PreWorX, the local developer of preboot software, has released its PreBoot Services Toolkit for ZENworks 2.0, a set of administrative tools enabling users to expand the PreWorX preboot functionality and services already built into Novell ZENworks for Desktops.
"Novell`s ZENworks is an infrastructure management tool that has been implemented by about 38 million users around the world," says Rhys Taylor, PreWorX sales and marketing director. "It is therefore an attractive and sizeable market segment PreWorX will be targeting with a toolkit that makes managing corporate desktops simpler, faster and less costly."
The Preboot Services Toolkit allows ZEN users to build and edit network boot images and preboot menus, and deliver them to any workstation before the local operating system loads. A remote control console can be used to control these menus and network boot images in preboot from a single centralised interface, or the user can select specific services from a menu - again before the operating system has loaded.
"These extended services can deliver solutions that range from BIOS upgrades to basic health diagnostics, minimising human interaction with problematic PCs or systems needing upgrading, and ensuring substantial savings in overall support costs," explains Taylor.
In traditional support environments, a technician has to travel to each faulty PC, diagnose the problem and implement a solution. By using preboot technology, a technician at a remote site can take control of the PC and even go so far as to reformat the hard drive and reload the operating system and applications over the network, saving the support department time and money, and getting faulty PCs up and running in record time.
The toolkit`s remote control console allows support staff to reboot, restart or shutdown a remote workstation and control its keyboard access during a session to eliminate user intervention. It also makes use of ZENworks` imaging policies to deploy network boot images to any workstation based on the system`s hardware fingerprint, which consists of the machine`s MAC address, IP address, CPU, hard drive size, video card, network card, sound card, hard drive controller and the system`s memory.
Clients will also be able to deploy configuration tools to prepare PCs for advanced hardware such as RAID controllers, or third-party diagnostic applications to check system health. The toolkit can also integrate other imaging solutions such as Ghost, PowerQuest or ImageCast into ZENworks. PreWorX is making the toolkit available directly from its Web site to Novell ZENWorks users (http://www.preworx.com).
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