E.2 Novell ZENworks Configuration Management Imaging Agent (novell-ziswin)

The Novell ZENworks client (which includes novell-ziswin) should be installed on devices where you want to apply images. For information on installing the client on your devices, see the Installing the ZENworks Adaptive Agent in the ZENworks 10 Configuration Management Administration Quick Start.

Installing the Configuration Management client automatically installs the Novell ZENworks Configuration Management Imaging Agent (novell-ziswin). Therefore, every Primary Server is an imaging server.

After the ZENworks Adaptive Agent is installed, the ZENworks Imaging Windows Agent window indicating that the configuration files are being processed by the Imaging Agent is displayed during the device boot-up. During this process, the ZENworks Imaging Windows Agent restores the data from ISD so that the device can communicate by using its previous identity. Later on, the Imaging Agent automatically reboots the device.

The Imaging Agent’s purpose is to save certain device-unique data (such as IP addresses and hostnames) to an area on the hard disk that is safe from imaging. The Imaging Agent records this information when you install it on the device. Then the agent restores this information from the image-safe area after the device has been imaged. This allows the device to use the same network identity as before. This functionality is handled by the novell-zisdservice on Windows Vista and Windows 2008 devices.

If a device is new and does not contain a unique network identity, the default settings that you have configured for the Management Zone are applied when you image the device by using a Preboot Services Imaging bundle.

The data that the Imaging Agent saves to (or restores from) the image-safe area includes the following:

The Novell-ziswin usually runs automatically. However, if you want to run it manually, see Understanding the Arguments for the command line arguments that can be used with the Imaging Agent.