Greetings -

Your first question jumps quickly across the line from inventory to license management. MSDN licenses - as I suspect you are aware - allow for the installation of a variety of applications; the license also assumes that these applications will only be used in very specific manners (most notably development). ZENworks inventory will find the installed applications and report their presence. But there really isn't any way for ZENworks to know when an installation of Server 2012 is part of an MSDN license or part of some other entitlement, nor for what purposes the applications are being used. The main reason for this is that Microsoft does not mark the MSDN installations in any way that allows them to be differentiated. That part is going to be up to you, and it's something of a challenge. The short form is to use machine-based entitlements in ZENworks Asset Management licensed products to single out the installations that are part of MSDN licenses and separate, probably per-installation entitlements for the same products installed under other license agreements, such as an EA or SA. (As an aside, if ZENworks ever implements the ISO 19770-2 standard for software recognition and ISO 19770-3 for software entitlements, it's possible that this could become much easier. But that's at best a couple years out, if Micro Focus decides to support the standards.) It's always going to be up to you to validate that the MSDN-specific installations are being used for the authorized purposes covered under the MSDN license.

Cloud subscriptions are even more interesting as, in many cases, nothing is ever installed - they are usage-based entitlements. You can create web-based fingerprints in ZENworks Asset Management that will measure the usage of cloud products and allow you to validate the invoices you receive from vendors.

Hopping to your last inventory question, ZENworks does as good a job recognizing software serial numbers as software manufacturers let the software - because most software companies won't divulge how to recognize their serial numbers. Some are presented in the inventory data, and I discover new items every so often. Now, you asked about product keys. Product keys are rarely stored anywhere electronically in places where the inventory scans can find them. Installers generally take product keys and turn them into serial numbers, with the product key remaining on the media container or in an email. So you won't get much luck here. You can add Administrator Defined Fields to your Catalog Product and/or Licensed Product records in ZENworks Asset Management and enter your keys there for storage; that process won't add too much time to your day.

I've thrown out lots of terms and concepts in the answers above. All are covered in the ZENworks Asset Management training course (8015). The course covers the concepts very nicely; I know - I'm the author. However, making ZENworks Asset Management handle all the nuances necessary to handle every circumstance takes some experience. I'll watch for further questions!

As for the question on PRUs, you can get those from the Patch Finder page at http://download.novell.com/patch/finder/?ref=h. Note that you will need to have a support subscription for ZENworks to be able to download the PRUs. On the other hand, if you have the subscription activated in your ZENworks installation, you can configure ZENworks to look for and automatically download your PRUs. All you have to do then is accept and deploy the PRUs in your ZENworks environment.