Zero Effort Network Essay, Research Paper
Zero Effort Networks (Z.E.N. works) is a great new tool in NetWare 5, that makes
the network administrator’s job a lot easier by allowing him to spend less time
at each user workstation. To be able to use the Z.E.N. works these are the
minimum hardware requirements: ? Processor: 486/33 or higher ? Memory: 16 MB
(for Windows 95); 24 MB (for Windows NT) ? Hard disk space: 4 MB (workstation;
24 MB (full station) Z.E.N. works needs to be installed on the server and the
client on the workstation needs to be updated. During the installation process
Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) are copied to the workstation. DLLs contain
subprograms that are called by an application to perform certain operations.
Another utility that is included in Z.E.N. works to help the distribution and
management of applications is the Application Launcher, which consists of four
major components: ? Snap-in DLL ? Snapshot ? Application objects in the NDS
tree ? Application Launcher Window and Application object The snAppShot utility
allows you take a "snapshot" of the Windows workstation before
installing the application. The snapshot includes Registry settings along with
the names of system and application files on the workstation. After the
application has been installed, the snAppShot utility takes another picture of
the workstation’s configuration and then uses the two snapshots to create an
Application Object Template (AOT) file. The Application Launcher uses the AOT
file to determine what Registry settings and system files need to be copied to
the workstation to run the application from the network. In addition to
including configuration settings and system file names, the AOT file also
contains the name of the Application object and the path where you want to store
the AOT and installation files. Consequently, before running the snAppShot
utility, you need to define the name you want to use for the Application object
and decide where the application and AOT files will be stored. The Application
Launcher software consists of two components: the wrapper program and the
launcher. The wrapper program determines which launcher program (NALW31.EXE,
NALWIN32.EXE, or NAL.EXE) to run based on the client computer’s operating
system. The launcher program then determines the Application objects to which
the user has access and displays a window showing all applications the user has
been authorized to run. When the user selects an application, the launcher
determines whether the application is installed on the workstation. If this is
the first time the user has run the application from this workstation, the
application will automatically be installed using the AOT file created by the
snAppShot utility. If Application Launcher senses that the application
configuration has been damaged, or files are missing or corrupt, it will
automatically correct the application configuration and copy and damaged or
missing files.