This part of the Best Practices guide focuses on what the administrator who is responsible for maintaining the ZENworks Database and the ZENworks Audit Database should know.
The ZENworks database is the most important aspect of the ZENworks infrastructure and it contains information about bundles, policies, configuration, and how these features apply to the managed devices and users.
The main considerations that influence the choice of the ZENworks database platform are as follows:
Number of devices you manage: Different databases offer different scalability. Therefore, review Database to decide which platform to use.
Using clustering technologies for fault tolerance of the database: Clustering ensures that the database is always available.
Virtualization of the ZENworks Database Server is not recommended. However, if you want to go ahead and use it, ensure that you follow the database vendor's best practice.
The sections covered in this chapter include:
Novell strongly recommends a dedicated database server for the ZENworks database. Placing the ZENworks database on a dedicated server ensures that other processes cannot take resources that ZENworks might need in order to provide an efficient and scalable experience. Placing the database on a server with other virtual machines can lead to performance degradation, which in turn can affect other aspects of ZENworks, from the performance of the ZENworks Control Center to the responsiveness of ZENworks on managed devices.
Novell does not recommend virtualization of the ZENworks Database server. You should use a dedicated server for the ZENworks database to ensure that the available resources for the database are known and are under control. Placing the database on a server with other virtual machines can lead to performance degradation, which in turn can affect other aspects of ZENworks, from the performance of the ZENworks Control Center to the responsiveness of ZENworks on managed devices.
If you want to virtualize your database on a VMware ESXi server and you are planning to utilize Microsoft SQL Server, see the VMware documentation on Virtualizing Microsoft SQL Server on VMware ESXi. This document needs to be reviewed prior to installing the database and other ZENworks services.
The size and performance of the database is dependent on a number of factors, including number of managed devices, database hardware configuration, database features, and more. In the Novell Superlab testing we have certified the database platforms to support a specific number of managed devices as shown in the table below. Depending on your hardware configuration, it is possible that your real-world results might vary.
|
Database Platform |
Number of Devices |
|---|---|
|
Sybase (embedded on ZENworks Primary) |
Up to 3,000 |
|
Sybase (remote) |
Up to 5,000 |
|
Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Standard Edition |
Up to 40,000 |
|
Oracle Enterprise Edition (with Partitioning) for information about partitioning, see Oracle Enterprise with Partitioning. |
Up to 100,000 |