Overview of Inventory Components

Before planning ZfD inventory deployment, you should understand the inventory components, which interact together to perform inventory functions.

The following sections help you to understand ZfD inventory:


Inventory Components in ZfD

ZfD inventory uses the following independent components for inventory scanning at workstations:


Inventory Scanners

Platform-dependent scanners determine the hardware and software configurations of workstations. These scanners are located on the ZfD Inventory Server. When executed on the workstations, the scanners collect the inventory information for the workstations and store the scan data as .STR files on the servers.

The WINSCAN.EXE scanner scans Windows* 95/98 workstations over IP/IPXTM. The NTSCAN32.EXE scanner scans Windows NT*/2000 workstations over IP/IPX.

Using the Workstation Inventory policy, you can configure the scan settings so you can schedule the scanning on the workstations, enable a software scan, customize software scanning, and specify the location of the scan data files.


Inventory Components on Servers

The inventory components process the scan data. The following components are Java* programs that work identically on NetWare® and Windows NT/2000 servers:


Inventory Database

The Inventory database functions as a repository of workstation hardware and software information. In ZfD 3.2, the database is a relational database management system (RDBMS) maintained in Sybase or Oracle.

The following illustration shows the list of inventory components on the server and workstation. This illustration also depicts how the inventory components interact with each other.


The Scanners, Selector, Sender, Receiver, Storer, and Inventory database component on the server


Front End Console

The ZfD Console uses ConsoleOne, the Novell single management tool for administration. This is a Java-based console that includes snap-ins for inventory management operations.