Netware 2 was an 80286 OS. (DOS was an 8086 OS.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWare#NetWare_286_2.x
Normally, Netware took over the whole PC, but if you ran it non-dedicated, it loaded in memory above 1MB (which DOS couldn't use anyway) and then let DOS continue running in a pre-empted box, using the screen and keyboard. So someone could use the console as a DOS PC, while the Netware server ran in the background using the rest of the server's RAM, doing file and print for all the client machines.
It worked really well... the main problem was that the user would often turn off the "PC" when they were done. >_<
More seriously -- this seems to compare well to the old Locus DOS/Merge product: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_(software)
Is there any benefit to DSL [argh, TLA overload, this is not Damn Small Linux] compared to DOSemu?