Inventory Schedules - Novell ZENWORKS 10 CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT SP3 - SYSTEM PLANNING-DEPLOYMENT-BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 10.3 30-03-2010 System Planning Manual

Maximum retry request wait: The maximum time the device waits between retries.This
overrides the incremental time to wait in the Initial retry request wait setting.
If a Primary Server or Satellite device is contactable but busy, a client waits for the initial wait
period, retries, increments the wait interval by the value specified, then retries again. This process
continues until the number maximum retries has been reached or until the connection load on the
server goes down. The default settings in ZENworks Configuration Management are 20 retries, an
initial wait time of 10, and a maximum wait time of 20. This means that a device waits a maximum
of 345 seconds before marking a busy Primary Server or Satellite device as Bad. All the HTTP or
HTTPS calls are sequential, so if the closest server rules are correctly configured, the wait should be
very short. Connecting to a different Primary Server or Satellite device might not be the best option
because it might be overloaded or across a low-bandwidth, high-latency connection.
These settings should be based on the placement of Primary Servers and Satellite devices within the
environment. If there are many Primary Servers in a location connected to the clients by high-
bandwidth, low-latency links, these settings can be lowered. If there are fewer Primary Servers and
clients connecting over low-bandwidth, high-latency links, or to a Satellite device across a WAN,
these settings can be increased to "wait out" the busy period. These settings can be overridden on the
device or folder level.
During Novell testing, retries were set at 60/30/60. A server was never marked as Bad, and all
content was delivered. No degradation of performance at the client was observed when the retries
were set high.

Inventory Schedules

Inventory scan frequency depends on how often the hardware and software in the environment
changes, and how accurate the information needs to be. Under normal circumstances, it should be
adequate to collect inventory data on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis, but this might not be
sufficient for all deployments. Be aware of the workload placed on the ZENworks Primary Servers.
Every inventory scan a device does must be processed by the ZENworks Primary Server and stored
in the ZENworks database. Ensure that the schedule does not unnecessarily scan thousands of
devices on a daily basis, but if this is necessary, closely monitor the load and performance of both
the Primary and database servers. Inventory schedules can be set at the Management Zone folder,
and device level. We recommend that you configure inventory schedules on a folder basis to ensure
that the load is spread through a given time period. If you must immediately update the inventory of
a device, a scan-now request can be sent to the device via ZENworks Control Center.
For a weekly scan, select a day that is most likely to capture the largest number of devices connected
to the network. To capture all workers, consider doing a scan on every fifth day so that all days are
eventually targeted.
For restricted scan times, use the random wait time carefully. If a scan window of 9:00–17:00 is
configured with the Randomize scan time option, devices that disconnect during this period might
not be scanned. This can cause many to consistently miss their scans. The Process immediately if
device unable to execute on schedule option instructs any device that missed the schedule to scan
when it next connects to ZENworks. This is useful for ensuring that devices perform an inventory
when they are offline during their assigned inventory schedule.
Use a schedule that best fits the environment and avoiding restricting the scan times severely. A very
small "scan potential" window can lead to many devices not performing regular inventory scans.
If some devices are always on, consider starting the scan schedule before or after normal office
hours, so these devices can be processed when there is low utilization.
Performing Design Activities 59