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Enterprise User Manual

Chapter 15

Online Clients

Online Clients are accessed directly over a network using shares on the Client PCs. Online mode offers immediate, real-time management of Clients, but requires the Client PCs to be available across the network at the time of access.

Operations work differently for Online Clients. When Operations are applied to an Online Client, they are performed in real-time by interactively accessing the Client shares as a background task; no intermediary file server is used. Non-disruptive background access is provided by an Enterprise component for DOS and Windows 3.x and through Microsoft file sharing on other Windows platforms.

For Online Clients, the inventory collection programs run quickly and silently, saving their data to files on the local hard disk. The data is then retrieved by background access when Update Hardware Inventory and Update Software Inventory Operations are performed. This avoids imposing any boot-time network load for Online Clients.

You can perform an Operation on any mixture of Online Clients and Offline Clients.

Detecting Online Clients

By default, Enterprise is not configured to detect Online Clients as they do not save any data to the Offline Area. If you want to add Online Clients to your Site, you must enable the Online Client settings by customizing the Find Clients Operation or creating a variant of it (for more information, see "Creating and Customizing Operations").

To customize the Find Clients Operation to detect Online Clients:
  1. In the Console, right-click a Find Clients Operation and choose Customize from the shortcut menu.
  2. In the Customize dialog, select the Auto-populate/Scan tab.
  3. Select Enable online scan to detect Online Clients.
  4. Select Create groups for domains if you want the Operation to create a new Dynamic Group for each scanned domain.
  5. Select Add to clients database to display new Clients in the Console's Clients list and their data in the Site Database.
  6. Choose the domains you want to search for new Clients:
If you want to populate the Site Database with all Online Clients from all domains on your network, choose Scan all domains.
If you want the Operation to populate the Site Database only with Clients from domains specified when you run the Operation, select Prompt for domains. You are prompted to specify the domains using the Select Domain dialog.
If you want the Operation to populate the Site Database only with Clients from specified domains, choose Scan specified domains and type the domain names in the entry field.
Take care when using these settings. In Online mode, the Find Clients Operation detects any networked PCs where shares are enabled, even if the Client software is not installed. If you run the Operation against large domains, it can add a large number of Clients to your Site Database and exhaust your Enterprise license.
  1. Click OK to save your changes and close the dialog. You can now detect your Online Clients by clicking the Operation.

Specifying Disks and Shares

Online Clients use local disks and shares (referred to as Resources) to transfer data to and receive instructions from PC-Duo Enterprise. Before you work with and perform Operations on Online Clients, you must ensure shares are available on each Client and register the details of the shares that you want to access. Use the Resource Details dialog to register share details with Enterprise and to test and modify the existing details.

By default, the Enterprise Client software attempts to create shares for drives C through Z when it first runs on Client PCs. However, this can be prevented by Windows Security Policies or changes to LUCLIENT.INI file in the Client kit. If the shares have not been created, you must manually create them on Client PCs before using Online mode.
To add resource details for an Online Client:
  1. Right-click the Online Client and choose Edit Resources from the shortcut menu.
The Resource Details dialog is displayed. The Available Resources list displays the disks and shares that are currently registered for the Client, and the Client field displays the name of the Client you selected.
  1. In the Resource field, enter the name of the drive or share you want to register with Enterprise. For example, to make the C drive of the Client available for use, type C.
  2. In the User, Password and Verify password fields, enter the details of an account that can be used to access the selected resource. The account must have Admin privileges if you want to use an Admin share on the Client. You must also enter the Domain name if the Client belongs to a domain.
  3. Click the Test button to check the Access control settings will work with this Client.
  4. If you want Enterprise to automatically warn you when the Client is running out of free disk space, enter the warning level in the Free space threshold field.
For example, to display an Event List warning when the free space on the disk drive falls below 50 MB, type 50 in this field.
  1. If the specified resource is read-only, select Read-only resource.
  2. Select Client area if the Enterprise Client software is installed on this resource.
    Only one client area can be specified for each Client. PCs that share the Client installation directory must have this check box selected on that resource.
  3. Click the OK button to save the resource details and close the dialog.
To modify resource details for an Online Client:
  1. Right-click the Online Client and choose Edit Resources from the shortcut menu.
  2. In the Available Resources list, select the resource you want to modify and click the Edit button.
  3. Edit the fields you want to modify.
  4. Click the OK button to save the resource details and close the dialog.
To delete resource details from the Site Database:
  1. Right-click the Client and choose Edit Resources from the shortcut menu.
  2. In the Available Resources list, select the resource you want to update and click the Delete button.
  3. Click the OK button to save the resource details and close the dialog.
    You can delete resource details from Offline Clients as well as Online Clients. This enables you to delete the details of resources that are no longer required when you convert a Client from Online mode to Offline mode.

    Deleting a share from Enterprise has no effect on the share itself.

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