DISCLAIMER: The service discussed in this solution is NOT an official Novell Service. This service is hosted on my own personal equipment from my own personal location. While I attempt to do the best to ensure the bundles I'm publishing are as close to perfect as possible, I highly recommend always replicating the content as a sandbox and testing it in your own environment.


Now that ZENworks 11SP3 has been released I’m happy to announce that I’ve setup my own ZENworks zone on the Internet that you can subscribe to and download common Cool Solutions bundles. Initially I expect the content will be pretty sparse, but over time I expect you’ll see lots more. The purpose of this solution is to describe how to setup a subscription to my zone and discuss the currently available bundles.

Setting up a subscription to the ZENguru Zone

ZENworks 11SP3 introduced the ability for you to setup your zone to allow external zones to subscribe to select content. Since many of the Cool Solutions I have published, or expect to publish involve the creation of bundles and/or policies I’ve setup a zone that you can subscribe to instead of having to recreate each bundle from scratch. In order to subscribe to my zone you need to do the following:

1. Login to your own ZENworks zone.

• (optional) Create a new folder in the Bundles folder and the Policies folder where you want to store the bundles and policies you are going to subscribe to.

• Click Subscribe and Share.

• Click New > Subscription.

• From the subscription types list, select ZENworks Subscription; then click Next.

• Enter a name and description for the subscription you are going to create; then click Next.

• Click the Register with a Zone button. This will display a screen similar to the one below:

• 

• In the Server Address field, enter zenworks.zenguru.info

• In the Subscriber Key field, enter CoolSolutions

• In the Email Address field, enter your email address. This will allow me to contact you in the event of important updates related to this zone.

• Click Connect to Zone. This will make a connection to my zone and fetch the SSL certificate. Most likely you will receive a message that you don’t trust the certificate as it has been issued by my own Active Directory Certificate Authority.

• Click the Register button to accept the certificate and register to my zone; then click Next.

• You can now select from the available bundles the ones you want to download. If you want to download all current and subsequent bundles simply select the top level folder and choose the option to Replicate all of the bundles in the folder.

• (optional) Make sure the bundle folder is set to the folder you created in step 2.

• Click Next.

• You can now select from the available policies the ones you want to download. If you want to download all current and subsequent policies simply select the top level folder and choose the option to Replicate all of the bundles in the folder.

• (optional) Make sure the policy folder is set to the folder you created in step 2.

• Click Next.

• (optional) If you want your server to periodically check-in with my zone, setup a recurring schedule.

• Select a server to communicate with my server and fetch the bundles and policies you selected; then click Next.

• Review your selections and click Finish.

I recommend you leave the default options for other subscription settings. This means that by default any time you subscribe to a bundle or policy in my zone it will be automatically created as a sandboxed version in your environment. This allows you to test the bundle before it is deployed fully in your environment.

Current Content

At present the following content is available for subscription from my server:

• The bundles associated with Psuedo User based Assignments of Mac OS-X Bundles in ZENworks 11SP2 Please refer to the Cool Solution and/or the Administrator notes of the bundle for information about the variables used in this bundle. Be sure to replace the certificate distributed by the TrustCA bundle with your own corporate CA if needed or remove the Install Bundle action that transacts this bundle if it is not required.

• A template bundle for building bundles that are streaming from the ZENworks Application Virtualization Server as described in Using SpoonReg and SpoonPlay to Integrate Virtual Applications into your Environment Please refer to the Cool Solution and/or the Administrator notes of the bundle for information about the variables used in this bundle.

• A bundle that will enable VNC remote control of the logged in user session on Mac OS-X devices as described in Johnnie Odom’s cool solution here Using ZENworks to Remote Control the Current User Session on an OS X 10.7 or later Macintosh with ZENworks

I expect this content to grow over the coming weeks and months as my schedule permits. I will typically release a cool solution that describes what I’m doing with the bundle(s) or policy along with documentation on any variables or other environmental specific issues. Additionally, the Admin Notes of the bundle or policy will reference the URL to the cool solution. Typically you will want to leverage the Resolve Issues capabilities to make these settings.

If you have any questions, problems, or requests for bundles or policies you think would be valuable please contact me at jblackett@novell.com. Also it should be noted that while I strive to have this server up all the time, it is used for a number of other things as well and may be down from time to time.