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ZENworks 10 Configuration Management System Administration Reference
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7.1 Understanding the Satellite Roles
A Satellite is a device that can perform some of the roles that a ZENworks Primary Server normally
performs, including authentication, information collection, content distribution, and imaging. The
following sections contain more information about each role:
Section 7.1.1, “Understanding the Authentication Role,” on page 80
Section 7.1.2, “Understanding the Collection Role,” on page 80
Section 7.1.3, “Understanding the Content Role,” on page 81
Section 7.1.4, “Understanding the Imaging Role,” on page 81
7.1.1 Understanding the Authentication Role
When users logged in to previous versions of ZENworks, they were authenticated to the
Management Zone by contacting the ZENworks Primary Server, which in turn contacted the user
source that contains the users.
Satellite devices with the Authentication role can now speed the authentication process by spreading
the workload among various devices and by performing authentication locally to managed devices.
You can have multiple Satellite devices with the Authentication role. In addition, each Satellite with
the Authentication role can have multiple user sources configured and each Satellite can have
multiple connections to each user source to provide failover.
When a managed device uses a Satellite for authentication, the Satellite issues a certificate to the
managed device so that it can authenticate to the Management Zone using SSL.
On the managed device, the Authentication module is inactive until you promote the managed
device to be a Satellite with the Authentication role or until the Authentication role is added to an
existing Satellite.
NOTE:
If a Satellite device performing the Authentication role is a member of a domain, all
managed devices authenticating to that Satellite must be members of the same domain.
7.1.2 Understanding the Collection Role
If you want to improve information roll-up access for a group of devices to minimize traffic to the
ZENworks Primary Server that is hosting the ZENworks database, you can enable the Collection
role on a device. For example, if you have devices that are rolling up information to a Primary
Server outside of their network segment, you can minimize network traffic by enabling the
Collection role on a device within the network segment to accept the information from the other
devices in that segment. That Collection role device is then the only device from that segment that is
rolling up information to the Primary Server.
You can enable the Collection role on any managed device. The Collection role requires only the
Collection role module that is installed with the ZENworks Adaptive Agent. The module is inactive
until you enable the Collection role on the managed device.
