NSS (Novell Storage Services) is Novell's next-generation file system for NetWare servers, version 5 and above, intended as an eventual replacement for the "traditional" NetWare file system. It is based partially on the Andrew File System (AFS) for Unix, developed at Carnegie Mellon University.
Here are a few of the features of NSS (as available in NetWare 5.1):
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Journaling. Where the traditional NetWare file system stores the entire file allocation table for each volume in physical memory, NSS is a journaling file system. This allows any volume, regardless of size, to be mounted in a very few seconds.
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Modular architecture. The components of the file system that access the actual media are abstracted from the ones that serve the data to clients, so either can be rewritten or updated more easily.
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Storage pooling. Rather than directly occupying physical partitions on the disk, volumes may be composed of pools of free space on a wide variety of storage devices.
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Disk quotas by user, as well as by directory.
Currently, a NetWare 5.x server's SYS volume may not be NSS, since the transaction tracking (TTS) required for NDS is not yet supported. In the upcoming NetWare 6 release, NSS will gain support for TTS, as well as SAN-style logical volume management and native file access by any client (including HTTP, CIFS and Macintosh).