions of code to collaboration, SAMBA and FreeRADIUS communities, and a data center initiative.

OES contains both NetWare and SuSE Linux kernels with file, print, identity management and security services layered on top. OES has been in an open beta for the last several months and experienced over 7,000 downloads. According to users polled, the product has been highly successful. In addition to file, print and identity services, OES includes Novell Storage Services and Novell Cluster Services.

OES is supported by Advanced Micro Devices, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Intel, as well as anti-virus and back-up vendors such as CommVault Systems, McAfee and Veritas Software. The operating system will be priced the same as its existing Netware at US$18,400 for a 100-user license.

Novell will also resell and support PolyServe's Matrix Server clustering software. PolyServe Matrix Server is a clustered file system that allows data sharing and high-availability. The deal will be Novell's first offering in its data center initiative and use as its foundation the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server.

The company will also work with Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle and SAP to ensure interoperability for Linux and virtualization in the data center. Novell also announced that it will support the Xen server and workstation virtualization technology in its next version of SuSE Enterprise Linux Server. The company is also partnering with Vmware, Virtual Iron Software, Egenera and Levanta for their virtualization offerings.

The data center initiative Novell announced will bring a number of packages to market for workstations, workgroup and high-performance computing. Novell's data center initiative will focus on the application infrastructure, Novell storage software, virtualization, systems management and security. Novell data center offerings will be available later this year.

The company also announced it will work to harden Linux for business-critical applications. This hardening includes a new security certification, the CAPP/EAL4+ and the availability of OES, as well as the Hula collaboration server initiative.

Further, the company announced the Hula open source project to develop a collaboration server, which will include calendar and mail functionality. Hula is based on Novell's NetMail collaboration software, which has more than four million users. Novell has donated the core code of NetMail to the Hula project. Hula will use Internet standards such as SMTP, IMAP, iCalendar and the CalDAV calendar access protocol.

Meanwhile, on Monday Novell announced that it had contributed interfaces to its eDirectory identity management software to the FreeRADIUS and SAMBA projects. The contributions will allow developers to use eDirectory as their engine to authenticate users to the network.

The FreeRADIUS contribution will allow Novell customers to use FreeRADIUS for wireless authentication services with eDirectory. In addition, the next version of eDirectory will ship with support for FreeRADIUS.