IT professionals are constantly asked to get more done with fewer resources. Our lives are often spent doing mundane tasks such as hauling mounds of CDs around so we can install applications on our user's computer, re-installing operating systems, or trying to figure out where all of our assets are. We could get on with the more strategic things that will make our companies better if we could just have a system that takes care of these operational tasks.

ZENworks is just such a solution. ZENworks will help you manage your systems through their entire lifecycles. With ZENworks the system will automatically track assets; deliver applications; keep your laptops, workstations, handhelds, and servers up-to-date on the latest approved patches; and keep the user's data safe, all through policies that tell the system how to behave and allow ZENworks to manage itself. ZENworks will even deliver images to those systems that need restoring or upgrading. ZENworks includes secure remote management capabilities to help you diagnose and control computers in your WAN or across the Internet.

ZENworks will deliver all of these features into your enterprise regardless of your preferred platform. ZENworks can function in a Windows-only environment or mixed environments including Windows, NetWare, and Linux. All of the capabilities of ZENworks are delivered via a web server, allowing you to support your users over the Internet. In this latest release of ZENworks, you now have full freedom of choice of back-end servers. You can even manage Windows desktops from a Linux server.

This book is about installing and getting ZENworks working in your environment, from small to enterprise levels. We will try to point out all of the tips and gotchas to watch for to make your installation and deployment of ZENworks a success.

We thank you for purchasing this book and hope that it is useful to you.