Net/Systems Management /

Desktop management tool time

Intel's LANDesk stays on top in our annual desktop management suite showdown.

By Paul Ferrill
Network World, 04/09/01

Also:

How we did it

Interactive scorecard and NetResults

Buyer's Guide database

Bulking up your desktop toolbox

Desktop configuration, ongoing mgmt. utilities

One challenge for desktop managers is maintaining control over the physical machines on their networks. That includes things such as preventing registry corruption, addressing deleted system files and maintaining a standard configuration across the corporation.

The first step in managing a large number of desktop computers is to establish a baseline configuration for each machine. In the case of new computers, it's fairly easy to deploy a standard image with the appropriate software loaded and proper network settings in place. EXpress and ZENworks provide system-imaging tools to make this task even easier. They use a similar approach to managing and deploying images. Functional steps include the initial image generation, cataloging of different images, and the mechanics of conditionally deploying an image to a specific workstation.

Novell's ZENworks also provides the most comprehensive desktop configuration tools of all the products we tested. ZENworks' policy feature lets an administrator centrally create and manage Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000 policies and user profiles. Policies make it possible to restrict access to control panels and network settings. The goal is to take away any chance of users changing things that might disable or degrade their desktop systems. ZENworks also monitors and fixes mistakes made in registry or system files. SMS provides a similar capability for propagating user profiles and logon restrictions although ZENworks was easier to administer.

Cognet 3.5 provides the ability to enforce profile restrictions on an individual basis. Specific profile options include setting application restrictions, defining access to Windows features such as the run option on the start menu, and limiting access to the Windows control panel. Another validation option keeps users from bypassing the network logon process by clicking the cancel button or escape key. A user settings Wizard makes it possible to change properties for multiple users at the same time.

Another angle to the configuration management problem is integration with third-party help desk products. Intel offers its Desktop Integrator Technology, which links LANDesk with help desk consoles from Remedy and royalblue.

Hardware and software inventory

All the products we tested provided some level of hardware and software inventory. The key factors we looked at were accuracy and thoroughness.

TS.Census is by far the most thorough inventory program tested. TS.Census picks up desktop details such as the number of memory slots used and those still available. That can come in handy if your company is looking to upgrade to Win 2000 and you need to know how many workstations have enough memory or available spare memory slots to accommodate the additional memory requirements.

TS.Census also leads the pack for software inventory. Its extensive recognition database is updated every 30 days and is accessible via Tally Systems' Web site. LANDesk and ZENworks come in a close second on the software recognition front.These products do a good job recognizing most standard software applications, such as the standard Microsoft productivity tools, Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and others, including shareware products such as WinZIP.

Some of the products, such as LANUtil32, reported slightly different numbers for things like available memory, depending on the operating system installed. For instance, LANUtil32 told us that one of our Compaq iPaq machines running Windows 98 had 126M bytes when it actually had 128M bytes of memory. An identical machine running Win 2000 Professional correctly reported 128M bytes.

As we found in last year's test, SMS suffers from recognition problems. It categorizes software into known items by manufacturer and unknown files. By default, it will gather all .exe files and attempt to identify them. While it did a satisfactory job overall it still didn't recognize DOS executable files like chkdsk.exe and emm386.exe.

Software distribution and application healing

All the products we tested make it possible to distribute software to some extent.

They all use the "before" and "after" snapshot approach to building a distribution package. The only hitch to this method is you must build a snapshot on each type of system, based on operating system, that you wish to make a distribution. Most of the products support some type of variable substitution, allowing you to customize each distribution based on things such as user name. Cognet 3.5 provides a macro language and predefined actions that simplify the process of customizing distribution packages.

LANDesk, SMS and ZENworks provide features that ease the network effect of distributing software to a large number of clients. All three products use a tiered distribution scheme in which a master server distributes a single copy of an application to a second level of distribution servers. From there a smaller subset of clients will be serviced when the application installation takes place.

Several of the products, including LANDesk, ZENworks, TS.Ready and eXpress, also use IP multicasting to accomplish software distribution with a minimal effect on network bandwidth consumption.

ZENworks also has a feature for increasing the availability of software run over the network. ZENworks makes it possible to build in fault tolerance and load balancing for all applications using the ZENworks Network Application Launcher (NAL). It will also launch applications from the server nearest the user to help reduce network traffic. For mobile users, the NAL feature will install a local copy onto a user's hard drive and make it possible to repair a broken application using a CD-ROM while disconnected from the corporate network.

In addition to basic distribution performance, we also gauged how each product can heal a broken application. While any application that supports Microsoft Systems Installer (MSI) doesn't need this type of functionality, it is still useful for a large number of applications. Only LANDesk and ZENworks provide true application-healing capability for non-MSI applications that will fix virtually any application-corruption problem. Cognet 3.5 will replace any missing files from a distribution each time their scheduler runs but can't handle the case when a file is simply damaged.

Reporting

Almost every product tested includes a basic report-generation facility. Along with that basic capability comes a set of default or template reports, with none of the products really differentiating itself from the pack.

In terms of the sheer number of canned reports, TS.Census wins out. It includes component, file not identified, product and workstation reports. Within each type of report an administrator can get breakdown, trend, catalog, history, detail and upgrade reports. TS.Census also supports all types of graphical formats, including pie chart, line and bar graphs. Default reports can be modified and saved to a personal reports container for later use.

We also evaluated each product's ability to produce Web-based reports. TS.Census provides an add-on called TS.Webport that can export reports to the Web on a scheduled basis. LANDesk also supports reporting to the Web and custom queries.

Another key area for reporting is the ability to build user-defined queries. TS.Census again leads the pack with an easy-to-use query tool. It has all the features you would expect from a database query tool, including the ability to view the results. SMS provides a query tool, but it requires that you know SQL Server. ZENworks inventory database can be accessed from an external Open Database Connectivity-compliant database.

License metering

Two of the products - eXpress and TS.Census/TS.Ready - do not provide software-metering capabilities. MyITware has only a software-usage capability that can give some insight into how a particular application is being used in terms of numbers of users and amount of time. LANUtil32 provides only a license-grouping feature for controlling which workstations can install and run specific applications.

On the other hand, LANDesk, SMS and ZENworks feature license pooling and will either deny, monitor or use a queue system to allocate individual licenses to users.

Each also lets you specifically grant full access to individual users. ZENworks does the best job of integrating with an underlying licensing system through the NetWare License Management facility.

Remote control

One of the biggest factors in judging the quality of a remote control product is speed. If the remote control function runs slowly, it can hamper a technician's efficiency in getting the remote PC fixed. Vector Networks' PCDuo offers the best performance of all the remote control features tested.

There is also the question of how much control an administrator can take over a remote machine. All of the products except for eXpress let administrators determine what role users get to play in a remote control situation. As an administrator you can give a user no choice in the matter or full choice, in which the user must give permission for you to carry out repair tasks.

Some of the products, such as ZENworks, let administrators lock out remote users' keyboards and mice while remote control sessions are taking place. One plus for LANDesk is its ability to launch a remote control session from its Web management console.

Client support

Intel's LANDesk is by far the most versatile when it comes to client support. The list of supported clients includes all versions of Windows, OS/2, Macintosh and Linux.

The ZENworks client is part of the standard Novell NetWare client. One difference between ZENworks 3 and the previous version is that it does not require you to have a NetWare server on your network. However, you do have to be running a version of eDirectory formerly known as Novell Directory Services on either a NetWare or NT server.

One dig on several products was the necessity of loading multiple client programs. Currently, Cognet, Tally Systems and Vector Networks require you to load more than one client program to cover all the areas that we wanted to test.

Installation and documentation

No product is perfect. One quick way to prove this is to install it. Two of the companies in this comparison, Tally Systems and Cognet, include installation support in the basic cost of the product. We allowed both companies to install their products on our test network and provide the same type of support that they would normally give to their customers. Our judgment of these two products was based on observing the installation process and then participating in some of the initial configuration and setup.

The Altiris product was the easiest to install and configure. One big plus for Altiris is that Compaq now ships Altiris client software preinstalled on many of its desktop systems. That made it possible for us to start using the software after installing only the Altiris console program. Altiris gets another star for the minimal amount of configuration necessary to enable productivity. Unlike many of the other products, the Altiris program will install and run without a lot of extra care and feeding.

SMS and ZENworks were the most difficult to configure. Both products require you to manually enable features that are enabled in other products by default. This is a design feature and is based on the concept that in large networks you want to explicitly turn specific capabilities on and not have them take down your whole production network.

Best documentation goes to TS.Census, as the user's guide explains the options in excruciating detail. The SMS manual provides a good set of examples and is well-indexed. Novell provides all of its documentation in electronic format. Intel's manuals contain an ample supply of screen shots and are also indexed well.

In the final analysis, there remains no be-all and end-all in the desktop management market. Once again, our recommendation is to understand the problem you're trying to solve and then choose the product that fits that criterion the best. However, based on the criteria we set for this evaluation, Intel's LANDesk tops our list, while Novell ZENworks should be on the short list in Novell shops.