aphilp's blog

This summer Novell will work to update the Systems Deployment and Best Practice Guide for ZENworks Configuration Management.

SC Magazine has just published a five-star review of ZENworks Endpoint Security Management. The review gives ZENworks solution top marks for features, performance, support, value and documentation. Scoring the highest overall ratings possible, ZENworks offers a well-rounded solution with good bang for the buck.

Recently I joined the Product Management team within the Systems and Resource Management Business Unit at Novell. As part of this role I will become more active on Novell blogs sharing details of up and coming releases and best-practice materials.

It's that time of year again, so I'll be off to Salt Lake City. This year I only have one session, it's a Tutorial but I am aiming to keep it as open and flexible as possible. Hope to see some of you there, details below:

Recently I've been busy working with customers to implement ZENworks Configuration Management (ZCM). My posts in the coming days and weeks will discuss the key points when considering a ZCM deployment.

So let us start with a couple of fundamentals, what do we really need to be in place before we start anything.

DNS
Forward and reverse lookups must be functional to and from all severs and workstations. We use forward and reverse look-ups in our certificate operations such as when a device checks in, when we hook into Casa for eDir/AD operations, and remote control operations.

Time Synchronisation
All managed devices, primary servers and the DB server should be sync'd as close as possible. Certain operations in ZCM are session based and therefore rely on accurate time between the two parties.

If you have any ideas on subject matter, please feel free to leave feedback.

The aim here is to start the discussion not give everything away :)