Anyone used ZenWorks (Migration from to GPO's)

[Stevehewitt]

Hi all,

I work in a IT company (web dev's mainly) which is a MS house, and Win2k3 (generic WinNT networking) is my main area.

We have been asked by a company to give their systems a health check - almost on a consultancy basis.

However this client company uses ZenWorks and Groupwise. I already have a pretty good understanding of Groupwise and the benifits of moving to Exchange 2003 / 2007 from it. The problem is that I'm confused as to what ZenWorks does that Group Policies, Scripting and one or two free 3rd party apps can't do?
From my very limited understanding ZenWorks is a desktop management solution which does things like redirection, desktop policies, license auditing and remote sceen access for support.

If the above is right (and I know that it's probably a very basic view of it) - then could all that not be accomplished by GPO, some funky VBS scripting and TightVNC / Remote Assistance?

Any advice from anyone who has used ZenWorks in a Win2k3 environment regarding functionality compared to native Windows tools would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,




Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[TheLad]

It seems to me like you would be trying to reinvent the wheel by suggesting that with what appears to be limited knowledge of their environment. I assume that since they are using ZENworks and Groupwise, that their core server environment is NetWare - is that correct? If they have their workstations in an AD and use Windows 2000/2003, you can apply GPOs etc... but one would assume that they are using ZENworks for a reason and it might be worth investigating their environment further to understand why.

Maybe you have scope to suggest a server/workstation/email migration here, but I would suggest you need more understanding of their current environment and how it works before you suggest anything.

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[Stevehewitt]

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I completely agree, just formulating ideas at the moment. E.G. What reasons could there be to use ZenWorks rather than GPO's?

To my knowledge they are not using NDS / Netware - they are using AD for the directory.

They are already planning to migrate to Exchange for other reasons (new 3rd party app will not integrate with Groupwise).

So if they are just using ZenWorks - can anyone tell me what (if any) key advantages there are compared to AD/GPO's?

I ask as from my (and others at the meeting) opinion the IT manager is not very knowledgeable about MS technologies - thus they maybe using technologies that are not required. This is the very reason the board have asked us to come in and give it a health check. Hence this thread as my knowledge regarding Novell products are very limited at best.

Thanks again,




Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson