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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."
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.
... here, here, here, here, here, and here.
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
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. "
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.
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 ;)
Evil ZEN Scientist
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.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com