Novell Upgrades ZENworks Linux Management Software

cfelde writes "eWeek reports that Novell launched a major new release of its ZENworks Linux Management software at CeBIT on Friday, with the aim of bringing management of Linux desktops and servers on par with that of Windows desktops and servers. ZENworks 7 Linux Management adds remote control, imaging, hardware and software inventory, a Web console, and ZENworks' automated policy management to make it a full life-cycle management suite."

Comments

Bring it on par with Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, they lied to us all those years, when they told us Linux was already better in any way?

Addresses Critics Wells

[bigtallmofo]

New features listed in ZENWorks 7 will really help to shutter the FUD in regard to Linux's TCO.

Now CIOs will have an even more robust product to be able to tell their MS reps to stop chanting "TCO" as a reason to stick with/switch to Windows.

Re:Addresses Critics Wells

[Anonymous Coward]

Provided it works as advertised and you can afford all the licenses you'll have to buy!!!

wtf?

[Apreche]

with the aim of bringing management of Linux desktops and servers on par with that of Windows desktops and servers

Um, how about a tool that does the reverse? Something that turns the windows registry and software configurations into a bunch of sensible and human readable text files all in a single directory with sane permissions.

Although the imaging is nice. I know way too many imaging programs which do not correctly support certain bootloaders in the mbr.

Re:wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty close to what ZENworks for Desktops does for Windows. It puts files, registry settings, ini files and settings, environment variables, shortcuts, and more in one management console.

Re:wtf?

[rikkards]

No offence but the registry is not that hard to figure out, hell it is easier to figure out than setting up Modelines for a wierd monitor in Xorg.
HKLM = Machine specific Settings
HKCU = Link to HK_Users\ = User specific settings
HK_Classes_Root = Link to HKLM\Classes\Software Classes

In both HKCU and HKLM there are Software subkeys which is where apps are supposed to write and user or machine specific settings

Machine specific System Settings (i.e Services, etc) are located in HKLM\System.
In there are CurrentControlSet (curren System Settings) as well as ControlSetx which (I think) are previous settings as well as LastKnownGoodRecovery

Probably the most convoluted section is the Classes but rarely does anyone need to go in there.

It's a little of a different mindset but not that big. The nice thing about Linux is that since they are human readable files there is no singular point of failure (i.e if registry corrupts) but the Registry is still not that daunting and it can be backed up easily by backing up the System state.

Re:wtf?

[rikkards]

Damn the HKCU entry got screwed up Essentially HKCU points to a subkey within the HKEY_USERS that corresponds to the SID of the user.

For example if you go into Regedit as the local administrator and look in HKU you will see two subkeys called -500 and -500_Classes. The local Administrator account SID always ends in 500

This is why renaming the admin account is not always a foolproof method of stopping people to hack in as all they need to figure out is what name corresponds to the *500 SID.

Re:wtf?

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

It's a little of a different mindset but not that big. The nice thing about Linux is that since they are human readable files there is no singular point of failure (i.e if registry corrupts) but the Registry is still not that daunting and it can be backed up easily by backing up the System state.

Well the other nice thing about config files is the ability to have in-line comments and manage the files via CVS or something similar.

Re:wtf?

[rikkards]

Well the other nice thing about config files is the ability to have in-line comments and manage the files via CVS or something similar.

The comment thing would be nice however Active Directories gives a lot of power to applying specified configurations to specific computers or groups of computers. Rather than managing the files you just create Group Policies and apply to specific OUs that are necessary. You can also limit which members of the OU (machine or User) that gets it applied by setting specific permissions based on groups.

About time

[Vidar Leathershod]

There are plenty of small businesses who will stick with MS just for the MMC stuff. I am hoping this is pretty decent, so I can get someone to switch already.

Vidar

Hey Hemos.

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsforge, an OSTG site, had this story two days ago. In fact Joe Barr, OSTG's own epic hack, interviewed Novell execs directly.

True to form, it is a terrible artice from Barr but, it was several days earlier than what your posting. Surely the left hand knows what the right is doing at OSTG. Doesn't it?

to late, to little

[MadMirko]

The product is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2005

Companies with large numbers of clients already have that funtionality. From Microsoft's own SMS in combination with Vintela's fantastic extensions for Linux / Unix / Mac management.

The catch is, most companies are MS centric, so they use SMS to manage their clients. With Linux replacing the Unix (if any) machines in those companies it makes sense to extend the existing management product, to use ONE solution to manage ALL clients.

Check out Vintela if you haven't. They offer client management, authentication and single sign on for integration of non-MS clients into MS-centric networks.

Re:to late, to little

[ezs]

Sure - if the customer is tying all of their management into Microsoft SMS 2003. The SMS/Vintela story is good if you have Windows guys looking to have some simple Linux management. Contrast this to the ZENworks story that says - "We don't mind what you have". ZENworks will run in a pure NetWare, pure Windows or a pure Linux environment. Most often it runs in a broadly heterogeneous world. You choose who manages what and what to install on and where to administer from.

Re:to late, to little

[killjoe]

I have friends who are MS admins, they hate SMS. Maybe their experience is not typical but they really really hate it.

Also vintella is a canopy company. If you can avoid it you should boycott canopy companies.

Re:to late, to little

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have friends who are MS admins, they hate SMS."

I have too *cough* a friend *cough* who is *cough* MS admin *cough* and ..

Re:to late, to little

[Anonymous Coward]

>Also vintella is a canopy company. If you can avoid it you should boycott canopy companies.

But I need a tarp for my trailer!

What the hell is a canopy company? A cover for another company? Which one? What's so bad about them?

Re:to late, to little

[Anonymous Coward]

Canopy as in Canopy Group as in the Evil Bastards behind SCO.

Re:to late, to little

[DFossmeister]

Are you talking about SMS or Zenworks?

Novell was rolling out its directory service and Zen back when Microsoft was trying to get SMS 1.0 working. Back then it required the netware client. It has come a long, long way since then.

At one time, most of the world was using Netware clients. So if most of the world is using Windows file servers now, it can change just like it did before.

Lastly, most Windows admins that I know don't really care for SMS all that much--never have.

DFossmeister

Oh, *great*

[buss_error]

with the aim of bringing management of Linux desktops and servers on par with that of Windows desktops and servers.

And why would we want to subject ourselves to that kind of difficulty, pain, and anguish? The tools that are already part and parcel of Unix/Linux are complete and useful for that. All it takes is someone that knows what the hell they are doing.

Re:Oh, *great*

[Clover_Kicker]

> And why would we want to subject ourselves to that kind of difficulty,
> pain, and anguish? The tools that are already part and parcel of
> Unix/Linux are complete and useful for that.

Ever used Zen on Windows? There's a lot to like.

> All it takes is someone that knows what the hell they are doing.

Heh. In case you haven't noticed, there's a severe shortage of people who know what the hell they're doing.

Re:Oh, *great*

[huber]

You have obviously never used zenworks. It is a fantastic package for workstation managment. As far as i know there is nothing better than it.

Re:Oh, *great*

[buss_error]

Ever used Zen on Windows?
Yes.

There's a lot to like.
Not in my experience with multi-thousands of desktops. About all I can say is that it's better than nothing.

Heh. In case you haven't noticed, there's a severe shortage of people who know what the hell they're doing.
I noticed that at work, actually. Starting with the management and all the way down. Most of the people that actaully DO the work are pretty bright, or at minimum CAN do the work... This isn't the usual PHB gripe either. I mean, management seriously lacks clue, seriously avoids it, and selects software and future plans based on what slick salesmen and pretty brochures say. The manager that understands the most technically wouldn't qualify as a level I admin, but thinks he knows the technical end better than any of the admins. I'd go on, but there isn't any point, nor any hope.

Re:Oh, *great*

[Clover_Kicker]

My (happy) Zen experience is with a few hundred desktops, sorry to hear it isn't working out for ya.

I don't know if you're directly responsible for the Zen stuff, but there's an excellent Novell mailing list that might be of help.

http://netlab1.usu.edu/novell.faq/nvfaq-b.htm#B000

Good luck etc.

What?

[Pan T. Hose]

Novell launched a major new release of its ZENworks Linux Management software at CeBIT on Friday, with the aim of bringing management of Linux desktops and servers on par with that of Windows desktops and servers.

Am I the only one who has been trying for years to finally bring management of Windows desktops and servers on par with that of Linux desktops and servers? I'm sure that "full life-cycle management suite" may be very interesting to anyone who employ cutting edge proactive paradigm shifts, but in the Real World administrators have much more problems with remote administrating of Windows than Linux (or BSD, or Mac, or Solaris... you name it) boxen. (Don't trust Microsoft when they tell you about Linux TOC. They lie.) So the question is: is Novell really relevant in the Un*x world? Hasn't TCP/IP won with Novell's proprietary networking technology? Don't get me wrong, Novell networks were great in MS-DOS world but the Un*x culture is much older than that, the Internet is much older than that. The most important question is: what does it really mean for Linux users, administrators and developers? And by "really" I mean without the marketspeak buzzwords. Which tools is it supposed to render irrelevant? (Because if it is useful, then it must be used in place of some other, standard, existing tool, for all of those areas have been pretty much covered for decades.) All in all, the choice is good, but I will remain sceptical until I see any Real World examples of the supposed superiority of those new ideas. (I am not holding my breath, though.) I believe that we should look at Windows if we want to make Linux ready for the desktop, but as far as the management of Linux desktops and servers goes, here the Windows should learn from us.

Re:What?

[FreeLinux]

The most important question is: what does it really mean for Linux users, administrators and developers?

They are not referring to making Linux like Windows. They are referring to making the management of Linux, through ZenWorks, like the management of Windows, through ZenWorks. This is an important feature for ZenWorks and its users and is a feature that Novell has been missing for some time, despite their previous claims of ZenWorks Linux support.

ZenWorks is a fantastic tool and is extremely powerful. It performs functions such as hardware and software inventory, application installation and removal, remote control, system policy management and more. But, ZenWorks primary area of support has been Windows systems. Novell claimed that it supported Linux and PDA's but, this support was very limited. Now, with ZenWorks 7, the supported features for Linux approach the level of the Windows features that have always been there.

First off, you need to understand what ZenWorks can do. ZenWorks is a system for controlling and managing workstations and servers network-wide from a single location, using policies that are stored in eDirectory, Novell's directory service. With ZenWorks, an administrator can control settings like Windows Policies and KDE kiosk configuration. With ZenWorks an administrator can install and remove applications, patches and configurations remotely from a single location. With ZenWorks, an administrator can install new operating systems or reinstall broken operating systems remotely, from a single location.

Some of these things you can do with Linux already and some of them you can't. Or at least, you can't do them easily. This new ZenWorks is supposed to make it brain dead easy to do these things for 10 systems or 10,000 systems. The key concepts are ease and volume/automation. Sure, you could write a script to ssh into your systems and install some software or what-have-you but, it will be different every time and too often requires some form of manual intervetion. Most importantly, nothing about the script will be useable on Windows workstations. You'll have to use different scripts and scripting languages for those systems so, the overhead is relatively high.

Here are a couple of scenarios. Suppose your working the helpdesk and a user calls to say that their PC isn't working. You open up the management console and quickly locate the PC in question from amongst the thousands in your firm. With two clicks you are connected to the PC and remotely controlling it. Regardless of whether the PC is Windows or Linux, the procedure is the same.

Now you see that the PC isn't actually broken, as the user reported but, it is simply missing an application because the user had moved in from another department and had not yet been configured to use that application. A couple of clicks associates the user with the application and the application is automatically installed and made available to the user. Again, Windows or Linux, the procedure is the same in ZenWorks.

Now, let's suppose that during the install of the application, the user unplugged the PC. I don't know why they did it, they just did it. They're a user, OK? Anyway, for what ever reason the disk is corrupted and the OS is hosed. You instruct the user to restart the machine and choose the appropriate option from the boot menu. The PC is reimaged with a fresh copy of the OS and the appropriate applications are reinstalled. In ten minutes the user is up and running with no user or admninistrator intervention. Again, Windows or Linux, the procedure is the same from within ZenWorks.

Now, let's assume a different scenario. This time, let's assume that your boss has decided that the company will now use the latest Windows 200X on all workstations. This is a massive upgrade that requires not only the installation of a new OS but also the installation or upgrade of numerous applications that were being used before but no longer work under the new Windows version. Even if you use RIS or Ghost

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Work for Novell, do we?

Re:What?

[spitzak]

Now I'm not a system administrator, but this sure sounds like Windows-centric thinking. Especially where you said "run an ssh script on the remote machine". You seem to think the only way to fix a machine is to run specialized programs *on* it.

Have you heard of rsync? rcp? ssh logins? How about nfs? How about centralized home directories? How about running an application that is stored on the network? 20 years ago a sysadmin could "remote administrate" a user without their machine even being turned on! And if it was on they could do everything from a terminal running on their own machine, without telling the user to wait and without the user getting to watch the mouse move around on their screen and open gui tools and accidentally type in the admin password into the clear field.

The only useful thing this provides (other than handholding for people brainwashed by Windows into believing you have to take over a machine to "administer" it) is imaging. Now I don't know what they are using, but at work on reboot the machine already checks and images itself from a central location, updating *both* Windows and Linux of a dual-boot system. Sounds like this already exists. Though if there was more intelligent non-Windows-centric design perhaps the BIOS could respond to a network or at least communicate over a serial line so the user does not have to reboot the machine. THAT would be an improvement!

Re:What?

[FreeLinux]

Now I'm not a system administrator

From your post, obviously not.

Have you heard of rsync? rcp? ssh logins? How about nfs? How about centralized home directories? How about running an application that is stored on the network?

Rsyc - Synchronizes files doesn't really help with specifics like settings in Gconf or updates to Postfix alias databases or RPM installations.

Rcp - insecure. Better to use scp or sftp.

Ssh logins - that's what I said in the original post.

Nfs - File sharing isn't systems management.

Centralized Home directories - the only way to go for network connected uses.

Running apps from the network - excellent when possible. But, doesn't work with some apps, with large apps when bandwidth is an issue, or with people disconnected from the network such as laptops.

Also, many of the above services are not available on Windows, only Linux/Unix. This limits your options for network management as even your environment seems to have Windows as well as Linux.

I'm not trying to flame you but, rather point out that it isn't a case of Windows-centric thinking. It is a case of network-wide management thinking. Thinking in terms of doing as much as possible from a central point with the greatest of ease. Volume and automation.

The imaging that you describe in your environment is likely the same one the ZenWorks uses, PXE booting. While it can be setup on almost any network it is fiddly to say the least. ZenWorks makes its setup much easier and it is only a small part of what ZenWorks does. For instance, can they take a backup image of your workstation remotely because, your hard drives S.M.A.R.T. is predicting a failure or they want to have a backup for some other reason? PXE doesn't do this but, with ZenWorks they can, and now it doesn't matter if your running Windows or Linux.

Re:What?

[Reziac]

"With ZenWorks setup in your environment, you can have your Windows helpdesk people install or repair applications on Linux systems without any real Linux knowledge."

I am not a sysadmin or even a real networking dude; my network-grok is at best crude. However... when I went to Novell's seminar and watched the ZenWorks live demo, my immediate thought was, "That is SO simple, even *I* could do that". How to accomplish desired tasks was flamingly evident, and did not assume any serious knowledge of networks beyond "this is connected to that". Very much designed for real people in the real world, not just for toplevel experts.

Re:What?

[spitzak]

Sorry I didn't mean to sound hostile. It is just from a Linux point of view, I am still very confused as to what this offers. It must offer something, but too much of the description is how to work around bad ideas in Windows. I would like to know how it really is superior to hav

In Unix it is assummed that a program is quite able to look in arbitrary places for it's configuration. The user has to set an environment variable that says "look here", but *that* can be set by another script. Even totally broken programs are fooled into running by symbolic links or by making a script to run it do the necessary rsync. In all cases you can make running a program lead to something the administrator can change on the central machine, so most of "administration" is "edit this file and save it". Now I'm the first to admit this leads to a spagetti mess of shell scripts, and cleaning it up would certainly be nice.

But it just seems the whole design of this remote administration is backwards from a Unix point of view. Even you admit that a big part of the design is because "many of the services are not available on Windows". On Unix you only "go to the other machine" to fix things when they are *broken*, meaning you are experimenting and thus a remote shell allowing arbitrary commands is the ideal interface. All automatic things are done by doing something *local* to the administration machine.

Some of the documentation I read described as "pull" verses "push". I guess then classic Unix administration is *all* "pull". The idea that anything needs "push" is foreign, and thus leading to the many questions people with Unix experience have about these systems.

Actually the only thing I really understand is the re-imaging code, but that is a "pull" system as well, in that it checks on reboot, and just-in-time, in that it gets the new image just before it uses it.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm not trying to flame you but, rather point out
> that it isn't a case of Windows-centric thinking.

Actually, it *is* a case of Windows-centric thinking. Unix, Linux, and even Mac OSX can use a similar central server management. It's possible to create Linux or Mac OSX desktops and manage those through scripts and daemons, but they're nowhere near as easy to administer as things centrally. If you want to see how things should be done, pick up a Sun Ray. Those things make terminal serving a breeze (yes, they can be made to work with Linux and other OSes too.).

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it this particular case (zen application distribution) the person who actually configures the application for distribution must, in many cases, have extensive knowlede of the company's network, know the application inside out, know the operating systems, etc. etc. etc. After that test, test and test. After that, hand out the application to these clueless help desk persons.
Compare this to a situation where the clueless help desk person walks down to a (Windows) workstation and installs office on it. Does she need all the knowledge about mentioned to succeed? No. But if she wants to deploy the very same office through zen, the knowlegde is a must.
Im not saying Zen is not a great product. It's just not _that_ simple.

Re:What?

[Reziac]

I agree with you completely about the need to test, test, refine, and test some more. However, that's a matter of content, not of distribution.

What I was getting at, is that given X content (and an assumption that SOMEONE has tested it, because untested patches/updates are tantamount to network suicide), anyone with half a clue could DEPLOY that content with ZenWorks -- selectively, if necessary.

Re:What?

[NutscrapeSucks]

In Unix it is assummed that a program is quite able to look in arbitrary places for it's configuration. The user has to set an environment variable that says "look here", but *that* can be set by another script. Even totally broken programs are fooled into running by symbolic links or by making a script to run it do the necessary rsync

OK, you take these script/envvar/symlink tricks, mulitply by hundreds of applicaitons, multiply by thousands of workstations and the whole thing ends up looking like one big unmaintainable hairball hack attack.

Maybe that's just my Winbrain talking -- but when I do work on *nix systems, it always seems like I'm reverse engineering these tricks, even to get programs running that shipped with the distro.

Maybe a better way to think of it is a "server" mentaility -- custom configurations are required and there pretty much has to be a "pull" model, as you put it. However, when you have thousands of mostly identical workstations, it would seem that "push" is vastly superior to "pull".

Re:What?

[FridayBob]

That much is obvious, but he does have a point. Sure, there are completely different ways of tackling this problem in the Unix world, but that doesn't mean there aren't any people in the Windows world who wouldn't like to be able to manage Linux workstations the same way they do Windows workstations. For them, it's always been a tool that's been missing for Linux. Let's face, most big companies are still Windows centric as far as the desktop is concerned and many of the sysadmins out there find themselves in cross-over situations at best. ZENworks Linux is for them. Let 'em use it if they think it's the best solution: that's fine with me. I recently heard a complaint about Linux from one ZENworks sysadmin that the lack of this kind of tool was exactly the reason why his department was not yet ready to consider Linux as a serious alternative to Windows. Maybe ZENworks Linux will shut him up. Okay, so NDS (um,.. eDirectory) is not as popular as it used to be, but at least this kind of solution is available for those who want to work this way. And who knows, if some companies that go with this product eventually end up getting rid of most of their Windows desktops as a result, maybe they'll start to notice the other more elegant Unix-type solutions as well.

Now let me wait...

[bogaboga]

Now let me wait...to see whether there is any slashdotter who will say this is not positive. I hope there will be none. On the other hand, it would be better if Novell gives a hand to the Firefox folks so that they can deliver management tools for the up-coming browser. This is what it lacks now. In case they are already assisting in some way, my apologies. I understand IE has had this feature for ages.

Critical need

[The Second Horseman]

Actually, deploying and managing hundreds or thousands of workstations in a policy-driven fashion is critical in a large buisiness network. It's the policy-driven part that's important -- it can really cut down on the number of people you have running around changing workstation configs. The non-corporate elements around here tend to discount these sort of things, but if you're short-staffed and faced with 1,500 workstations, managment and deployment are huge issues. And up until recently, those tools for Linux werent there. They're not really there for MacOS. If you want to beat Windows, you have to not only match what the OS does for managment, you have to have 3rd-party tools as good as the ones available for Windows. And a lot of those 3rd party tools are quite good.

Re:Critical need

[Ed Avis]

On Unix-like systems most of the policy is determined by config files in a user's home directory, which will be the same across all systems. Then there is a small amount of per-system configuration like X server configuration and who is allowed to log in, which can be done by distributing out config files to each host with an overnight cron job. What remains is configuring which software is installed, which is fairly easy to do by setting up a custom repository with yum/apt/smart/whatever.

I must be missing the point here - what is involved in managing desktops in a 'policy-driven fashion'? Perhaps it is more difficult if you can't assume that 99% of the desktop machines have almost identical settings.

To put things another way: hundreds of universities have big networks of Linux desktops, with a varied range of applications and hardware configurations. I don't think many of them shell out for expensive 'policy-driven' tools, yet they manage to enforce sensible policies in the face of fairly hostile and ingenious users (students). I understand the need for extra tools when administering Windows because Windows configuration is otherwise so fiddly and obscure. But I don't see what extra these tools bring to Unix.

Re:Critical need

[bogaboga]

[...]hundreds of universities have big networks of Linux desktops,[...]

Care to give some examples? This would help...or are you bound by some non-disclosure agreement?

Re:Critical need

[just fiddling around]

In this context, "configuration management" means managing OS versions, patches, software installation, upgrading and removal and, at least with Zenworks, remote control and hardware inventory management.

As you have assumed, those tasks get more difficult when you mix user types, tasks and profiles; at work, we have developers (a small minority of users), which get different software and permissions on their PC's than the rest of people. Zenworks manages that and separate shared directories for each unit in the shop.

What I think is cool with that suite is that I do not face more than 2 hours downtime when I have my workstation upgraded.

Re:Critical need

[The Second Horseman]

You're limiting what you think of as policies, and you may be ignoring the staffing issue. How about policy-driven application distribution? Triggered by the end user on demand instead of a push technology so you're not dumping unneeded garbage on every workstation? And distributed securely using elevated system access so that the user doesn't have to be logged in as Administrator/root/whatever to trigger that installation? Same with distributing printers, software patches, etc.

Look at it this way -- the industry is/will be about identity managment and provisioning resources. There's no reason that workstations and software, storage, servers, etc. can't be treated as resources. This moves towards the ability to handle Linux systems as just another resource.

Re:Critical need

[Welsh Dwarf]

Take the one that I studied at for a start: Nantes, France, the undergrad section alone in CS had a good 300-400 boxes, all either dualboot or Linux only

Re:Critical need

[rsax]

They're not really there for MacOS.

Actually there are a couple of commercial ones. I can't remember the names but go through the radmind mailing list archives and they're probably mentioned a bunch of times. Speaking of radmind, are you aware of the fact that several university administrators are using it to manage networks consisting of hundreds of Mac OS X machines? radmind can work on UNIX, BSD and Linux machines as well.

Re:Critical need

[billysara]

There are very workable free tools to manage large UNIX/linux installs - for instance cfengine. I use that extensively to manage 100's of workstations, servers and clusters with policies, sub-policies, logical grouping of policies etc etc

Re:Critical need

[Anonymous Coward]

It continues to amaze me how Windows and Linux admins present their problems from eachothers' perspectives, neither fully realizing what the other is capable of. Being a system administrator that deals with both (and soon MacOS X as well), I see the value of knowing as much as possible about everything I can about both.

The Second Horseman (121958):
Actually, deploying and managing hundreds or thousands of workstations in a policy-driven fashion is critical in a large buisiness network. It's the policy-driven part that's important -- it can really cut down on the number of people you have running around changing workstation configs.

No argument from me here. Homogeneity is a profoundly important goal for any large organization, unless your employer likes paying unnecessary payroll tax, benefits and workman's comp. However, Microsoft's choice of a consolidated, binary configuration file(s) creates the need for Windows policy management, and all its associated helper utilities. Basic policy enforcement is a free lunch, but more flexible solutions require the purchase of other software, or third-party tools.

Ed Avis (5917):
I must be missing the point here - what is involved in managing desktops in a 'policy-driven fashion'? Perhaps it is more difficult if you can't assume that 99% of the desktop machines have almost identical settings.

It involves creating a 'template' of the configuration you want, and configuring the domain controller to enforce those settings whenever a workstation logs on. Configuration is done through the MS Management Console utility. It's great for Windows settings and MS applications, but nearly worthless for anything else.

The Second Horseman (121958):
The non-corporate elements around here tend to discount these sort of things, but if you're short-staffed and faced with 1,500 workstations, managment and deployment are huge issues. And up until recently, those tools for Linux werent there.

Here's an example of exactly what I mentioned in the first paragraph. Just because it doesn't work exactly like Windows, it "[isn't] there", and to contrast, I've quoted the above, where the poster asks what is the "policy-driven fashion" of configuration management. The tools are there, and not knowing how to make use of them is no excuse for ignoring them during a discussion of management. Since Linux configuration is essentially just a bunch of text files, enforcing the desired configuration is simply a matter of overwriting those that need to be changed. It's conceptually no different from merging forced registry changes, except one can be more selective with separate text config files, and therefore more bandwidth-efficient.

Cron jobs, remote shell, encrypted remote shell, through ftp, http, file shares or secure file transfer, take your pick. Need your policy to follow the user? Stick his home directory on a share and let it be mapped on log-on. Need applications to follow him around, too? Use X sessions on a central host.

The Second Horseman (121958):
If you want to beat Windows, you have to not only match what the OS does for managment, you have to have 3rd-party tools as good as the ones available for Windows. And a lot of those 3rd party tools are quite good.

Those wonderful third-party tools are often quite expensive, and many are per-seat licensing. From my perspective, managing both operating systems as server and client, those third-party tools exist because Microsoft's operating systems lack the flexibility of Linux's tiny, modular components. Don't misconstrue this as my dismissal of said tools; They are quite good and incredibly useful on Windows, and I don't see the problem with them existing for Linux (other than the fact that I don't need them).

There are a whole class of tools that just don't yet exist for Linux b

Re:Critical need

[Ed Avis]

I used to work (occasionally) in the Systems group at the department of Computing at Imperial College London. There were about five hundred desktops altogether of which most were dual-boot Linux/Windows with a few Linux-only. I don't doubt that many other universities have a similar setup. Certainly in CS departments but probably in others where Unix is common.

Re:Critical need

[Ed Avis]

In this context, "configuration management" means managing OS versions, patches, software installation, upgrading and removal

I'd say apt or yum or smart or Red Carpet or (insert favourite package management tool here) handle these tasks pretty well. Perhaps Zenworks or other payware also do a good job but I don't see what real advantage it could have over the existing tools. On Windows, where every application has its own executable installer program, of course you need some kind of fancy tool to make things automatable. But on Linux we're lucky enough to have sane package management.

The only thing you can't smoothly do through the package manager is to upgrade to a whole new release of your distribution, unless you run Debian.

'hardware inventory management' sounds intriguing but I don't know what it is. For 'remote control', surely all Unix systems already have this?

at work, we have developers (a small minority of users), which get different software and permissions on their PC's than the rest of people

Again I can understand this on Windows but it makes less sense on Linux. Unless you're cursed with very small hard disks, you might as well just install all software on all hosts, since rpm or dpkg makes it easy to do so. And normally even a developer does not need any special access to the local machine - even if he or she did want to install additional software not available through package management, all Linux software can be built with './configure --prefix=$HOME' or equivalent.

When you refer to 'at work' are these Windows or Unix systems? I'm sure Zenworks is very useful for administering large numbers of Windows boxes, I'm just trying to get what it offers for those who live in the more civilized world of Unix.

Re:Critical need

[Ed Avis]

How about policy-driven application distribution? Triggered by the end user on demand instead of a push technology so you're not dumping unneeded garbage on every workstation?

I'd never considered 'unneeded garbage' to be a problem, certainly it appears less of a problem than the extra complexity involved in carefully measuring out the amount of garbage each machine gets. I'm referring to Linux systems here; on Windows it's not a good idea to install too many applications since they may do unpleasant things to your Registry or tread on each others' toes, but if you are just distributing RPM or deb packages there are few reasons not to solve the problem with 'install everything everywhere'.

Same with distributing printers, software patches, etc.

Printers: distribute out the /etc/printcap file with an overnight cron job (in the same manner as other system config files). Software patches: again rpm or dpkg handle this, when used with a management tool like apt or yum or smart.

(BTW, if you did for some reason want user-pull app installation on Linux, it's trivial to write a wrapper that lets the user run 'apt-get install gnumeric' or whatever. But I'd prefer to just put gnumeric on everyone's machine and be done with it.)

Screenshots....

[leonmergen]

... here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Re:Screenshots....

[Anonymous Coward]

I see it even has a "Failures" report so it can be used to monitor M$ Windows machines also :)

A brief history lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC because I used to work for one of these (now hated) companies. :)

Long ago, Novell entertained the idea of replacing NetWare with Linux. This was way before the big Linux boom so management obviously just laughed off the idea. So Ransome Love took a bunch of engineers away from Novell and started Caldera.

Novell at the time was developing Zenworks and many in the group felt that there ought to be a Zen for Linux. Again, Novell management flatly rejected that idea as well, so they left novell and started up their own Zen-like product at Caldera, Volution, which I suppose didn't end up doing well.

Right. So instead of listening to their own people years ago and letting them leave for cash-starved startups, Novell is finally getting around to it 5 years later. Better late than never.

Re:A brief history lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you examined the situation from the viewpoint that you were the Novell CEO five years ago BEFORE THE BIG LINUX BOOM and somebody told you it's a good idea to to go support linux on this and that?
So.. maybe 'better late than too soon'? Novell isn't that big company.

Nevertheless, that's an interesting story. In case they had back then 'boldly gone where no man has gone before', things might look quite bright for them today. It's just the guy who presents the idea is not the one taking the responsibility if it doesn't turn out right, managment is. For management, it's a numbers game mostly.

Re:A brief history lesson

[NutscrapeSucks]

Long ago, Novell entertained the idea of replacing NetWare with Linux.

Novell actually announced they were replacing NetWare with UNIXWare. The product map whoed this UNIX-based thing called "SuperNOS" would appear after NetWare 4.

Turned out to be a terrible decision because the technical limitations of NetWare killed Novell's dominant standing in the market.

Re: Linux Management Software

[legirons]

In other news, one of IBM's new sourceforge projects is SBLIM (Standards Based Linux Instrumentation for Manageability)

"The goal of this project is to provide a complete Open Source implementation of a WBEM-based management solution for Linux. "

Ill Omens - Uncommon Proprietary Demo Software

[UnseenEnigma]

If you go into the different demos on the page you will notice that it installs a activeX component and the WebEx player. Why when writing a system designed to promote interopability and OS indipendence would you have your marketing demos in a proprietary application that noone has and (im fairly certain - cant test my linux box doesnt even have a gui) will not work from linux. Macromedia Flash (I know still proprietary) is common and installs relatively easily on linux systems (especially with version 7)

Their are far better alternatives to integrate linux into AD. Their management system reminds me of the Sun Solaris Management (underpowered, fugly - thats why sun dropped it).

Any free alternatives ?

[nurb432]

Not faulting Novell at all, but are there any free alternatives for us small business people that really dont need ( or can afford ) Zen?

Re:Any free alternatives ?

[Donny Smith]

Yeah, they're called Yast and/or Bash

Re:Any free alternatives ?

[nurb432]

Sorry, but a bunch of hacked up bash/perl/python/whatever scripts dont count.

I admit i dont mess with YAST as im not a SUSE fan, but does it allow remote admin of machines as well as local?

Im sure YAST wont support windows machines, which wont help.

Re:Any free alternatives ?

[rsax]

Ignore Donny Smith's reply... it's the standard geek, condescending reply. I don't understand why people like him feel the need to use up bandwidth and time to post useless comments when they have nothing constructive to add to a conversation.

I don't know about Windows machines but for maintaining *nix ones you can use projects like radmind or Cfengine. Someone else in this discussion mentioned sblim but it doesn't look that project is ready to be used in production environments. Hopefully someone else will point to some other decent software.

Re:Any free alternatives ?

[Bishop]

Have a look at Webmin. It is really remote administration and not as powerfull as Zenworks. However for a small business you may find that it does what you need.

I personally don't use Webmin or any similar product. But I have never had to manage more then a dozen machines. I know of Webmin as it has been around forever and it is still being developed.

Note: like all remote administration tools, includeing Zenworks, Webmin does add a security risk. However the risk is easy to manage if you read the docs and configure Webmin properly.

Re:Any free alternatives ?

[Anonymous Coward]

vim? Or I am the only person who does micromanagement.

Re:Any free alternatives ?

[ezs]

Of course there are free (beer, speech) management for Linux from Novell:

Look at Open Carpet as well as the Open Source ZLM (formerly Red Carpet)client

For small shops it should be enough. For hackers and developers - it's free (see above)

Removes last excuse for Linux on Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

For Novell shops this removes the (second to) last major excuse that they had to not run Linux on the desktop: desktop management. This is a very big deal and a very big day for Linux on the corporate desktop (although many Slashdotters may not recognize it).

The ground under Microsoft's castle is shifting.

The final problem is the agreements that MS has with the large PC OEMs (Does anyone _not_ buy Dell for corporate desktops?). MS will continue to (ab)use their monopoly power in this regard. Try to buy 1,000 Linux desktops and see how much you save over buying Windows: not very much, eh? Now look at how much the OEMs are paying MS for each Windows licence that they sell...

The winning punch for Linux on the corporate desktop will not be up-front price, it will be TCO. Novell is rubbing it's fist and thinking about MS's Jay Leno-size chin...

Re:Removes last excuse for Linux on Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if this one little piece in the desktop jigsaw puzzle was enough to make any difference at all - it's not by the way - Novell will surely fuck it all up like they have done with everything else.

Re:No it does not!

[morcego]

Cost of a Linux support person compared to a Winblow -> HIGH

Rightly so, considering that a Linux support/admninstrator can handle, in average, 3 times more users/machines.

Well, yeah. It sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

MIS does a pretty good job of messing up Windows
boxes, damaging productivity and sometimes causing
massive failures during crunch time.

Now even the Linux boxes fall prey to MIS goons.

How about Webmin's cluster module?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't you use the cluster module for webmin and manage X number of machines in this manner with an OSS product?

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

> Ever used Zen on Windows? There's a lot to like.

No, but I've used Xen on Linux. There's a lot to like.

Can Zen configure Xen?

Does Novell have Budda nature?

The answer to these and other exciting questions will be answered on the next episode of "Mu: A step by step guide on how to confuse PHBs".

Absolutely

[losman]

I agree with you 100%. Just reading that line from my original post and I did not mean it to sound as if they "cost" to much. They don't.

They have a skill set that others don't. It is basic supply/demand.

Re:Absolutely

[morcego]

That is true sometimes, of course. But that was not the point I was trying to make.

I was comparing people with comparable skills. Just a question of productivity due to system resources, and the fact that you will have, in the long run, lower suport calls with a unix network.

Most people tend to forget a basic fact about Unix versus Windows. Their learning curves are the inverse of each other.

To learn basic skills, Windows is (usually) easier. But the more you want to advance your knowledge, the harder it gets.

Unix is the oposite. Harder to learn the basics, and keeps getting easier and easier to advance your knowledge.

Re:Absolutely

[shaitand]

Not only that, the skillset required is much more extensive. A Linux admin has to be able to program for instance. Every component in a linux system requires far more pre-requisite knowledge and has a much steeper learning curve than it's windows counterpart.

It takes a linux admin 5yrs to get a firm handle on linux. It takes a windows admin about 3 months tops.

Like most things in life, you get what you pay for. Whether you go with the cheap admin or the system that requires cheap admins, you get lower quality either way.

Re:Absolutely

[sigaar]

No, it takes one 3 months got get a handle on the Windows GUI tools for Windows admin. That does not mean the admin understands anything about how his system works and why things are configured the way they are. Which means, when something serious goes wrong (as often happens in Windows), he won't have a clue where to start looking and probably won't understand the problem, even if someone points it out to him.

Also, your statement that it takes a linux admin 5 years to get a firm handle on linux, wrongly assumes that all linux administrators are ex Windows boys. It may take a GUI-clicky-pointy-mouse dependant Windows user 5 years to get a firm handle on linux. But most people who've been around before windows get into it quite quickly. And people whose first computer exposure happened to be on linux learns the fastest of all. I know a few guys who has never used a GUI based OS before they got into linux, and you'll be amazed how quickly they learn without the restraints imposed by being needing pictures in order to understand your computer.

Re:Absolutely

[shaitand]

"No, it takes one 3 months got get a handle on the Windows GUI tools for Windows admin. That does not mean the admin understands anything about how his system works and why things are configured the way they are."

No actually it is quite possible to know everything about windows from top to bottom short of programming API's after about 3 months of exposure. You can manipulate almost every part of windows via the gui tools you mentioned. There is next to nothing that need be done with the CLI.

"Also, your statement that it takes a linux admin 5 years to get a firm handle on linux, wrongly assumes that all linux administrators are ex Windows boys."

No actually it does not. To be a windows admin, you need to understand windows. A linux system differs, there is a new scheme or system for every aspect of the system. Nothing is obvious or intuitive, instead everything is designed to be as functional as it can be AFTER learning.

I know this may come as a culture shock to you, but windows has strengths and linux has strengths. Denying the weaknesses that go along with those strengths does NOT help anyone. Linux and almost all open source software, trades off ease of learning and sometimes use for power and flexibility.

To perform intermediate level work on windows you can walk in the door with no knowledge and fake it. All you need to know is basic tcp/ip, a handful of gui tools, how to search the registry structure, the boot process and common file types. You also need to know how to click "ok". A domain and file and print sharing can be setup with no instruction and no prior knowledge beyond computer competency.

To perform the lowest level work with linux you need to know the scheme used to format fstab, mtab, init + runlevels, modules/modprobe.conf, sysconfig, passwd, groups, cron.*, ld.so.config,issue, hosts, and resolve.conf. They need to understand the loading and unloading of modules and be familiar with the exact module names they need to load for most hardware. They need to learn nfs, samba, apache, bind, postfix, and sendmail backwards and forward. They have to learn C, at least bash shell scripting, and perl. They have to learn pam, kerberos, and have familiarity with ldap. This is only scratching the surface of the things a linux administrator needs to know that a windows administrator does not.

Linux is a far more powerful , flexible, and secure system, after setup it needs little or no maintaince beyond resolving hardware issues. The downside is that setup from start to finish takes awhile, usually double the time for someone who knows what they are doing (but is performing a UNIQUE setup) compared an equivelent windows setup by a windows admin with equivelent knowledge. The admins also need to learn much more to reach that equivelent knowledge level.

A windows admin who has invested as much learning about the system as an LPIC-1 Certified Linux Tech is only likely to be found working on a global wan.

Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Can Zen configure Xen?

Eventually, yes!

What's more, Zen could configure Xen to configure Zen to configure Xen to configure Zen to....

To hell with it.

Let's just rename Xen to XINZ (Xen Is Not Zen) and be done with it.;-)

Re:Yes!

[shaitand]

Xen was around first. So it is Zen which must be renamed to ZINX.

Re:Yes!

[Bedouin X]

Xen was around first.

I seriously doubt this, unless you're just talking about the Linux part of Zen.

eghads!

[BierGuzzl]

The unfortunate side effect of this is that you wind up with a network that has a rotten core for some time to come.

Cygwin does this

[grouse]

Michael@MINIMOO /
$ ls /proc/registry/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microso ft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run
@ BMMMONWND IBMPRC OptionalComponents/ TPKBDLED TrackPointSrv gcasServ
AGRSMMSG CoolSwitch IgfxTray SunJavaUpdateSched TPKMAPHELPER UpdateManager
BMMLREF HotKeysCmds IntelliPoint TPHOTKEY TPKMAPMN dla

Michael@MINIMOO /
$ cat /proc/registry/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microso ft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/CoolSwitch C:\WINDOWS\System32\taskswitch.exe

Will they be as good with error messages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

[Microsoft][ODBC driver for Oracle][Oracle]ORA-12535: TNS:operation timed out //global.asa, line 34
SYMPTOMS

When you use an Internet Information Server (IIS) ASP page to access a database, the connection may fail with the following error message:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

[Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified

CAUSE

If you have used the C2 security program from the Windows NT Resource Kit on your system, the following registry key may only have read permissions assigned to the Everyone group:
Hkey_Local_Machine\Software\ODBC
In order for the ODBC drivers to function properly, the Web user accounts must have full control of this registry key.

RESOLUTION

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
To assign full-control permissions to the Everyone group, follow these steps:

1.
Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).

2.
Locate the following key in the registry:
Hkey_Local_Machine\Software\ODBC

3.
On the Security menu, select Permissions.

4.
Select Replace Permission on Existing Subkeys and set the permissions for the Everyone group to full control.

5.
Quit Registry Editor.

MORE INFORMATION

For additional information on the C2 security update utility, consult the Windows NT Resource Kit, or see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
185874 How to Troubleshoot Permissions in IIS 4.0
137018 Availability of C2 Security Compliant Windows NT
93362 C2 Evaluation and Certification for Windows NT

APPLIES TO

Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0

Back to the top

Keywords:

kbprb kbpending KB238971

Back to the top

If you use MS then you do not have to worry about support they are really experienced at it. They have to be with the amount of garbage code they peddle!

Re:Will they be as good with error messages?

[diegocgteleline.es]

Apparently you haven't used windows a lot. Use XP, go to the even viewer, look at any error. It'll say you "even number foo, check http://www.microsoft.com/foobar for more details". Great help, what if the event happens to be a network card error and I can't visit the site??

Call me when Microsoft starts including the documentation in the OS instead of giving me meaningless numbers.

Oh, and I don't think that a support site for servers that says you "click in start -> run and type regedt32.exe" instead of "modifiy registry key HKLM/blah" is a good support site. In that microsoft support article you'll see lot of text, but having a lot of text doesn't means the article is good.

The one thing I've clear is that Microsoft OLE DB provider gave me a error, and instead of saying me "I couldn't access $THIS registry key, not enought permissions", which would have gave me a clue and I could have figured out the fix myself, it gave me a meaningless error number and I had to go trought the web to see what was happening (of course OSS documentation is usually inexistent, so even that is good i suposse...)

Re:Will they be as good with error messages?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh, and I don't think that a support site for servers that says you "click in start -> run and type regedt32.exe" instead of "modifiy registry key HKLM/blah" is a good support site."

You do realize that servers are also used in small companies, where having experienced professional sysadmins on payroll is not an option?
It is a good support site. Experienced people know what they're looking. I almost never read through the whole article, just scroll down to the part that lists the registry keys and if the change seems trivial, just get on with it.

Optimal solution would be to include links like "how to change registry, click here" in the article, but that would not solve the problem completely. There are just too many variables.

Re:Will they be as good with error messages?

[Anonymous Coward]

> "I couldn't access $THIS registry key, not enought permissions"

If it doesn't have enough permissions, it doesn't even know the registry key is there. Which is why it says "not found".

Re:Will they be as good with error messages?

[diegocgteleline.es]

If it doesn't have enough permissions, it doesn't even know the registry key is there. Which is why it says "not found".

Well.. and how could then try to open something that it can't see? Obviously, there's something

Besides, the error is When you use an Internet Information Server (IIS) ASP page to access a database, the connection may fail with the following error message: Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005' [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified

ie: it doesn't says anything about a registry key.

Answers to why.

[FreeLinux]

Please see my other post on this article here.

yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the "active directory" thing actually is much better in the microsoft side

(of course I'd say that plan9 beats both in this regard, in plan9 unlike happens in windows and linux apps don't really need to be "LDAP aware", you just exports and imports filesystem namespaces)

Re:yes

[Anonymous Coward]

eDirectory owns Active Directory.

Re:yes

[Doctor Crocodile]

>>Yes, the "active directory" thing actually is much better in the microsoft side

Twaddle... AD is a poor response to Edir, too late and a few slices short.
It's single platform, and brings all the 'inSecurity' features of Win32 to what is meant to be an identity management solution.

Hey - my* product is on Slashdot

[ezs]

Probably worth giving some background to this project.

ZENworks 7 Linux Management can trace its roots back to Ximian Red Carpet Enterprise.

What we* have done with this project is extended the really strong RPM delivery and dependancy resolution (messaged as software and patch management for Linux) and added much of the traditional ZENworks functionality.

What ZENworks 7 Linux Management aims to do is really change the story for managing Linux in the Enterprise; we're not targetting the hacker community here really (take a look at projects like OpenCarpet).

Novell will be including OS deployment via imaging as well policy-enabled AutoYaST and Kickstart (yes - it's cross distro!)

There will also be inventory and asset management, remote control and support, strong auditing and logging and the ZENworks one-to-many policy management.

Novell BrainShare is next week - we will be showcasing this and have live demo systems. There is also a 'Sneak Peek' online [registration required].

Personally I'm really excited that this will change the perceptions of Linux in the Enterprise - it certainly helps with customer migrations from Windows to Linux.

It's taken a large, distributed, cross discipline team to get this far - I'll ruin my Karma by thanking them all publicly.

* the Novell ZENworks business unit - which includes the Ximian Red Carpet Enterprise engineering and QA team.

Go on - mod me down for not being objective ;)

Re:Hey - my* product is on Slashdot

[IgorMrBean]

Yes, you seem to be right.
Actually, i've played a lot with Novell products in the last 2-3 years. From Netware 5.x to 6.x, edirectory, ichain, extend, dirxml, groupwise, zen of course, and all sub derived products like ifolder and iprint.
I'm really a novell fan, but i'm bit afraid of what novell is doing now.

I've also played with suse9, and recently OES, all this is fine, but novell is preaching oneNet, but the problem is that there's so many flavor of products, and the devel seems to be done all over the world, that the QA is not doing the right job.
Mixing Novell products together is really hard, and gives all kind of problems. Novell hotline support is decreasing in efficenty of support, and with the zen7 sneak peak, i'm affraid that this will continue. We, zen4 and zen6.5 fans, love the C1 administration, cause it works, and it's clear. The sneak peak is showing a web interface, and doesn't seem to be integrated to iManager. What, not again another interface to manage another Novell product ??

Sorry for this flamebait post, but that's my opinion.

Thanks

Re:Hey - my* product is on Slashdot

[Reziac]

This sort of "bigger thinking" (ZenWorks for everyone, not just Platform N) is why I always find Novell's seminars so interesting, and mind you I'm not even a networking dude :)

Re:Hey - my* product is on Slashdot

[R3]

Similar story here - We've been Novell shop since NetWare 2 days and kept using most of the product line until recently. The fragmentation of the product lines and management tools is becoming painfully obvious - NWAdmin, ConsoleOne, iManager, snapins flying all over the place and most of them don't work as advertised.

iManager (web admin) looked interesting during its early beta stages (cca. NetWare 6 release), then inevitable question was asked - "How are we going to do administration if the web server (the whole Apache/Tomcat/Java stack) is down for some reason?"

So now we are administering what was left of the NetWare/Zen infrastructure with the combination of NWAdmin and ConsoleOne and anxiously awaiting for the other shoe to drop - IT Director informing us that we are going pure Microsoft (probably later this year).

Re:Hey - my* product is on Slashdot

[billh]

I can't tell you how many big shops I've seen this happen to.

What is really fucked up is that people overlook the other question - What happens when the entire network is taken down by some new exploit/bug? What do we do with the MS network then?

(Yes, your firewall might prevent this. It will also prevent it in the Novell case. Better marketing, I guess).

ConsoleOne was a really, really bad idea anyway.

In some parallel universe, Novell ported everything to Linux or BSD ten years ago, and just worried about NDS, not the whole OS. And things worked like Netware 3.11...

Re:Hey - my* product is on Slashdot

[R3]

"What happens when the entire network is taken down by some new exploit/bug?"

Tell me about it. So far we've been either dumb lucky or we have a really disciplined, smart users (my vote is for the former) - we had only one major outbreak in the last 3 years.

In the same parallel universe, OS/2 took off and Microsoft remained a bit player in office software business.....;)

Re:Hey - my* product is on Slashdot

[billh]

Sadly, it wouldn't have been much better. As much as I like IBM hardware these days, their software is still lousy, and they never would have supported Linux had OS/2 become mainstream.

Re:Hey - my* product is on Slashdot

[drzen]

The piece that has been missing for Linux to really take off on the desktop, is the piece between the server and desktop. It's nice to have all these secure devices, rock-solid, with no viruses... but if you have no way of managing them... and I mean MANAGING them (remote management, inventory/asset, application distribution, policy management, imaging, etc.), then you can forget about ever making a dent in Microsoft's desktop empire. OK... I'm a little biased... but I believe the story here... and I'll remind EZS of that on Tuesday morning!! Cheers.

Excellent!

[drinkypoo]

They're catching up to where Tivoli was five years ago.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if you started implementing Tivoli five years ago, there's a chance you got it working by now.

Re:No it does not!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, so cliche, you tell us about your experience with Linux and Windows, and Linux isn't the winner...

That must be a flamebait!

Webmin

[nurb432]

I use webmin now, but you have to hit each machine independently which makes it rough when you have 100+ machines..

Yes, it does help..

I just hate to have to go out and start writing my own scripts, and we dont have the size to warrant the cost of the 'enterprise' packages.

Re:Webmin

[Bishop]

Look at cfengine as another poster suggested. The initial install of Cfengine is complicated, but it is easy to use once configured.

on par?

[Tom]

bringing management of Linux desktops and servers on par with that of Windows desktops and servers.

Please don't. The nightmare of windos administration on Linux? There's a reason real professionals prefer Unix systems, and administration is a huge part of it.

This isn't a joke. At my 400 people company, there's half a dozen people employed just to keep the windos network running, plus another half dozen students and other cheap labor forces for simple stuff such as exchanging machines, etc. And I'm not saying it's running especially well.

On the other hand, four Unix admins keep several entire networks of production servers running.

Re:on par?

[yukonc]

I agree, Engineers and Admins that know what they are doing can keep any OS running well. We have 5 Windows engineers working on >200 Servers. Half of them Mission Critical apps to our business. We are very good at meeting our SLAs. So are the Linux, Unix and Novell Groups.

The Desktop support people have a much tougher time. They deal with Users. Users have the right to install their own apps, because they need it (political). Management won't purchase new machines (and OSes) for users because it is just too costly.

Desktop people are always going to be screwed if they don't get the support they need. It doesn't really matter what OS they are running, there will always be the user that needs root level access to break their machines.

Re:on par?

[Tom]

Sorry, but I also have a real-life example to the contrary here.

I have managed a (small) Unix (mostly Solaris, one or two Linux machines) desktop network. It was painless and took up a tiny fraction of my time.

The most difficult part was convincing the users that no, they do not need root access and if they need an application installed anywhere but their home directories, I will gladly install the package for them.

Users without system access == users who cause you no trouble.

And that's where windos fails. You can't have happy users without system access. You need that access level for almost anything that's important. On a well-setup Unix machine, you don't need root.

Re:on par?

[yukonc]

Look this, isn't flamebait and i am not trying to start battle. You can give windows users a machine they can use and like without Admin or root access too, I and many others have done it and it works very well. My initial point is that politics makes most of these deicision on security and not the security folks. We have a Customer service group (300 users) where everyone uses the same Username and password for their login, everyone knows it, and it hasn't changed in years. We have a strict password policy (strong passwords, change every 60 days) throughout the company. We tried to force them to change, and they wouldn't. They were going to raise hell as that would be a change. We complained to the security group, and they said they can't really enforce it. Those kinds of decisions are why destkop support groups in large companies get screwed. I agree that lots of windows users need root, but it also comes from: 1) Sloppy programming. I have seen several instance where Applicaitons get bought by the users they NEED to run their business, and the first thing the README says is that all the users need to me administrators to run the app. Do they need to be? No, I know they don't, but the morons they bought their apps from can't figure it out or are too lazy to get it right. 2) Then there are the Gems from Microsoft: Can't use Office 97 on Windows 2000 without be a Power User.

That's what I'm facing right now.

[khasim]

Upgrading a mixed lot of 4.11 & 5.1 servers to 6.5.

Oops. Problems with the overlay CD and iManager just wouldn't work. (iManager relies upon LDAP, Apache2, Tomcat and their software all working together. Maybe it uses perl, too. Give me a single utility you idiots.)

Anyway, the iManager problem gets solved when Novell finally released a TID on how to MANUALLY install their iManager stuff. It seems that uninstalling and re-installing their stuff does NOT actually re-install their stuff. Novell, this is basic stuff. What the fuck are you thinking about?

Also, the software that I have to manually install is a mix of .zip, .tar, .tgz and .war files (.war? So now I have to get a utility specifically to uncompress that single .war file? What the fuck are you thinking?)

So, I finally get all of that working and now I have 4 applications (all launched differently and maintained differently) needed to manage the system.

#1. NWAdmin because GW5.5ep doesn't work with Console1 or iManager.

#2. Console1 because not everything has been migrated to iManager.

#3. iManager. Their future system for managing everything (this is the one that depends upon 4 other apps to run correctly). Oh, and it runs best with IE, not Firefox.

#4. NWoR (NetWare Remote Manager). You need this to work with the disks/NSS/volumes.

Novell has made the major leap to what Linux was in 1995. Congratulations. And they're finally discovering .rpm's. Great.

Novell, here are a few FREE hints.

a.) Look at apt-get update, apt-get upgrade. You already store the info on what packages are installed. In 2005, I should be able to keep my NetWare boxes updates as easily as I do my Linux boxes.

b.) While Console1 is still alive, you need to make ALL the plugins available for it and easily installed. Why should I have to run the GroupWise installation to get the GroupWise plugins for Console1? Why can't I just download whatever plugins I want?

c.) If you're going for a web interface, learn from webmin. Do NOT make running the MANAGEMENT CONSOLE dependent upon getting multiple other packages correctly configured. The MANAGEMENT CONSOLE should be a single app. Console1 sucked, but it was far better than iManager and far easier to setup.

d.) Back to point a. What is it with a "service pack" that is over HALF A FUCKING GIGABYTE? It's 2005. Why am I waiting 12 hours for a "service pack" to download? And when I want to install the eDir8734 patch, I have to MANUALLY hunt and install 3 other patches? In the time it took me just to download that patch, I had tested and updated 3 Debian boxes.

Re:That's what I'm facing right now.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with most of the things parent said. Mod him up despite the rude language, please.
I am rather new Novell user, but I can imagine it went something like this:

1. People bitch about nwadmin, because it lacks features etc. Instead of fixing it, they say something like "Ok, when C1 comes out, you will get all that, don't worry."
2. C1 is released, but instead user's are stuck with two (main) management software. Two times more trouble. "Yeah, well, iManager will take care all of that.."
3. ...
4. Profit! (for Microsoft at least)

Look at apt-get update, apt-get upgrade. You already store the info on what packages are installed. In 2005, I should be able to keep my NetWare boxes updates as easily as I do my Linux boxes.

Just curious: Have you checked how much of your Novell stuff you could switch to Novell's Linux and what things are holding you down?

Huh?

[nurb432]

When you get into the thousands of desktops to manage, the tools that microsoft puts out saves your butt.

Could they be better? Sure they could. Do they work? Yep.

Until tools such as Zen, that many unix boxes to manage would be a nightmare.

Ironic..

[Anonymous Coward]

that it's gconf in the second screenshot, and that we see it's running at a SuSe Linux Enterprise Server 9 in the last.

Re: Linux Management Software

[rsax]

Are you using SBLIM? And if so then what has your experience been with it? Any gotchas?

But does it work?

[yukonc]

We have been using Zenworks for everything it "can" manage at our company. It sounds great, can deal with our Linux, Novell and Windows Systems together. In practice, its crap. Roll out a new application to the desktops. Do you get an error code if it doesn't install properly? No. Do you get a report of the machines that had problems installing? No. This is especially bad when you are working with hundreds of machines that must have the latest verision to work with the new DB Server. Zenworks is garbage. And I believe Novell will not get much farther with it, as there are alternatives to use with SMS that will allow hetergenous networks to be managed from one console. I work with both Linux and MS. Zenworks is worthless for both. Our MS and Linux Server groups have installed it per management and shut it off. Now everyone (except the novell group) is getting ready to push out their own tool to manage their systems. I didn't even get into the cost comparison of SMS vs. ZenWorks. Its not even funny for what you get.

Re:But does it work?

[rf10573]

I beg to differ. I've never met anyone who worked with ZEN and SMS who preferred SMS. Usually they tell me SMS is "crap". ZENworks is quite capable of reporting application push success and failure. Perhaps you ought to read the manual. Or perhaps you've been assimilated?

Re:But does it work?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I haven't been assimilated. I do not like working with MS products, and they still have enormous amounts of flaws out of the box, especially when compared to other OSes.

Do you use these products?

Re:But does it work?

[rf10573]

Yes, I do. I have worked with ZEN V1 through V6.5 in production environments. I am currently working in a V3.2/V6.5 mixed environment.

You should consider the Novell Press books for ZEN administration.

Re:But does it work?

[yukonc]

What OSes are you supporting with Zen?

What kind of reporting can you get (and how hard is it to get it)?

We have been told (by the group that runs ZenWorks at our company) that these iventory reports are not possible (perhaps that means easily available). Say, I want to find all the machines that are running a certain version of certain product, give me the list. We are told we can't get that with ZenWorks

Hinesight is nice, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh yes, but as is typical, at the time it didn't make business sense to Novell. They would have needed a reasonable ROI on a ZENWorks product for Linux and I'd believe given the market share of Linux at the time it didn't make commerical sense... Caldera's efforts are proof of that.
Techies fail too often to realise that. Even techies with buisness sense can become jaded just looking at the business positives without looking at the realistic negatives.

How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

So how much will the eDirectory, Zenworks, Client licenses, and training cost??? Novell will make a bundle and lock you in to boot!!!

Re:How Much?

[yukonc]

SMS is worthless without AD or Microsoft DHCP. They'll lock you in just as well, although for a lower price than Zenworks/Novell Client costs (for now). I have heard Kix scripts and file shares are often a better answer for desktops than ZenWorks, but then you need to find people that can write the scripts...

Re:No it does not!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was Gartner TCO certified.

I think that was your problem. For the rest of us, that learned the costs in "real life" as opposed to "paid shill school" we see things differently.