Taking the time to plan your ZENworks Linux Management deployment can help you avoid problems or reconfigurations in the future. Although many of the decisions you make at this stage can be altered or adjusted in the future, it helps to have a clear set of actions laid out beforehand.
The following list walks you through the planning process using examples from the Example Rollout Procedure:
Decide on the number of groups you need and how you wish to divide them. Try to predict the sorts of software you will need to distribute.
In our example network, there are three general types of machines to take care of: servers, which require remote administration, engineering workstations, which are administered, sometimes recklessly, by their users, and non-technical workstations which are used but generally not administered by their users. For all machines, we want security and operating system updates installed automatically whenever they are available. Office workstations also get access to optional updates and additional tools. The engineering team requires access to software development tools, as well.
Later, it may be advisable to grant administrator access to some of the engineering team members, so they can distribute their own software to each other.
Our example will use three groups, one for each type of machine. The servers get security updates only, including SUSE® patches for SUSE Linux Enterprise 9 servers; the workstations will get security updates, patches, and the optional software channel, and the engineering workstations will get those two, plus a development channel.
For most deployments, multi-use keys are the best activation tool.
Single-use keys might be good for the engineering workstations, and the organization ID method would be acceptable for the servers, if there were only a few of them and we wanted to give them individual attention. However, for maximum automation and convenience, the multi-use key is the preferred method.
You need to decide on a procedure for installing the software on Linux* clients that already exist, such as a shell script and an NFS shared drive.
Even if you are not deploying to new machines now, it helps to have a plan for the addition of new machines to your existing ZENworks Linux Management network.
If you are using OS installation tools like AutoYaST or Kickstart, you can add the required packages to the install set, then have post-install scripts run configuration commands and start services as needed. If you are installing custom machines or adding them one by one, it might be simpler to do the client software installs manually.
PostgreSQL* is the default ZENworks Linux Management database. Oracle* is also supported in certain configurations, see Using Oracle with ZENworks Linux Management for details.
How many administrators do you plan to have, and what privileges do they require?
Decide now how many operating systems you need to support, and how many different channels you need to create and manage.
Choose your policies on package signatures, SSL certificates, and remote access. Especially with package signatures, they must be in place before you need to ship software.
Complete the Server Installation Worksheet to record the information you need during the ZENworks Linux Management installation.
After you have planned your ZENworks Linux Management deployment, continue to Installing.