Setting Up a Service Location Policy Package—The SNMP Trap Targets Policy

In ZENworks for Servers 3, several agents send an SNMP message to a central server that stores these messages and enables you to print reports on the traps. These traps can identify whether a policy has been successfully applied, whether a distribution was sent successfully, and other potential successes and failures.

The SNMP Trap Targets policy identifies the location of the service that is accepting and recording the SNMP messages from the server agents.

NDS Rights, Other, and Rights to Files and Folders pages are described earlier in the chapter in the "Setting Up a Container Policy Package" section.

Figure 5.11 displays the Trap Targets policy page. The service on the workstation walks the tree to find this policy and uses the service location stored in this policy as the destination of the SNMP messages.

After you bring up the policy page, you may add as many trap targets as you want. The service on the server sends the SNMP message to all the specified trap targets. Click the Add button and specify whether the destination can be achieved with an IP address, an IPX address, or a DNS name. After selecting the type, a dialog box appears in which you can type either the address or the DNS name of the target service.

After you add the trap targets, you need to specify how often that policy should be applied to the SNMP agents on the service location. Select the Policy Schedule tab shown in Figure 5.11. From the Policy Schedule tab, you simply identify the policy schedule type that you want to apply. When the scheduled time arrives, the system retrieves the SNMP Trap Targets policy and applies it to the agents on the server. The details concerning your choices for the schedule are described in the "Setting Up the Server Policy Package—The SNMP Community Strings" section later in the chapter.

NOTE

This Schedule Policy tab replaces the SNMP Trap Target Refresh policy that was found in the Server Policy Package in earlier versions of ZENworks for Servers.

Setting Up a Service Location Policy Package—The Tiered Electronic Distribution Policy

In a ZENworks for Servers 3 TED system, you can define several configuration items in this policy that are applied to the components in the TED system. Using this policy keeps you from having to administer these items in each of the subscribers or distributors that you create in the network. This policy is found by association and is not placed in the Distributed Policy Package. This policy will be found by the distributor walking the tree, from the perspective of itself or the subscriber, and then including this policy in the standard distribution.

The "Setting Up a Container Policy Package" section earlier in the chapter describes NDS Rights and Other pages.

Understanding the Settings Policy Page

This page is found under the General tab and represents some general configuration settings that are effective for any associated distributors and/or subscribers. Figure 5.12 shows this page.

On this property page, you may enter the following settings:

• Input rate (bytes/sec) . This represents the number of bytes per second that you allow a subscriber to consume for all distributions for input. The default is for the system to send at the maximum rate possible on the server. If you choose to enter 4096, for example, the subscriber shall not exceed receiving 4K bytes per second for incoming messages. This setting does not change the I/O rate for the distributor when gathering distributions via the FTP or HTTP agents , which always consume as much bandwidth as possible.

• Output rates based upon distribution's priority (bytes/sec) . This represents the number of bytes per second that you allow a distributor to consume for all subscriptions, based on the distribution's priority. If you entered 4096 into the low priority category, for example, the distribution whose priority is set for Low will not exceed sending 4K bytes per second.

• Maximum concurrent distributions . Each time the system is going to perform a distribution, it creates a Java thread that handles the distribution to the subscriber. This value identifies the maximum number of threads that you allow the distributor or subscriber to create to service the sending of the distributions.

• Connection timeout (seconds) . The default for this is 300 seconds. You can also enter your own timeout value. When the timeout value is exceeded, the distributor fails the distribution and retries the distribution every 2 minutes for the next 30 minutes (as long as it is still in its scheduled window). If, after all 15 retries, the distribution still has not succeeded, the distributor fails and cancels the distribution and does not attempt to distribute it again until the next scheduled time for the channel to be distributed.

• Working Directory . This identifies the directory where the distributor or subscriber stores its distribution files. The agents on the distributor, when they are called to collect the files and compress them into the distribution file, store the files in this working directory. The agents on the subscriber use this working directory to uncompress the files before copying them to their final destination. It is not recommended to use the SYS volume because of the potential system problems should that volume become full.

• Parent Subscriber . This enables you to identify whether the associated subscribers should receive distributions from the specified parent subscriber (as opposed to getting them directly from the distributor).

• Disk space desired to be left free (MB) . This enables you to establish a buffer on your hard drive so that a certain percentage of it will always be free. This is extremely important for large packages so that there is still enough drive space to install the application after it is delivered.

Defining the Messaging Property Page

The Messaging property page is under the General tab and can be configured if you click the active tab and select the messaging under the drop-down menu on the tab (by pressing the small triangle in the tab). Figure 5.13 shows a sample of a messaging page. Unless you are having some problems and are diagnosing some issues, it is not recommended to request a message level higher than 4.

For each of the appropriate fields, you may enter one of the following message levels:

• Level 6 . This level includes all the other levels, plus developer trace information.

• Level 5 . This level includes all Level 4 messages, in addition to trace information, which notifies the observer of the modules that are being executed. This level also captures and displays all Java exceptions.

• Level 4 . This level includes all the Level 3 messages and, in addition, informational messages that identify key points in the system.

• Level 3 . This level displays any warnings that were encountered in the system in addition to all the Level 2 messages.

• Level 2 . This level displays the successes that were satisfied by the system and also includes all the Level 1 messages.

• Level 1 . This level displays only errors that were encountered in the system.

• Level 0 . This level displays no messages.

You can administer the following configuration parameters on the Message property page:

• Server Console . This item identifies the level of messages that are displayed on the distributor or subscriber console (not the main server console).

• SNMP Trap . This identifies the level of messages that should be sent as an SNMP trap to the SNMP host. The SNMP Host policy must be defined and active in an effective (for the distributor or subscriber object) Service Location package for traps to be sent.

• Log file . This identifies the level of messages that should be stored in the log file. Additionally, you can configure the following about the log file:

  • Filename . This is the filename of the log file. The default location for a distributor is SYS:\TED2\DIST\DIST.LOG and SYS:\TED2\SUB\SUB.LOG for a subscriber. You should probably change the location of the log file, because it can grow as well. The log file may adversely affect the system because it is located on the SYS volume by default.

  • Delete log entries older than X days . In this parameter, you identify the number of days ( X ) worth of log entries that should remain in the log file. The default is 6 days. Therefore, any log entries that are older than 6 days are cleared from the log file. The process of removing the old entries from the log happens once every 24 hours.

• Email . With the email option, you may specify the level of messages that are sent in an email to the identified users. The SMTP Host policy in the ZENworks for Servers 3 Service Location Policy Package must be active and the package must be effective for the distributor or subscriber object to enable it to discover the address of the SMTP host and send the email. If this is not specified, the email is not sent.

In addition to identifying the level of messages, you must also specify who should receive these messages. To add users to the list, and have them receive the messages, you must select whether you want to add an NDS User or Group or specify an email address in the drop-down menu. When you select a user, you are asked to browse to the user in the directory, and the system takes the email address attribute from the user and uses that as the address for the user. Should you choose a group, all the users in the group are sent the email message, and the email attribute is used for each of those users. Should you not want to use the email address attribute in the user object, you may select the down arrow in the Address Attribute field and select which of the NDS User attributes you want to identify as containing the email address. It is expected that the attribute you identify will contain a valid email address.

If you choose to enter an explicit email address, rather than selecting a user or a group, you may choose the E-mail Address choice from the Add button. You are prompted to enter a valid email address. The entered email address is assumed to be valid and is shown as the User Name field in the table with an N/A in the Address Attribute field.

Learning About the Variables Property Pages

Variables enable you to substitute a variable name in the distribution with the value specified for the subscriber. When you create a distribution, you can, for example, use variables in the volumes and directory names . When the distribution is sent to the subscriber and the extraction agent is called, the agent replaces these variables with their defined value in the subscriber object. If no value is given, the variable name (including the %—percent sign) is used for that value.

The variables defined in this policy are additions to the variables defined in any associated subscriber. If you define the same variable in the effective policy and directly in the subscriber object, the variable definition found directly in the subscriber object is used.

Unlike ZENworks for Servers 3 policies and software distribution packages, the TED software performs only basic substitution of variable to value and does not allow you to reference an NDS object or its attribute. This eliminates the requirement that the subscriber have access to NDS and all the objects in the tree. This would be especially difficult if the subscriber were an external subscriber—not even in the same tree as the distributor!

If you created a distribution and specified %DEST_VOLUME% as the volume name, for example, when the subscriber extracts the files, the agent substitutes the variable DEST_VOLUME defined in this property page with the value. If DEST_VOLUME is not defined, a directory called %DEST_VOLUME% is created in the SYS volume.

Remember to be consistent in your conventions and your variable names. You should probably come up with a set of common variables that you define with each subscriber that you set up. When you create a distribution, you can then use these variables in defining the directories in which the distribution will be placed. Remember, determining which subscribers receive the distribution is based purely on who subscribes to the channels where you place the distribution. If you are not consistent in your variables across all subscribers, you may inadvertently send a distribution to a subscriber that does not have the variable defined. This results in the distribution being extracted in a place you do not expect (probably on the SYS volume). Some variables that you should consider defining in each of your subscribers include the following:

• DEST_VOLUME . Define this variable as the volume that receives the distribution after it is extracted.

• DEST_APPVOL . Define this to be the volume where your applications are stored.

• DEST_APPDIR . Define this to be the directory under the application volume where you place your applications.

Looking at the Schedule Property Page

This policy page enables you to specify how often the associated distributor software on the server goes to NDS and reads the configuration information for itself, the distributions for which it is responsible, the channels with which its distributions are associated, and the subscribers that are subscribed to those channels. The default value is Never, which means that the associated distributors read information from NDS only when it is first loaded on the server, anytime you reboot or restart the server or distributor process, or if you explicitly refresh the distributor from the distributor console or from the distributor object in ConsoleOne.

This page enables you to select when the configuration should be read and applied: Never, Daily, Monthly, Yearly, Interval, or Time.

After you select when you want the configuration applied, you have additional fields to select in the lower portion of the screen. The following sections discuss the various options.

Never

This option loads the distributor with the configuration information only when it is first loaded on the server, or after each reboot or restart.

Daily

When you choose to have the configuration applied to the system daily, you need to also select when the changes will be made.

This schedule requires that you select the days when you want the configuration applied. You select the days by clicking the days you want. The selected days appear as depressed buttons .

In addition to the days, you can select the times the configuration is applied. These start and stop times provide a range of time where the configuration will be applied.

You can have the configuration also reapplied within the time frame specified per hour /minute/second by clicking the Repeat the Action Every field and specifying the time delay.

Monthly

Under the monthly schedule, you can select on which day of the month the configuration should be applied or you can select Last Day of the Month to handle the last day, because all months obviously do not end on the same calendar date (that is, 30 days hath September, April, June, and November, all the rest have 31 except for February…).

After you select the day, you can also select the time range when the configuration is reread and applied.

Yearly

You would select a yearly schedule if you want to apply the configuration only once a year.

On this screen, you must choose the day on which you want the configuration to be applied. This is done by selecting the Calendar button to the right of the Date field. This brings up a Monthly dialog box where you can browse through the calendar to select the date you want. This calendar does not correspond to any particular year and may not take leap years into account in its display because you are choosing a date for each year that will come along in the present and future years .

After you select the date, you can also select the time range when the configuration should be read and applied.

To keep all the distributors from simultaneously accessing NDS, you can select Randomly Dispatch Policy During Time Period. This causes each server to choose a random time within the time period when it will retrieve and apply the configuration.

Interval

This schedule type enables you to specify how often to repeatedly read and apply the configuration. You can specify the interval with a combination of days, hours, minutes, and seconds. This type of schedule waits for the interval to pass before applying the configuration for the first time and then for each sequence after that.

Time

This enables you to specify a specific calendar date and time when the configuration is applied. When the current date on the server is beyond the identified date, the configuration is applied.