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:
ZfD inventory uses the following independent components for inventory scanning at workstations:
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.
The inventory components process the scan data. The following components are Java* programs that work identically on NetWare® and Windows NT/2000 servers:
The Selector processes the scan data files to determine whether the new scan data should be merged with the existing data and places the files in the appropriate directories for the Sender and the Storer.
The Sender and the Receiver on the servers compress the scan files and then transfer the files from the lower-level servers to the higher-level servers for roll-up of inventory information. By using the Roll-Up policy, you can configure the next level destination server for roll-up, and also schedule the roll-up time.
The Storer stores the collected inventory information (.STR files) in the Inventory database. By using the Database Location policy, you can configure the properties of the Inventory Database object in ZfD 3.2 and associate the Database object to a server.
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 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.