3.3 Connecting to User Sources

You can connect to one or more LDAP directories to provide authoritative user sources in ZENworks.

Adding a user source lets you associate ZENworks administrator accounts with LDAP user accounts and associate devices with the users who primarily use them. In addition, adding users enables additional functionality for the following ZENworks products:

  • Configuration Management: Enables you to assign bundles and policies to users as well as devices. Enables user-based inventory reports.

  • Asset Management: Enables you to account for software licenses on a user basis as well as a device basis.

  • Endpoint Security Management: Enables you to assign policies to users as well as devices.

When you define an LDAP directory as a user source, the directory is not affected; ZENworks requires only read access to the LDAP directory and stores all assignment information in the ZENworks database. For more detailed information about the specific read rights required when connecting to a user source, see Creating User Source Connectionsin the ZENworks 11 SP4 User Source and Authentication Reference.

You can connect to Novell eDirectory and Microsoft Active Directory as user sources. The minimum requirements are Novell eDirectory 8.7.3 and Microsoft Active Directory on Windows 2000 SP4. The minimum LDAP requirement is version 3.

After you connect to an LDAP directory, you define the containers within the directory that you want exposed. For example, assume you have a Microsoft Active Directory domain tree named MyCompany. All users reside in two containers in the MyCompany tree: MyCompany/Users and MyCompany/Temp/Users. You could reference the MyCompany tree as the source and the MyCompany/Users and MyCompany/Temp/Users as separate user containers. This limits access within the directory to only those containers that include users.

In addition to the users that reside within the containers you add, ZENworks Control Center also displays any user groups located in the containers. This enables management of both individual user and groups of users

To connect to a user source:

  1. In ZENworks Control Center, click the Configuration tab.

    Configuration page

  2. In the User Sources panel, click New to launch the Create New User Source Wizard.

    Create New User Source Wizard - Connection Information page

  3. Follow the prompts to create the user source.

    For information about what you need to supply at each step of the wizard, click the Help button.

You can also use the user-source-create command in the zman utility to create a connection to a user source. For more information, see User Commands in the ZENworks 11 SP4 Command Line Utilities Reference.