Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations TouchToneTommy on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Zenworks Configuration Management 10 Thoughts/Opinions/Complaints

Status
Not open for further replies.

Provogeek

MIS
Sep 4, 2002
1,412
US
What does the rest of the Zen community in Tektips think of ZCM10?

I my self only have 3 deployments under my belt, mostly due to the fact the product is very immature. Of those 3, only one remains. All others have reverted back or went to ZfD7 instead. Because of the large amount of problems with the product I my self stopped recommending to customers that they deploy or upgrade to ZCM10. Only bring it up if I know the customers uses Vista ... and who uses Vista in a production corporate environment? (looks around, hears crickets).

First deployment failure:
Client doesn't want to give any money to M$ if they don't have to. Liked the idea that ZCm ran on Linux and they have a current drive to migrate all NetWare servers to Linux, and even a few of their Windows servers as well. Only wants to have Windows on the desktop and on the terminal servers. Client didn't like the idea that a Windows box was needed in order to use the deployment functionality of ZCM to Windows servers (because Linux doesn't support WMI and WinAPI, at least Novell's version doesn't so ZCM doesn't hook into it). Got away with using an XP machine running in XEN on the same SLES server that hosted ZCM. Worked, okay. The killer, even after 10.0.2, DLU did not function on a terminal server. Client does not have AD, so DLU was a must.
- reverted to ZfD7 since DLU did work with ZfD7 on a terminal server.


Second deployment failure:
Simply went out to client site to train them on how to deploy the agent, perform simple updates, create simple reports from inventory database, and package MSI bundles. Second objective of appointment, update server from 10.0.1 to 10.0.2. Update went with out any issues. Log files are clean, everything according to the system went fine. Using the system, everything seems fine, until you go to the properties of a device. When you go to view a device, the system kicks back a java error. Worked with NTS for some time on this issue with no success, finally after a few weeks of phone tag, had NTS contact client directly and work with them on issue (was in the middle of a large vitualization project). NTS talked customer into waiting for 10.0.3 to be released since it had a huge number of fixes in it. They did, and when 10.0.3 was installed, the problem continued to occur. Next recommendation from NTS was to simple reload from 10.0.3 install media.
- Client got angry with the recommendation because they felt reloading was a Microsoft solution, not a Novell solution (have never had to reload a Novell server product to fix a problem my self). So they just canceled the deployment of ZCM and stuck with their current ZfD deployment (after updates and some add work to have it deploy the apps they wanted ZCM to deploy).


Last deployment left:
This client chose a windows 2003 server to host ZCM. Had hoped this would work a bit better since the ZCM app seems to be written with Windows in mind more than with Linux in mind. This turned out to be a wrong assumption.

Installed from the 10.0.1 media, and wanted to immediately update to 10.0.2 before deploying the agent to workstations. Required NTS involvement just to get the update downloaded and applied because the process would continually hang. The fix from NTS included a debug zenloader.jar that essentially forced the process to complete.

Then find out that the server was pushing out the 10.0.1 agent, not the updated 10.0.2 agent. Found out because the 10.0.1 agent would crash workstations through out the customers building. This made it difficult to get the agent up to 10.0.2 through the auto update feature of ZCM since the agent kept crashing. Required a customized script written by the NTS back line that integrated the 10.0.2 agent into the deployable agent files.

After many hours with NTS, fine tuning the server we got somewhat of a stable environment. Users still completed about the large amount of resources the agent sucked up on the workstation. Some Autocad type app turning into a snail opening up drawings when ZCM was installed on the workstation, and general slowness in the login process.

10.0.3 releases, woohoo!!! lots of bug fixes, git-r-applied What? that stupid nag screen is still there telling me I don't have ZAM for Unix/Linux? Server starts up and stays at 100% CPU utilization and CRM (part of BOE) never completes it's load? Logins now take 2 to 20 minutes? Wait a sec, why aren't any of the inventory scan files being consumed?
- Got some dev replacement files because the login issue was known to be caused by the remote control policy. This brought it down some, but still wasn't very impressive.
-A quick hack to the BOE setup to disable one of the database logs fixed the CRM loading problem and in turn seemed to fix the consistent high utilization and the inventory problem as well.

Found 10.0.32 got released just a few weeks later, finally the stupid nag screen is gone. Login is now under 30 seconds, but when your on a GB network and login is instant with out the ZCM client, as well as when ZfD is used, Novell still needs to fix this.

So as you can tell, my experience with ZCM has been far from pleasant. This last client is on the edge with keeping the product in their network with all the problems we have been having with it. So far every support call I have opened (about 15 now) have been refunded since it was found to be a bug in the software. I have also been directed to begin writing a script that we can use on this customer network to remove the ZCM agent from the whole network and deploy ZfD7 with ZAM and old school Patchlink. I hope it doesn't fall to this, since the customer won't be billed for it, really messes up by billable time numbers. I also do like the potential this product has, I find it much easier to use that ZfD in building application deployments, and the inventory just knocks the socks of the old ZfD inventory (woot for ZAM). I think Novell just released this product WAY before it was ready to be put on the market (damn marketing dweebs).

I've been wondering if others have also been running into these kinds of problems, and what have you done to handle it? Are you keeping the product? Does it actually work fine or you and do all you want and expect?


=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt SPOOOOON!!!!! [hippy]
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple
 
We have done 0 (zero) ZCM deployments, mainly because our internal testing proved really rough. And we also had some inside scoop from a couple folks at Novell that cautioned us from using it based on things they had seen/heard.

I would have thought that a 10.0.32 release would be much better, so I appreciate the information you provided. Thanks.

Marvin

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting, Inc.
A Novell Platinum Partner
 
been on vacation the past few weeks, haven't played with it yet.

But I did get an interesting email from the boss, seems I will be getting a product specialist from NTS to join me at my client site to assist with the deployment. Just to be sure that any issues that arrise get resolved immediatly instead of the weeks it takes exchanging log files and waiting for a developers responce.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt SPOOOOON!!!!! [hippy]
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple
 
Sadly this product is totally out of character for Novell. Over a year since release, after what was supposed to be a significant patch (SP1) and then 10.1.1 and it's still riddled with issues that novell can't explain.

We've tried to deploy twice and are pulling out out again. It really pains me to say it, but if it's not in productioni and working well by the time our SECOND maintenance comes around, I'm writing it off and looking to the alternatives.

(for benefit of anyone reading this that's new to ZEN in general, the disappointment is because all previous version of ZEN have worked so well, as do most of their products)
 
Well, since starting this thread, I have lost my last ZCM deployment. It was a sad sad day, I cried ...

The 10.1 update did not fix the login delay as promised, users still experienced 30sec - 2min delays in login. It was an improvement to the 10 - 15min login delays, but a delay never less. Because of the delay, the customer chose to remove the product. To many users complained that the login took to long, they were just used to the instant login they had before ZCM was introduced to their network.

I also found out after installing 10.1 that there was once again a utilization bug in one of the java files (Inventory related). So the back end server continued to get hammered from faulty java code.

Stopped trying to convince the customer to let Novell fix it this time, and just agreed with them that the product needed to be removed. Lots of time, lots of money down the drain.

Now I get to get trained on LANdesk that will be replacing the desktop management solution for this customer. Yay [neutral]



=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt SPOOOOON!!!!! [hippy]
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple
 
Do you see the login delay on every installation? Or is it an intermittent thing? Does it have a bearing on hardware or performance of the server?

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting, Inc.
A Novell Platinum Partner
 
The delay was seen on any type of PC.

I had lost all my deployments that ran on Linux, so I have no good comparison for that platform. On windows 2k3 RC2, I only had a single client (that I just lost) that had a 3.2GHz pentium with 4GB ram and 1GB ethernet.

I would see the delay in the virtual test bed environment as well. At first glance it really is no big deal, geeks know what is happening. Users don't, and when your used to hitting enter and the desktop start to load with in 2 seconds, when you ad a 30 second delay to desktop initialization, users don't get it and complain.

One recommendation I got from NTS I was never able to try out, was the suggestion the database be on a separate server. A majority of NTS's calls on ZCM are from customers that use the internal Sybase database. Customers that use SQL or load Sybase on a different server (included in the ZCM media) do not have as many problems. If that fixes the login delay, I do not know at this time. But I do plan on grilling some people at next months ATT Partner training (going to the second one). See what they have to say at the top 10 ZCM support issues class.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt SPOOOOON!!!!! [hippy]
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top