ZENWorks and the art of Windows desktop maintenance

After a recent column discussing low-cost ways to flesh out a systems administration plan based on Microsoft’s SMS (System Management Server), I received a small deluge of reader e-mails chastising me for not suggesting Novell’s ZENWorks as an alternative to SMS.

Why didn’t I suggest it? Because I’m a boob, an imbecile, a weirdo. Oh wait, I’m just re-reading those e-mails. The real reason I didn’t suggest it that I simply haven’t looked at it in some time. Last time these eyes glanced at a ZENWorks console, it was installed on a NetWare server, something I’m not concentrating on much here, this being a column about Windows and all.

But Novell, in keeping with its long tradition of ultra-quiet marketing, has had a Windows-only version of ZENWorks available for quite some time. The company just forgot to tell me about it. (Little strategy tip for the folks in Utah: “New product” equals “send a press kit.”)

After taking my usual dose of post-fan-mail antidepressants, I clicked on over to Novell’s site and downloaded the evaluation version of ZENWorks for Desktops 6, now functional in a Windows-only environment. In fact, ZENWorks allows administrators to manage desktops relying user policies of Windows NT, 2000 and XP.

Although you won’t need NetWare, you will need Novell’s eDirectory (included with the same number of licenses as for ZENWorks). This bugged me at first because running two directories in any network is a recipe for hassle, but Novell has also included DirXML, which almost automatically keeps eDirectory synced with your Active Directory tree. You’ll run through some configuration hurdles in the beginning, but after that, syncing is seamless.

You’ll also need NetWare Client32 on every machine that ZENWorks will manage. I was ready to simply install the Client32 software, but happily, it turns out there’s a middleware component, the ZENWorks management agent, that will communicate with machines not running Client32, allowing them access to eDirectory objects and policies. Admittedly, I was working in a lab environment, but this solution worked great. I even installed the Client32 software on a couple of machines to compare overall performance, and the difference was negligible. The management agent used to run only on a NetWare server, but now it runs on any Windows 2000 Server using IIS, and the client half of the equation installs easily by using Active Directory to push the software out.

Finally, you’ll need a database, but there ZENWorks is no different from any other network or systems administration tool. A Sybase version ships with the tool, but you can also use Oracle 8i or later and SQL Server 2000 or later. These are hefty database bins, but because the Sybase database is included, there’s no harm to ZENWorks’ price tag. And for those running large enterprise networks, one or more power databases might be required because ZENWorks specifically caters to such needs. The product automatically captures data in a local database and then replicates it in another central repository. You’re still talking significant database configuration and management, however, since ZENWorks doesn’t do all this for you. But it does support such an environment, which is still an improvement over most other applications. ZENWorks’ inventory component offers a compelling reason to think carefully about your chosen database’s power, both because it’s fairly complex and because it offers a number of options depending on your network’s parameters. Once installed, ZENWorks is truly an excellent desktop management tool. Deploying or even pushing new applications to workstations anywhere on the network is a bit different than when using SMS, if that’s what you’ve used until now. But once you become accustomed to the new syntax, the software simply works. I never crashed it once, even during my learning phase, though I did have to back out of a few missteps.

ZENWorks 6 pricing is still a mite vague, but if it follows previous versions you can expect about $70 per client. Additionally, you can opt to expand to ZENWorks for Servers or ZENWorks for Handhelds. I haven’t been able to look at those yet, but I’m looking forward to it. In fact, I haven’t really scratched the surface of ZENWorks for desktops yet either. But even in this short time, it’s obvious the platform is not only polished, but stable and seamless in its integration with the Redmond behemoth or any non-Novell environment, for that matter.

Lessons learned: Not all good things for Windows come out of Washington; and some folks in Utah need to be a little more vocal.