System Requirements

This section contains information about the server software and hardware you need to deploy ZENworks Linux Management.

A ZENworks Linux Management server has similar requirements to a Web or database server, and should be run on a dedicated system. This server must meet the requirements outlined in the following sections:


Software


Hardware

For an evaluation, with fewer than 100 clients, 2-3 Linux distributions, and a lab environment, we suggest:

For a small deployment, with 100 to 500 systems, 3-5 Linux distributions, and some custom applications, we suggest:


Additional Requirements

You need approximately two additional gigabytes of disk space for each additional operating system you plan to mirror and support.

If your corporate network uses a proxy server to connect to the Internet, or if your clients need to use a proxy to access your ZENworks Linux Management server, be sure to check the type of proxy. HTTP and HTTPS proxies, using basic or digest authentication, are supported. NTLM or SOCKS proxies, such as Microsoft* Proxy 2.0, are not supported.

The default package storage location is /ximian, so in most cases / should be your largest partition.

The /var partition holds the database, logs, and download caches for rcmirror and rcd. It will require less space than the package repository, but half to a quarter of the repository size is not unreasonable. If you plan to use rcmirror to any extent, you may wish to allocate 4 to 6 GB more.

If you prefer not to allocate so much space to /var, you can select a different cache directory in the rcmirror.conf file. See rcmirror for details.


Server Installation Worksheet

This server installation worksheet contains a list of server information that might be required during install. Fill out this worksheet and keep it handy as you install the ZENworks Linux Management server, so that you have all the necessary information in one place.

Name Value

Hostname

IP Address

Distribution and version

Target platform

Available disk space (df -h output)

CD mount point

Red Carpet Express activation key, if any

Location of server.key file

Destination of server.key file

Administrator login (email)

 

Administrator password

 

Proxy URL, if any

 

Proxy username, if any

 

Proxy password, if any