Migrating Workstation Inventory from ZENworks 2

To gain the maximum benefit of an enterprise-wide inventory solution, you need to plan for migrating the inventory information for the workstations in ZENworks 2 to ZfD 3.2. ZfD 3.2 allows migration of inventory policies associated with a ZENworks 2 inventory server. When you migrate the inventory policy, the inventory information of the workstations associated with the inventory server will be added in ZfD 3.2. Also, all components on a particular server and all workstations associated to the server are migrated together. When policies are migrated to ZfD 3.2, there is some additional configuration needed for ZfD 3.2. For example, the SCANDIR path must be set in ZfD 3.2 because this path setting did not exist in ZENworks 2. Besides policies, you must also migrate the ZENworks 2 Inventory database to ZfD 3.2.

As a guideline, always plan and phase the migration.

Follow this procedure to migrate:

  1. Create a deployment plan for ZfD 3.2 assuming there is no ZENworks 2 in the network.

    See Deploying Inventory over a WAN Environment for more information.Optimize on the number of databases and routes for inventory flow without any consideration of the current ZENworks 2 deployment.

  2. Create a phased migration plan.

    Identify the sites and servers to move at the same time.

    It is much easier to migrate a single ZENworks 2 database and all servers and sites connected the database at the same time.

    If a database server and all servers and sites cannot be moved at the same time, use another server temporarily on the ZfD 3.2 site for the database to ease the migration. This server should have the appropriate role such as Intermediate Server or Root Server, as determined by the needs of ZfD 3.2.If an alternative server is not available, consider sending the inventory data from the servers at the lower level of the hierarchy directly to the next level during migration. If this is not feasible, another approach is to not to scan some of the workstations that are still on the ZENworks 2 tree during migration. This can be an acceptable solution because it should be possible to migrate all the servers and workstations served by a single database server during the course of two or three days, and it may not be an issue if some workstations are not scanned for that period.If you use the option of migrating the ZENworks 2 database server to ZfD 3.2, migrate as many inventory servers simultaneously as possible. The other servers will wait and get errors connecting to the database for a few days until they are migrated. The ZENworks 2 Inventory policy for those servers can be disabled until they are also migrated.

  3. Migrate the ZENworks databases to the database at the Root Sever of ZfD 3.2.

    All databases in ZENworks 2 can be migrated one after the other to a database at the Root Server in ZfD 3.2. There is no need to migrate the ZENworks 2 data to an intermediate database and then build ZfD 3.2 data.In evaluating the need for intermediate database, consider the power and deployment of ZfD 3.2. Fewer databases should suffice in ZfD 3.2 than were used in ZENworks 2.

  4. Migrate the policies.

    The most important policy to migrate is the Inventory policy applicable to the workstations. Use the Migration tool to migrate the old data and provide the new data, such as the SCANDIR path so the migrated policy will work in a ZfD 3.2 environment.

    If you want to use the ZENworks 2 setup after you have done a partial or incremental deployment and have a combination of ZENworks 2 and ZfD 3.2 servers, you must associate the ZENworks 2 container package (with the Search Policy enabled) to the container or the containers with the user and workstation objects. This is required because the schema is extended for ZfD 3.2 if it is installed in the same tree.

  5. Create ZfD 3.2 policies.

    Create all additional ZfD 3.2 policies and setups according to the ZfD 3.2 deployment plan.