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.