Workstation Removal Policy

Along with the capability to automatically create workstations in the tree, ZENworks for Desktops 4 provides an automated way to remove expired workstation objects from the tree. This is to keep the tree from being cluttered with workstations that are no longer associated with any physical device.

Each time a workstation is used and it has been registered in the tree, a service visits the workstation object and timestamps the last visit into the workstation object, along with refreshing several other pieces of information in the workstation object. This timestamp is what the Workstation Removal service is looking at when it determines whether the workstation should be removed.

The following pages enable the administrator to configure how the system removes these expired workstation objects. The NDS Rights, Other, and Rights to Files and Folders pages are described in the "Setting Up a Server Policy Package" section.

Containers Page

This page enables you to grant rights to the removal service to containers where they must remove workstation objects. When you add a container to the list, the system grants rights to the policy object. When the removal service needs to perform and delete a workstation object it logs in as the policy being used, enabling it to obtain rights to remove workstation objects in the specified container.

These containers are the only ones that the service monitors for stale workstation objects.

The process of adding and removing containers is familiar. You press the Add button and then you are presented with a dialog box that enables you to browse through the tree to select the container you desire. Once selected, the container is added to the list and the import service is given a trustee assignment to that container, and given the rights to Browse and Delete objects.

To remove a container from the list, select the desired container and press the Remove button. This removes the trustee assignment that was given to the service and deletes it from the displayed list.

Limits Page

This page enables you to specify how stale a workstation object must be before it is considered for removal. Figure 12.9 shows a snapshot of a sample limits page.

Figure 12.9. Workstation Removal Policy; Limits page.

graphics/12fig09.gif

You can use the up and down buttons to specify the number of days the workstation should not be connected with a device before it is considered for deletion. Once the timestamp in the workstation object is older than the specified number of days on this page, the removal service deletes the object from the directory.

Schedule Page

This page enables you to identify how often and when the workstation removal service should run on the server.

On this page, you can identify the following configuration schedules:

  • Year This is the year to begin the launch of the removal service.

  • Date This is the calendar date with the above year when the removal service will be launched.

  • Start Time This is the time of day when the removal service is available to run.

  • Duration This enables you to specify how long, after the start time, the removal service should run.

  • Repeat Interval This enables you to specify how often after the initial start date the removal service should re-run and be made available.

  • Limit Number of Workstations Removed This enables you to specify in the session value the maximum number of workstations that should be removed while the removal service is available. When this maximum is reached, the service quits removing workstations until the next specified execution time. This is to keep from consuming a significant amount of processing cycles for DS to refresh the partitions where the removal has occurred.

The service, when started, calculates based on the start date and how often it should come alive (interval) and which day it should work. If today's the day, the service begins its workstation removal work. This is done so that even if the server needed to be rebooted, the service would still properly calculate the day it should run and not rely on being up the number of days in the interval.



Novell's ZENworks for Desktops 4. Administrator's Handbook
Novell ZENworks for Desktops 4 Administrators Handbook
ISBN: 0789729857
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 198
Authors: Brad Dayley

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