by ezs | Apr 10, 2006 | Uncategorized, ZENworks
–
This is the start of another series of blog posts – this time around managing desktops and laptops – and what will happen in the future with Windows Vista.
In the words of Microsoft’s own marketing – we’ll try and “Bring Clarity to your World”
Written at: Draper, UT
First to the basics – the versions of Vista and hardware requirements.
There will be at least five versions of Windows Vista – although only two of these really seem suitable for businesses: Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise.
It seems that the proliferation of choice will be confusing at best. Will most customers choose the Business edition? Enterprise?
The next piece of the puzzle is hardware requirements. As always – take the ‘minimum requirements’ as just that. Analysts and beta testers alike are giving the following recommendations:
- general knowledge worker – Pentium 4 class machine, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, 1Gbit ethernet, accelerated graphics capability
- ‘power worker’ – Pentium 4 class machine; dual core and 64 bit ideal, 2GB RAM, 100GB HDD, 1Gbit ethernet, accelerated graphics capability
Now I have talked to enough of you to know that this is a tall order. Most organisations are currently working to a three year replacement program for laptops and a four, five or six year replacement cycle for tethered desktop machines. One other factor in this equation is that almost every IT team did a refresh of hardware and OS in 1999. (Remember that!)
This has led to the “Y2K + 5″ phenomenon – hardware was replaced on the desktop in 2004/2005 – and will next be replaced in 2008/2009/2010. Laptops are due for replacement this year – following a first round of replacement in 2003.
These two factors combined are significant:
- confusion on choice of Vista desktop
- massive costs (replacement and just churn costs) of desktop hardware
Already enough to make you think twice.
In the next post I will talk about another area to consider – application support. I’ll dive into some of the murky details of getting applications supported on Vista and why this may be another roadblock for some customers.
As always – comments are welcomed.
Written at: Draper, UT
by ezs | Mar 28, 2006 | Uncategorized, ZENworks
Post BrainShare and it’s back to real work!
Today Novell released the online demonstration of ZENworks Asset Management. This runs in Firefox or Internet Explorer – and lets you see the power of ZENworks Asset Management live – without having to install a single piece of code.
Take a look – and let us know what you think. We will be posting a ‘walk through script’ in the next day or so – that will let you get the most from your time online.
Written at: Draper, UT
by ezs | Mar 22, 2006 | Uncategorized, ZENworks
–
I have been working all week on a ZENworks lifecycle demo and session – part of this involves delivering a consistent Windows XP SP2 operating system to workstations, in an automated, hands-free manner. Certainly this toolkit has saved us days of time in building our demonstrations.
Part of the solution has seen us integrate the ENGL Imaging Toolkit into our demo; this allows the creation of a ‘universal image’ – it works well. In our demo we have a single 800MB Windows XP image that can be delivered to any type of hardware – Dell, IBM, HP, Lenovo, whitebox and even VMware.
The ENGL Imaging Toolkit has a great write-up in the current Novell Connection Magazine. Read it here.
[STOP PRESS – ENGL were awarded Novell EMEA Partner of the Year at BrainShare 2006 this week]
Written at: BrainShare 2006, Salt Lake City, UT
by ezs | Mar 22, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Novell BrainShare, Technology, Uncategorized, ZENworks
A couple of announcements that may have slipped under the radar – two security partnerships at BrainShare:
SecureWave – providing removable device lockdown and security, application white and blacklisting – all tied in to Novell Identity
Third Brigade – providing a smart, small, host based intrusion detection system.
Press here from Third Brigade. I’ll add SecureWave when it hits the wire.
by ezs | Mar 21, 2006 | Uncategorized, ZENworks
–
I have been asked many times during Novell BrainShare for examples of how Novells Identity, Security and Access Management products will integrate with Novell ZENworks – our cross platform management solution.
One example I have been giving is that of a customer looking to deploy a new Line of Business application – typically a complex multi-tiered client-middleware-database infrastructure.
Written at: BrainShare 2006, Salt Lake City, UT
The non-Novell way of doing this is to deliver an application to the desktop; create user identities within the new application – and give the end user another login and password to remember. Certainly not a good experience for the user; and not cost effective for the enterprise.
Using Novell Identity Management solutions you see a very different story. ZENworks can deliver the client application components to the desktop – cleanly and consistently; Novell SecureLogin can enable Enterprise Single Sign-on to the application; and Novell Identity Manager can provision the correct users, their password and their credentials into the identity store for the application.
The differences are striking. Lowered costs of deployment, increased agility, less challenges for the helpdesk during deployment – and ultimately a simple experience for the user – just click on the application icon and it ‘just works’.
This is another real-world example of how Novell is integrating solutions – from security, access, identity and resource management.
Let me know how you are dealing with these challenges.
Written at: BrainShare 2006, Salt Lake City, UT
by ezs | Mar 16, 2006 | Uncategorized, ZENworks
–
I wrote last week about ZENworks Server Management in the real world.
In that post I described how a deployment of ZENworks can deliver some rapid benefits – namely patching and updates for NetWare and its associated services.
Next I want to cover the second major benefit of ZENworks Server Management – Tiered Electronic Distribution. Using TED will save you time, money – and shoe leather!
Written at: Salt Lake City, UT
Tiered Electronic Distribution has been part of ZENworks since ZENworks for Servers was first released; it allows ‘content’ to be moved across your infrastructure (WAN and LAN) efficiently, between servers and sites, supporting multiple platforms.
The ‘content’ can be of multiple types – I quickly covered NetWare updates, but any type of file content can be moved using TED. We have customers moving all imaginable data using this technology.
One of the most cool uses of TED is integration with ZENworks Desktop Management – moving desktop applications from a development/test/staging area – to production – and then out across a campus, departmental or branch infrastructure.
We have many customers using this type of infrastructure today – and seeing huge benefits.
How do you know this will work in your environment – just ask a few simple questions:
- am I manually (or semi-manually) moving ZENworks applications across my network?
- are my administrators creating and re-creating application objects for each site and department?
- does a change to a global application require days, weeks or months of rollout; touching each site and server?
If these questions trigger uncomfortable answers then maybe you should look at using Tiered Electronic Distribution in conjunction with your NAL applications.
Typically once the ZENworks Server Management infrastructure is deployed you will see payback in weeks; some customers have paid for their deployment projects with their first deployment.
I’ll leave this post for now – I will point people to Erin Quill’s session at BrainShare. TUT 350 covers using ZENworks in this manner – as well as other high availability ideas. There is also an Advanced Technical Training Session at BrainShare – ATT 345 – as well as a Technical Tutorial – TUT 347 – covering advanced application management.
Written at: Salt Lake City, UT
Recent Comments