Part 1

Background

Zentyal was formerly known as the eBox Platform since it was developed by eBox Technologies. It's an open source unified network server software package (or a unified network platform). It includes development framework to ease development of new Unix based services. It is targeted at network administrators as it offers easy and efficient computer network administration for small and medium sized businesses because Zentyal can provide various networking services such as a gateway, network infrastructure manager, unified threat manager, office server or unified communications server or a combination of them.

The operating system can be obtained from the official site (zentyal.org) for free of charge. It is 625,224KB big in a disk image format.

Installation/Startup

For the purpose of this report, Zentyal is installed on a virtual machine using VirtualBox (VirtualBox). The disk image can be downloaded from the official site of the Linux OS (Zentyal).

VirtualBox setup

After you've downloaded Zentyal's disk image, a virtual machine needs to be created with appropriate settings. The configurations for my virtual machine were mainly default:

Welcome page: Nothing needed to be done here
VM name and OS type: Name: Zentyal; Operating System: Linux; Version: Other linux
Memory: 256MB
Virtual Hard Disk: Have the start up disk checked then create new hard disk
Welcome to virtual disk creation wizard: select VDI
Virtual disk storage details: Dynamically allocated
Virtual disk file location and size: The default setting is fine

When everything is all set up, it should now display the Summary of your virtual machine's specifications.

Basic Operation

- describe experience in using the distribution for simple use cases (use intended purpose) - if unable, explain why - Zentyal can be used as: - a gateway and firewall for internet connection - server for network (local or internet services) - - explain any problems encountered - include screenshots of some typical or interesting activities

Usage Evaluation

References

http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=zentyal. Retrieved 2011-10-12
http://www.zentyal.org/. Retrieved 2011-10-12