ZENworks 7.5 Asset Management Readme

Documentation version 7.5.12-061026
October 2006
Readme updated January 2009

Thank you for installing ZENworks® 7.5 Asset Management from Novell®. ZENworks 7.5 Asset Management can upgrade the products listed below:

For detailed instructions on using ZENworks 7.5 Asset Management, please refer to the Evaluation Guide, Installation Guide and the User’s Guide (available from the \Docs folder on the CD or CD image) or consult the online help in the ZENworks Asset Management Manager and the Web Console.

For information about fixes in this version, see TID #3971050 in the Novell Support Knowledgebase.

1.0 New Features and Enhancements
1.0.1 General Enhancements
1.0.2 Enhancements to Asset Inventory
1.0.3 Enhancements to Asset Management
2.0 Fixes
3.0 Installation Notes
3.1 Login Scripts
3.2 Standalone Deployment
3.3 Upgrading Tomcat and Java
3.4 Changes to System Requirements
3.5 How To Manually Create the ZENworks Asset Management Inventory Database
4.0 Known Limitations
4.1 Mac and UNIX/Linux Inventory
4.2 Virtual Machine Inventory
4.3 Inventory Database
4.4 File Store
4.5 Manager
4.6 Reports and Queries
4.7 Client Applications
4.8 Task Server
4.9 Software Usage Monitor
5.0 Documentation Notes
6.0 Technical Support
7.0 Documentation Conventions
8.0 Legal Notices

1.0 New Features and Enhancements

The following is a list of new features and enhancements that have been incorporated into the various components of the ZENworks 7.5 Asset Management release. Please refer to the online help for further details about these enhancements.

1.0.1 General Enhancements
1.0.1.1 Web Console Reorganization
1.0.1.2 Renamed Tabs
1.0.2 Enhancements to Asset Inventory
1.0.3 Enhancements to Asset Management
1.0.3.1 Contract Management Page
1.0.3.2 Server-side Software Usage Monitoring and Reporting
1.0.3.3 Web Application Usage Monitoring and Reporting
1.0.3.4 Software Management

1.0.1 General Enhancements

The following general enhancements have been added.

1.0.1.1 Web Console Reorganization

The Web Console has been redesigned and reorganized for more efficient use and to make it more clear which functional areas fall within Asset Inventory and Asset Management.

Here is a summary of the changes to the Web Console's organization:

1.0.1.2 Renamed Tabs

Asset Inventory tab, which has two main pages:

Asset Management tab, which has three main pages:

Administration tab (formerly the Admin tab), which has five main pages:

1.0.2 Enhancements to Asset Inventory

The following migration-planning reports/analysis have been added to Asset Inventory. See the Upgrade Readiness reports, found in the Reports folder of Asset Inventory>Workstation Inventory page.

1.0.3 Enhancements to Asset Management

The following Asset Management enhancements have been added.

1.0.3.1 Contract Management Page

Contract Management, available from the Web Console's Asset Management tab, allows you to track all types of IT contracts and associate them with workstations, network devices, users, license records, departments, sites or cost centers. When defining a contract, you can create date notifications that can be used to remind you of contract-related events, such as renewal dates, delivery dates or other specified date-related events. You can also define and track Service Level Agreements (SLA) provisions, renew contracts, and attach documents.

1.0.3.2 Server-side Software Usage Monitoring and Reporting

ZENworks 7.5 Asset Management monitors usage of applications served by Citrix Presentation Server and Windows Terminal Server. The standard ZENworks Asset Management client application monitors session information from the server hosting the application and tracks application, server, workstation, and user information associated with sessions.

Several groups of reports have been added to report on server-side usage activity:

Upgrade Note: Server-side usage monitoring is enabled automatically when the ZENworks Asset Management client is updated to version 7.5 on a server running Citrix or Windows Terminal Server.

1.0.3.3 Web Application Usage Monitoring and Reporting

ZENworks 7.5 Asset Management monitors usage of Web Applications defined by the ZENworks Asset Management Administrator. Web applications can be defined on the Web applications page under the Administration tab in the web console. The standard ZENworks Asset Management client application monitors browser (Internet Explorer and Firefox) activity for defined applications and reports information by application, workstation, and user.

Several groups of reports have been added to report on Web application usage activity:

1.0.3.4 Software Management
Software Collections

Software Collections can now be defined to represent a group of applications that have been bundled together (but cannot be automatically recognized as a suite by ZENworks Asset Management). A new page, Software Collections, is available from the Discovered Products page of the Software Management menu. From this page, you can define and manage software collections. Once defined, Software Collections appear in pages and reports that show lists of discovered products (all defined software collections are used at page and report run time to determine which machines contain software collections).

The products contained in Software Collections are still included in the Asset Inventory reports but the Software Collection is shown (instead of the individual products) as Discovered Products in the Software Management tab.

License Record Documents

In addition to attaching documents to contracts (under Contract Management), documents may be uploaded and attached to License records in Software Management. Documents can be attached and viewed from the License Record detail page under Software Management.

Also, contracts can be associated with License Records (typically to record Technical Support or Maintenance agreements related to software). Contracts associated with License Records are listed on the License Record detail page and link back to the related Contract.

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2.0 Fixes

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3.0 Installation Notes

3.1 Login Scripts

If you have configured login scripts to run the collection client setup.exe from the File Store, edit your login scripts so that setup.exe does not run while you are upgrading ZENworks Asset Management applications.

3.2 ZENworks Asset Management Standalone Deployment

If you are running ZENworks Handheld Management using the default MSDE installation, you cannot run the Standalone Deployment of ZENworks Asset Management on the same server.

3.3 Upgrading Tomcat and Java

When you upgrade to the new version, the Java and Tomcat versions remain the same, in case you have other applications which depend on the older versions. For detailed instructions for upgrading your Java and Tomcat versions, see TID #3922581, "Upgrading to Tomcat 5 and JDK 1.4.2 for use with ZAM 7 - 7.5," in the Novell Support Knowledgebase.

3.4 Changes to System Requirements

The following changes have been made to system requirements.

3.4.1 Standalone Deployment
3.4.2 Enterprise Deployment
3.4.3 Collection Clients
3.4.4 ZENworks Asset Management Evaluation Period

3.4.1 Standalone Deployment

3.4.1.1 Standalone Deployment Hardware Requirements (Back-end Servers)

No changes to hardware requirements.

3.4.1.2 Standalone Deployment Operating System (Back-end Servers)

Operating system support has been extended for machines running Standalone deployments as follows:

3.4.1.3 New Standalone Deployments (Back-end Servers)

The following changes have been made to system requirements for Standalone deployments:

3.4.1.4 Upgrades to Standalone Deployments (Back-end Servers)
3.4.1.5 Standalone Deployments to Virtual Machines as Back-end Servers

All editions of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005/R2 are now supported for running Standalone deployments.

3.4.2 Enterprise Deployment

3.4.2.1 Hardware Requirements for Enterprise Deployments (Back-end Servers)

No changes to hardware requirements.

3.4.2.2 Extensions to Operating System Support for Enterprise Deployments (Back-end Servers)

Operating system support has been extended for Enterprise deployments as follows:

3.4.2.3 Changes to Database Support for Enterprise Deployments (Back-end Servers)

The following changes to database support have been made for Enterprise deployments.

3.4.2.4 Extensions to Virtual Machine Support for Enterprise Deployments (Back-end Servers)

Virtual Machine support for Enterprise Deployments has been extended as follows:

3.4.3 Collection Client Applications

3.4.3.1 Changes to Operating System Support for Client Applications

Operating system support has been changed for Collection Clients as follows:

Extensions to Windows support:

Changes to Linux support:

Changes to Netware support:

3.4.3.2 Virtual Machine Support for Client Applications

Support for running collection clients on virtual machines has been extended as follows:

3.4.3.3 Server-side Usage Monitoring (Client Applications)

You can now monitor server-side usage of applications hosted on:

3.4.3.4 Web Application Usage Monitoring (Client Applications)

You can monitor web application usage activity through the following browsers:

3.4.4 ZENworks Asset Management Evaluation Period

The standard evaluation period for ZENworks Asset Management has been changed from 90 to 60 days to be consistent with the standard evaluation period for Novell products.

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3.5 How To Manually Create the ZENworks Asset Management Inventory Database

Under the "Database Setup for Oracle" heading (page 43) of the ZENworks Asset Management Installation Guide, you read the following:

"The Database Creation and Setup Tool creates a new ZENworks® Asset Management inventory database for you. The tool is started automatically while you are running Setup."

Note: For those who do not want to have the Asset Management inventory database created automatically, you can manually create the inventory database later by using the Oracle_Schema_Creation_Scripts_7_5.zip file, which is at the Novell Support Download web page.

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4.0 Known Limitations

4.1 Mac and UNIX/Linux Inventory

The following ZENworks Asset Management capabilities included for Windows Inventory are not available for Macs or UNIX/Linux:

Note: The Microsoft Office for Mac suite is recognized by ZENworks Asset Management, and appears along with its components in both the Asset Inventory and Software Compliance reports. The suite/component relationship is not shown, however. Because of this, Microsoft Office for Mac does not appear in the new Suite/Component and Standalone Component reports, available from the Software Compliance tab's Reports menu.

4.2 Virtual Machine Inventory

4.3 Inventory Database

ZENworks Asset Management does not support Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 installations with the case-sensitive sorting option enabled. (By default, this option is off.)

4.4 File Store

4.5 Manager

4.6 Reports and Queries

4.7 Client Applications

4.8 Task Server

If your Task Server is installed on a computer running Windows 2000, and you use Novell Netware, you are prompted for Novell login information when a print task is started. Scheduled print jobs cannot be run unless a user provides the login information when the task is run. To resolve this problem, contact Microsoft Product Support Services to obtain the fix relating to technical article Q266066.

4.9 Software Usage Monitor

The following limitations exist in the release relative to server software usage:

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5.0 Documentation Notes

The following documentation is provided with ZENworks 7.5 Asset Management:

These documents are made available during the ZENworks Asset Management installation process and are located on the CD image (in the Docs directory) and within the downloaded evaluation zip file.

For updates to the ZENworks 7.5 Asset Management Documentation, see Documentation Corrections for ZENworks 7.5 Asset Management.

Addition resources for ZENworks information include:

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6.0 Technical Support

For technical assistance, please contact Novell Technical Support at:

 http://www.novell.com

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7.0 Documentation Conventions

A trademark symbol (™, TM, etc.) denotes a Novell trademark; an asterisk (*) denotes a third-party trademark.

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8.0 Legal Notices

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