Novell ZenWorks for Desktops is currently version 4, and has improved
incredibly. Can't say how relieved I was to hear that they finally got rid of the need to have the
Novell Client installed. Now you can simply install a small ZenWorks agent on a laptop, and it takes care of anything regarding
policies, NAL (Novell Application Launcher) distributions, Remote Control. You can even do remote control over the Internet now - the client doesn't even have to be
authenticated to
eDirectory anymore to do a remote control. You only need the
IP address of the client you want to remote control, and the same
passphrase as the host has. I know, the speed of the screen updates have never been anything to write home to grandma about (in fact, with version 3.2 it would sometimes be faster to ask your
granny to
snailmail you a
photograph of her monitor rather than remote controlling her PC to see what was going on).
So, what else is
cool? Oh yeah, what do I do if I'm on the road with my laptop and need to install a killer app? The
System Administrator in the main office didn't remember to set the NAL object to "force cache" (to bring
the installation set with me for installing it offline, doing automatic repairs, or "self healing" applications as Novell calls it). Doesn't matter. As long as I am connected to the
Internet and given the application is
made available from the office on an unsecure noetwork connection, I can start downloading and installing it from anywhere, on any connection speed.
The
ZenWorks agent will detect the connection speed and kindly notify me that the application is availible, but since it's 10MB large, and all I have is a
GSM 9600bps line it would take some time. No worries, I can disconnect
anytime I'd like, and when reconnecting, the download will resume. How cool is that?
So what do I do if I want to access files on a
Netware Volume, but don't have the Novell Client installed? Well, Native File Access Pack would be a fairly OK alternative I believe. Installing it on a Netware server (Netware
5.1 SP3 or higher) enables you to access any volumes on the server from a
MAC, *NIX or Windows client, using different file
protocols for each of them (Windows uses
CIFS).