I have recently seen a tool in Netware in which you can distribute Applications over a network. I have seen Microsoft Office with the red shortcut Icon running from Novell Netware.
I was wondering whether I could run something like this using OpenSuse, the network isn’t large it runs 20 PC’s and was wondering whether OpenSuse could provide me with this tool to distribute applications over my network.
My workstations are Windows XP and 7 Pro.
I haven’t got the funding to run Netware servers unfortunately.
On Wed, 12 May 2010 15:26:02 +0000, cjnetworker wrote:
> I have recently seen a tool in Netware in which you can distribute
> Applications over a network. I have seen Microsoft Office with the red
> shortcut Icon running from Novell Netware.
>
> I was wondering whether I could run something like this using OpenSuse,
> the network isn’t large it runs 20 PC’s and was wondering whether
> OpenSuse could provide me with this tool to distribute applications over
> my network.
>
> My workstations are Windows XP and 7 Pro.
>
> I haven’t got the funding to run Netware servers unfortunately.
When you say “distribute applications over my network”, what exactly do
you mean?
Do you mean copy application directories from one server to another? If
that’s what you mean, then yes, you can do that by using something like
rsync.
If you mean “run the applications from the server”, then yes, you can do
that too, the easiest way would be to set up a SAMBA share with the apps
in it and use the Windows networking tools in the client to “map” drives
to the SAMBA shares.
when you logon to the system using the your Novell account the Applications such as Microsoft Office and EDraw and what ever other apps are downloaded to the desktop as shortcuts with a red shortcut arrow, the programs are stored on the Novell server but executed on Client machines.
It’s a really awesome setup and wondered if it can be done is OpenSuse.
Apparently this “Distributed Applications” thing is run under Zenworks is there something similar for OpenSuse ?
On Thu, 13 May 2010 06:36:01 +0000, cjnetworker wrote:
> Apparently this “Distributed Applications” thing is run under Zenworks
> is there something similar for OpenSuse ?
It sounds like you’re talking about a job that’s a combination of
installer and launcher (my ZENworks experience goes back to about version
2, but it sounds like this icon launches and makes whatever registry
changes are necessary when launching).
I’m not aware of anything in the OSS world that does that.
That form of distributed application is very unwise unless on a closed network. You do find that kind of thing in corporate architectures and M$ has been dreaming of making their software more of a central thing where you never really install the apps but instead just download/use/discard.
Touting that you will always be up to date with the latest greatest developments is more hype than the real value.
On Thu, 13 May 2010 17:56:01 +0000, techwiz03 wrote:
> hendersj;2164659 Wrote:
>> I’m not aware of anything in the OSS world that does that.
>>
>>
> That form of distributed application is very unwise unless on a closed
> network. You do find that kind of thing in corporate architectures and
> M$ has been dreaming of making their software more of a central thing
> where you never really install the apps but instead just
> download/use/discard.
That is the idea - it’s a closed network with standard desktop
deployments. From a systems management perspective, it works very well
(I used to work for a Fortune 50 company that used this technology).
> Touting that you will always be up to date with the latest greatest
> developments is more hype than the real value.
Not in an IT infrastructure environment - the savings are quite real and
if done properly, management of the systems becomes a breeze.
Sorry, I was referring to my own statement about M$ dreams … their touting that you will always be up to date and thus trouble free, if you let them handle deployment of distributed apps.
In a closed loop / IT infrastructure this is the one case where the technology has inroads to benefit. The one caveat is that to run apps from a separate system, the systems must be OS compatible as in Linux - Linux or Windoze - Windose. To install from one system to another that requirement is not needed as the host is merely deploying the apps and the compatible system receiving them handles the actual integration.
On Fri, 14 May 2010 01:06:01 +0000, techwiz03 wrote:
> hendersj;2164685 Wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 May 2010 17:56:01 +0000, techwiz03 wrote:
>>
>> > Touting that you will always be up to date with the latest greatest
>> > developments is more hype than the real value.
>>
>> Not in an IT infrastructure environment - the savings are quite real
>> and
>> if done properly, management of the systems becomes a breeze.
>>
>>
>>
> Sorry, I was referring to my own statement about M$ dreams … their
> touting that you will always be up to date and thus trouble free, if you
> let them handle deployment of distributed apps. In a closed loop / IT
> infrastructure this is the one case where the technology has inroads to
> benefit. The one caveat is that to run apps from a separate system, the
> systems must be OS compatible as in Linux - Linux or Windoze - Windose.
> To install from one system to another that requirement is not needed as
> the host is merely deploying the apps and the compatible system
> receiving them handles the actual integration.
You are right “hendersj” that’s what I’m looking for like the Zenworks stuff it’s brilliant. For Obvious reasons I canot afford a Novell License to run Zenworks so I’ll have to go with another kind of system, not sure the Samba share with apps in it would work though that was suggested in one of the replies.
I like OpenSuse but looks like it doesn’t have the ability, I’ll figure something else out.
Samba would work fine the executables are just resident on the file server. You can set the short cut on Windows boxen to use a local start directory if that is what is wanted. or just share the data from the files server.
On Fri, 14 May 2010 16:56:02 +0000, gogalthorp wrote:
> Samba would work fine the executables are just resident on the file
> server. You can set the short cut on Windows boxen to use a local start
> directory if that is what is wanted. or just share the data from the
> files server.
The difference is that what ZENworks does is essentially do the
installation using the server directories for the executables - using
SAMBA could work, but only if the app includes a network based
installation (and then the client install would need to be run on each
system).