[27241] in resnet
Re: Anyone using Dell KACE?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Chuck Steel)
Mon Feb 6 08:56:54 2012
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Message-ID: <CAHVqF_jg1NWSEJWpYZMnDRn2egT_8hr+z65oPqRx4wSGSmdz7w@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 08:56:43 -0500
Reply-To: Resnet Forum <RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu>
From: Chuck Steel <chuck.steel@gmail.com>
To: RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu
In-Reply-To: <C83AE047A84D1E48BA389A8071442469515122D1@BUEX.bellarmine.edu>
On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 8:18 AM, Ward, Sean <sward@bellarmine.edu> wrote:
> Our Dean/acting IT Director asked if we should look at the Dell KACE
> appliance (not sure which of the two, K1000 or K2000… or both) and I wanted
> to see if anyone used these and if they had any comments that they’d like to
> share (on or off list) regarding it.
>
We moved to Dell KACE over the summer and have been very happy with
it. We have a K1000 appliance and use it for Service Desk and
Inventory and just turned on patching for our campus. I actually heard
about the appliance at the ResNet Symposium at WWU. We were
considering migrating from Altiris to the K2000 for imaging, but the
K2000 doesn't support multicast at this point (that might be coming in
future versions).
The system is very flexible and includes some interesting features
that can make it very powerful. Within the Service Desk there is a
custom rules functionality that gives you the ability to modify
tickets through SQL commands, which means you can create queues that
will automate some common tasks. You can also use the rules to change
other tables in the database, meaning you can have a helpdesk ticket
act on assets, etc. The inventory also includes the ability to create
custom inventory fields that can be populated in a variety of ways.
For instance, we have a custom inventory rule that is populated with
the members of the local administrators group so we can now run a
report to see what computers have a certain user or group setup as an
administrator (oh, and I could have a custom ticket rule automatically
act on that information if I want to get fancy).
The KACE user forums on appdeploy.com are also active, which provides
a great resource for problem solving. I haven't had any issues with
getting good responses from technical support, but it's also nice to
have an active user community that you can turn to for questions. We
previously used Numara Track-IT and there wasn't a similar resource
available and I find it makes a world of difference if you have
someone other than technical support to reach out to.
--
Chuck Steel
Dickinson College
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