Another episode of the ZENworks Q&A with answers on questions I’ve seen in the past few months. This time I’ll focus on the new ZENworks Suite, there have been some articles already on this subject but still it’s something I get asked about quite frequently.
If you have a question that you want to get answered, just send it to qanda@open-horizons.net.
Q: I’ve heard that there is a new ZENworks Suite, what does that mean for me?
A: This is a question I’ve had many times recently and fortunately people seem to be happy after I explained them what has changed.
In the history of ZENworks we’ve had different packages that would include different components from the ZENworks product family. We used to have the ZENworks 7 Suite, and then when we shipped ZENworks 10.0 we introduced the Advanced and Enterprise editions for ZENworks and later we introduced the NELM and NTEMS and we even had some special packages for education customers. No surprise that this was confusing, not only for our customers but also for partners and us at Novell.
To move away from all these different bundles Novell decided to introduce a new “ZENworks Suite” and move all existing customers to the new Suite, everyone that had one of the old Suite offerings in maintenance is now moved to the new Suite and is entitled to use the additional components that it includes. With the next maintenance renewal these customers will be renewing the ZENworks Suite and not the old package they used to have.
Q: I’ve been reading about the ZENworks Suite, but sometimes I see that Patch Management is included and sometimes it’s not. What’s the true story?
A: We have seen some confusion on this: sometimes you might have seen ZPM listed as part of the Suite and sometimes you do not. Within ZCM you do have ZPM available. However in order to make use of this you will need a subscription to the service that provides the patch information. The patch subscription is not part of the ZENworks Suite but is a separate add-on (the price for the subscription add-on to the Suite is however lower than the standalone ZPM package).
Q: OK, so Patch is not part of the Suite. But I used to have ZCM Advanced and that had Patch Management included, what do I get now?
A: For customers that used to have Patch Management within the Suite offering, their Patch Subscription will be available until their maintenance needs to be renewed. At the renewal they will be offered to continue with their Patch Subscription. The maintenance price for the ZENworks Suite including the Patch Subscription is the same as the maintenance we used to have on the ZENworks Advanced edition.
Q: So you told me that in the new ZENworks Suite I’ve got ZENworks Full Disk Encryption, where can I find the key to enable this?
A: With the ZENworks Suite we’ve got a single key that will enable all products, so customers that were moved from any of the former packages to the new Suite will find the new Suite license key in their Customer Center portal. They won’t get separate license keys for the individual products. This works great as you only have to enter a single license key but you can only do so after upgrading to ZENworks 11.3 as that introduces the new Suite license option. Customers that are still using an older version of ZENworks will have to update to 11.3.x before they can use any of the additional components they got as part of the Suite changes.