Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Reviews

We use the System Management Appliance and the System Deployment Appliance.

On the K1000 management appliance, we're running version 12.0.103 and on the K2000 deployment appliance, we're running version 8. Our solution is deployed through a virtual machine.

For the K1000, we push out the agents through a group policy and provisioning agent. For the K2000, which we have four of, we have them set up as virtual machines and they reach out through PXE boot, IPv4 PXE.

We use the K1000 to manage all of our machines. Currently, there are 1,626, which includes 20 Android devices. We have a complete scripting library where managed jobs are maintained, both ones that run now and case by case.

We also use it to distribute and manage software. We use it to repeal unwanted software. We use it to disable machines after a given amount of time and repeal them from Active Directory. It is utilized for Windows feature build updates, as well as tracking Windows patch management and Windows patching.

We use KACE for IT asset management, compliance, software asset management, and patch management. It can also do mobile device management, although we don't use it for that. The combination of these features in a single package is important to us. I think with the inclusion of the service desk, the ticketing station, and integration through the user interface where they can download their own software and applications at a system-wide level, I think it's a really great program. It's really hard-pressed to find all of these features in one.

Overall, it works great in terms of updating and configuring everything we need it to be for our environment. My only complaint is smart label adaptation. I do recommend a bake-in period of 24 to 48 hours to make sure everything reports, but beyond that, it's pretty seamless. You have immediate reporting. The test environments are great, and you don't have to worry about bringing a real-world solution to a real-world environment.

The K2000 system deployment appliance assists us when new machines are set up. We take brand new machines out of the box and create a complete image of them. Not only does every machine that comes in get imaged but when we have a machine that takes longer than an hour or two hours for basic repairs, we re-image it. The K2000 touches everything in our company except for Android devices.

Using KACE has definitely increased our overall IT productivity. We used to spend approximately two hours per machine, doing one machine at a time. Now we can do as many machines as we can hook up. They have an average response time of approximately 30 minutes fully loaded, fully committed to our domain, and only require a simple update to Windows to finish the process. It's a whole lot easier.

We save an hour and a half, per machine, which is exponential because we used to get one machine done every two hours, whereas now, we can do as many machines as we can hook up in 30 minutes. It saves a lot of time. We used to spend hours each day re-imaging machines and now we spend minutes per day.

I usually use it for deploying patches, as well as for inventory, and sometimes even monitoring. KACE Systems Management is deployed through physical hardware. We have two of them. We use one for desktops and laptops, and we use the other for our servers.

We are part of a university, working under the president's office. We collaborate with all six campuses and have students from all six campuses interacting with us. To fulfill their requirements, we need tools for monitoring, patch management, and for inventory. KACE Systems Management is how we keep our customers and stakeholders happy.

The solution definitely saves us time. We try to do bulk patching, whereas before, we did manual patching. We used to have four people putting in 40 hours, and now we have one person doing it in 16 hours. That's quite a savings.

In addition, it has increased IT productivity. With one person responsible for installing patches, we have freed up the other three people to take more ownership of our applications. If I had to work on patching on a manual basis, that would be the only thing I'd be doing. But because this is all automated and scripted very well, I can use my time for other projects.

We have KACE SMA and KACE SDA. The SMA is to image all of our desktops. There are 3,000 desktops, and we use KACE SMA for Windows imaging and security patching and updates. We're using KACE SDA for our software library, so our client base can go to the software library and install software from there. We're using the support component and the trouble ticket system.

It increases security. We can target any machine or any device that is connected to it and update security if there is a vulnerability that comes out, especially this day of cyber attack. If we're notified by a vendor of vulnerabilities, we can push out an update within minutes. It has really increased the security of the network.

It is easy to use and pretty intuitive. It is pretty much a GUI interface. Its ease of use has affected the time to value because we can get our staff quickly up to speed on all of the components and how to support it best. Because it has a graphical user interface and is easy to use, it really decreases the training time and increases our efficiency in implementing things.

It provides a single pane of glass for everything that we need for endpoint management of all our devices, which has made things more secure. It gives us full visibility into every endpoint device that has the KACE agent on it.

It saves a lot of time. It has probably saved us a good month of person-time a year. It also saved a lot of training and a lot of lost productivity, not only for the technical staff but also for the staff, students, and faculty.

We also use KACE SDA, and it is fantastic for automating our deployments. We can literally push out an image to all 3,000 desktops at the same time and have everything imaged and done within three hours.

Every day, we do patching and updating of Windows Drivers. We also have to activate new software packages from firewall or VPN to Adobe software on a regular basis. We then use it very often and gladly to exchange files from directories, so people don't ask, "Please change this document to this document." We would rather do this through the system, exchanging various documents inside it. 

We do inventory to see whether:

• A machine is working fine, e.g.. hardware load.
• Systems are regularly shutting down. 
• A monitor is closed on a laptop.

This is exactly how the system works.

We are currently using the K1000 appliance. We now have it as a standalone, using it for software distribution.

We also have a hardware appliance. It is not worse than the last version of the hardware appliance. We don't have a virtualized one yet, but we are going in that direction.

Quest KACE Systems Management provides a single pane of glass with everything that we need for endpoint management of all devices. It allows us to run multiple processes in parallel, i.e., parallelization. We have been able to assign a lot to many users at once. So, if somehow there is a critical error or a software is not working properly, then we mostly notice this on one user but can transfer the effect/result to all of them right away. That has worked very well because we don't have an internal environment to work with, which is why it is a good thing that we can achieve a lot and distribute it simultaneously.

When we had to quickly switch from Office 365 to an Office local installation, which we used to have, people were cut off from the Office 365 license from now on because we no longer paid for it. We then got a call from a department, “Our 12 employees need our university Office application that we used before." That could be implemented very quickly. People didn't have to come to us, we didn't have to go there, and everything was done without seeing each other. This was very good and flexible, and no effort was needed.

The environment is worth it when rolling out new software, and we test it on this device.

We use the system every day because there is always something that someone needs. We just take a look to see if the system is working fine.

I primarily use this solution to deploy software, to deploy patches, to deploy drivers, and to do software package updates. I'm not using all of the functionality that it has but another thing I do is push out Windows upgrades. Rather than doing them all at once, I push out the feature updates.

It is set up on a VMware virtual machine.

When I first joined the company, the director and the other help desk associates were going to each computer to do updates and patches. At the time, we had 274 computers in the building, and I felt that there had to be a way that it could be automated.

One of the problems is that in order to get the updates completed, we were coming in on Saturday, which meant that they had to pay us overtime to get things done. When I started digging, I realized that you could use the SDA for automatic deployments and things of that nature. I was able to configure it to do what I needed to do.

I set up certain floors to be deployed during the night. The schedule was to complete 30 or 40 computers a night until they were finished. Then, when my director came to ask how the progress was, and I told him that the job was complete, he was shocked. It used to take them between two and three months to do the same thing.

Especially with the pandemic, where one day I have an employee in the office to work but the next day I don't, Quest has been instrumental in completing these tasks. With a couple of mouse clicks, I can get the job done.

The single pane of glass for managing devices is helpful because it allows me to perform updates and control things without having to disturb the doctors or nurses. The update process is transparent to them.

This solution provides us with IT asset management, software asset management, compliance, and patch management. This combination of features is important to us because we are able to perform all of these tasks without interrupting anybody's workflow. The most important thing is that we don't want to interrupt a doctor when they are with a patient and without Quest, if something critical needs to happen then I might have to wait to get into the office. During this time, the system could be vulnerable. Using a system with all of these capabilities and being able to use it after hours is key in IT.

The system makes it easy to update and configure things in our environment. If you get stuck then there are well-thought-out KBs available, and you can also ask people in the community. Personally, it has made my job easier. It's not as hands-on and it's more auditable.

Quest has absolutely saved me time, which I would estimate to be between two and three hours a day, easily. With the automations, things flow the way I need them to flow. When Windows updates come out on Tuesday, rather than deploying them on the weekend, we deploy them to all of the computers every Thursday. Because there is no more work to do on the weekends, it saves the company money, especially in overtime.

The automation helps on both ends. For one, you don't have the labor costs that you have to pay for in overtime. A lot of the things that we used to have to do by hand, I can now automate through the system. Then, at the same time, the work is getting done at the time you set it for. There is no "people factor", where they may not move as fast as expected. It happens, for example, that as people get tired, they get slower. Automation greatly diminishes the time that we spend going from one desk to the next. When I do it with the click of a button, everything is going to be done at that exact moment. 

We use it for a lot of things. We use it to deploy software, configure Windows via scripts, and to deploy some certificates for our customers. We are a call center and we have a lot of large companies as clients, so we need to deploy several kinds of software, such as Office 365 and applications from our customers themselves. We use a scripting framework from our consultants and that works great.

KACE SMA is the main software I'm using. I'm responsible for the KACE solution, and if there are any questions related to it, my colleagues come to me.

We have local KACE Appliances with VMware workstations, computers, servers, and we are using OVF files.

It saves a lot of time because, in the past, before we used KACE, when we installed a new version of a given software, we had to go to each computer individually and install it manually. Now we just set the labels and the software goes by itself. It also saves a lot of money because we have time to do other jobs.

We have seven locations. In the past, if we had to deploy new software or install user PCs, we had to drive with a large number of people to get the work done quickly. Now, we can deploy the software from one desktop. One person can do it and that saves a lot of time. It makes a lot of things easier. It has had a huge impact.

Another example of a benefit is that I developed a script because my CEO wanted to know how many computers are connected to our home office network from the outside. Every hour I run the script to import the information to an external SQL Server Express with a report engine. With the KACE, you can use information for other reports.

It is a virtual device. We use it for our everyday systems management and software deployment. It is implemented on all of our devices as an inventory and asset management tracking system. Our help desk system is utilized through it, and we do software distribution and deployments from it. We do all of those things on a daily basis.

We just updated to the beta version 12 on our test prep unit. We're on 11.1 on our active production device.

It has been very helpful in terms of management. The speed at which we're able to address help tickets is invaluable. We are able to maintain a history of problems and reference that information. That's been a huge piece.

Software distribution was what we initially purchased the product for, and it immediately paid for itself in time saved. We were looking to implement a new version of Office at the time, and we were anticipating a 6 to 12 weeks process to do the upgrade on all of our machines. With the device, we were able to complete that process in under a week. We saved a huge amount of time. At the time, I was the only tech who would have been doing the job. So, it would have been six weeks or so of my time. It has saved my hourly wage at the time for six weeks. We now have three people. Our roles are all the same. We're all IT technicians.

It has increased IT productivity. It has improved the speed for addressing end-user needs, distributing and updating software, and dealing with software vulnerabilities through patching. We could do these things much faster through the product.

It provides patch management, IT asset management, software asset management, and compliance. It also provides mobile device management, but we don't use it. The combination of all these things is really important for us. The patch management would be top of the list of those items. Asset management would be second, and software asset management would be third on that list. Compliance would be the last one.

It is really good for updating and configuring everything the way we need it to be in our environment. On a scale of one to ten, it is about an eight or a nine.

Its System Deployment Appliance (SDA) is wonderful for automating deployments. It is very quick and fairly easy to move forward with deployments. It makes deployments much smoother and quicker.

We use the KACE solution for endpoint management, since our posture is based on endpoints. We have almost 2,000 endpoints.

We have two KACE boxes. It's not a virtual appliance, it is a physical appliance.

It's not only saving time but increasing IT productivity. If you have a KACE box, you're going to save a lot. Having KACE is a blessing for IT administrators for endpoint management. They can do a lot of work remotely, as well as troubleshooting, mass deployment, and mass uninstallation. KACE is very intelligent and it has its own uninstaller.

An example of how KACE helped is that there was a McAfee service-provider who was visiting us to do a McAfee upgrade for our antivirus system. They are experienced people, the subject matter experts for deploying McAfee, the client, the agent, et cetera. He was having an issue uninstalling a McAfee firewall client. If you deploy a McAfee in your network, the uninstaller should be from McAfee, but the uninstaller from McAfee was an outdated version. Uninstalling the firewall client from McAfee requires a lot of effort. It's not impossible, but it's time-consuming and if you try to uninstall from the control panel, of course it won't allow you. There is a popup for the password and, without that, a lot of problems are going to occur. 

He told me he was facing this issue. The solution for uninstalling it was provided by KACE. I demonstrated it to him for one of our clients and he was shocked. He started writing that command, and the next day he sent me a text message, saying, "Thank you. You made my life easier." He gave that command to another customer, a client of his who is an IT administrator, to run that command via a batch file to all the end-users, because they didn't have KACE. 

For an IT department in any organization that pays for endpoint management, KACE is really a blessing for them.