Policy resources?

Hi folks,

I'm about to start working on our ZENworks environment, probably
upgrading to ZEN 6.5 and Windows XP SP2.  One area that i really want
to get nailed is policies.  Can anyone recommend any resources for
getting the main concepts in my head?  I'm fairly under-resourced on
policy skills - if i look at the name of a policy item, i can usually
work out what it's about, but i'm lacking background info on when
policies are applied, how, and various tips & tricks.  Can anyone
suggest some good (i.e. free  documentation?

Thanks in advance,
Paul
-- 
Paul Gear, Manager IT Operations, Redlands College
38 Anson Road, Wellington Point 4160, Australia
(Please send attachments in portable formats such as PDF, HTML, or
OpenOffice.)
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Re: Policy resources?

Hi Paul

 

Yes, I am trying to sort this too. I have set up group policies under ZfD6.5 and XPsp1. I do not believe I have a working user group policy yet. It seems NOT to apply. Others have set a PC policy and not used user policies because of its unreliability.

 

With XPsp2 there is great fun. All sorts of stuff stops working.

- Like CLNTRUST, needs UDP 3024

http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/searchtid.cgi?/10078031.htm

- And with the WinXP firewall on Zen remote control bombs too.

So I tried turning the $%& thing off. Have not sorted the ports yet.

 

I would like to know how we are going to handle the Win patches updates. I do not feel like trusting Microsoft to apply everything to over 400 machines with individual downloads on a chargeable line and in the background which may have insufficient logged in time to complete.

There has to be a better way - that is not grossly expensive too!

 

 

 

Regards

 

John Glennie  CNE
Computer Support
Marymount College
07-5535-0111
0439-798-507
jglennie <at> marymount.qld.edu.au


>>> pgear <at> redlands.qld.edu.au 04-Feb-05 11:13:55 am >>>
Hi folks,

I'm about to start working on our ZENworks environment, probably
upgrading to ZEN 6.5 and Windows XP SP2. One area that i really want
to get nailed is policies. Can anyone recommend any resources for
getting the main concepts in my head? I'm fairly under-resourced on
policy skills - if i look at the name of a policy item, i can usually
work out what it's about, but i'm lacking background info on when
policies are applied, how, and various tips & tricks. Can anyone
suggest some good (i.e. free documentation?

Thanks in advance,
Paul
--
Paul Gear, Manager IT Operations, Redlands College
38 Anson Road, Wellington Point 4160, Australia
(Please send attachments in portable formats such as PDF, HTML, or
OpenOffice.)
--
The information contained in this message is copyright by Redlands
College. Any use for direct sales or marketing purposes is expressly
forbidden. This message does not represent the views of Redlands
College.
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Re: Policy resources?

>With XPsp2 there is great fun. All sorts of stuff stops working. 

Windows 2000, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways....

>I would like to know how we are going to handle the Win patches
>updates. I do not feel like trusting Microsoft to apply everything to
>over 400 machines with individual downloads on a chargeable line and
in
>the background which may have insufficient logged in time to
complete.
>There has to be a better way - that is not grossly expensive too!

With our lab machines, we don't update during the term.  The image is
rolled out at the start of each term, and doesn't get changed until the
next holidays, unless something is actually broken.  Each school
holidays we refresh the image with OS updates, and we should probably do
Netware client updates and application updates too.  Then we roll the
clean image out to the student labs for the start of next term.  That
way a surprise windows update won't break things in mid term on us.

In theory anyway, depending how busy we are over the holidays.

If you want windows updates without the bandwidth nightmaer, have a
look at SUS
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/sus/default.mspx 

Note that it only works under a server edition of windows though.  I
believe some people have success rolling OS updates out with Zenworks
too, although I don't think that is recommended by Novell.

Jase

--
Jason Parlevliet			Oxley College
Network Administrator		A Co-educational Christian School
ICT Services			Old Melbourne Road
Phone 9727 9941			Chirnside Park
jasonp <at> oxley.vic.edu.au		Victoria Australia

Re: Policy resources?

>I would like to know how we are going to handle the Win patches
>updates. I do not feel like trusting Microsoft to apply everything to
>over 400 machines with individual downloads on a chargeable line and
in
>the background which may have insufficient logged in time to
complete.
>There has to be a better way - that is not grossly expensive too!

We get our workstation package to run a script at machine startup that
will install windows patches from a network location. Its quite simple
but effective. We had major issues with SUS and this seems to work very
well. When new patches come out we update the script and put the patch
in the required location. All updates are logged at the server so we
know if it has been successful and on which machine it was appled.

Regards,

Ben Cooper
I.T. Support
Iona College

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Re: Policy resources?

>We get our workstation package to run a script at machine startup that
>will install windows patches from a network location.

That seems a better solution than SUS.  Can we get a copy of the
script?

>All updates are logged at the server so we
>know if it has been successful and on which machine it was appled.

Ah now if you Appled your machines you wouldn't have to worry about all
this :P

Jase

Re: Policy resources?

John Glennie wrote:
> ...
> I would like to know how we are going to handle the Win patches
> updates. I do not feel like trusting Microsoft to apply everything to
> over 400 machines with individual downloads on a chargeable line and in
> the background which may have insufficient logged in time to complete.
> There has to be a better way - that is not grossly expensive too!

We use a product called windowsupdate_cache, which is a redirector for
squid, and it makes windows updates positively speedy.  Once one
machine has downloaded a fix, all the rest get it at proxy server speeds.

-- 
Paul Gear, Manager IT Operations, Redlands College
38 Anson Road, Wellington Point 4160, Australia
(Please send attachments in portable formats such as PDF, HTML, or
OpenOffice.)
--

-- 
The information contained in this message is copyright by Redlands
College.  Any use for direct sales or marketing purposes is expressly
forbidden.  This message does not represent the views of Redlands
College.

Re: Policy resources?

Ben Cooper wrote:
> ...
> We get our workstation package to run a script at machine startup that
> will install windows patches from a network location. Its quite simple
> but effective. We had major issues with SUS and this seems to work very
> well. When new patches come out we update the script and put the patch
> in the required location. All updates are logged at the server so we
> know if it has been successful and on which machine it was appled.

That sounds like a much better approach than we use.  Mind sharing
your scripts?  

-- 
Paul Gear, Manager IT Operations, Redlands College
38 Anson Road, Wellington Point 4160, Australia
(Please send attachments in portable formats such as PDF, HTML, or
OpenOffice.)
--

-- 
The information contained in this message is copyright by Redlands
College.  Any use for direct sales or marketing purposes is expressly
forbidden.  This message does not represent the views of Redlands
College.

Re: Policy resources?

Jason Parlevliet wrote:
> ...
>>All updates are logged at the server so we
>>know if it has been successful and on which machine it was appled.
> 
> 
> Ah now if you Appled your machines you wouldn't have to worry about all
> this :P

No - you'd just have to worry about broken user interfaces and not
being able to *do* anything... 

-- 
Paul Gear, Manager IT Operations, Redlands College
38 Anson Road, Wellington Point 4160, Australia
(Please send attachments in portable formats such as PDF, HTML, or
OpenOffice.)
--

-- 
The information contained in this message is copyright by Redlands
College.  Any use for direct sales or marketing purposes is expressly
forbidden.  This message does not represent the views of Redlands
College.

Re: Policy resources?

>> Ah now if you Appled your machines you wouldn't have to worry about
all
>> this :P
>
>No - you'd just have to worry about broken user interfaces and not
>being able to *do* anything... 

Don't make me come over there!

Jase

Re: Policy resources?

Jason Parlevliet wrote:
> ...
>>No - you'd just have to worry about broken user interfaces and not
>>being able to *do* anything... 
> 
> 
> Don't make me come over there!

8^)

-- 
Paul Gear, Manager IT Operations, Redlands College
38 Anson Road, Wellington Point 4160, Australia
(Please send attachments in portable formats such as PDF, HTML, or
OpenOffice.)
--

-- 
The information contained in this message is copyright by Redlands
College.  Any use for direct sales or marketing purposes is expressly
forbidden.  This message does not represent the views of Redlands
College.