FREE ESSAY ON ZERO EFFORT NETWORKS

ZERO EFFORT NETWORKS

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.