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Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) pros and cons

Vendor: Quest Software

4.4 out of 5

39 reviews
95% willing to recommend

463 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) streamlines software deployment with its robust imaging capabilities, reducing setup time. Automation features boost IT efficiency, while service desk ticketing optimizes device management. Centralized management allows seamless oversight across IT environments. However, power issues limit imaging capacity, and setup complexity poses challenges. Patch and software management need enhancement, and limited support availability raises concerns during critical downtimes.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance allows remote imaging and software deployment, boosting convenience and efficiency.

Asset management and service desk ticketing are valued for enhanced resource tracking and issue management.

Automating deployments and utilizing post-installation tasks optimize user-specific configuration and productivity.

Automated patch management aids in timely and large-scale software updates without disrupting operations.

Scripting capabilities improve IT productivity by simplifying complex software installations and updates.

CONS

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance has issues with power management and imaging capacity beyond thirty or forty machines.

Automatic application updates are not available, which impacts user control.

Initial setup is complex due to Linux-based virtual server limitations and mandatory upgrade steps.

Patch management for non-Microsoft applications lacks effectiveness.

User support is inconsistent and lacks 24/7 availability, impacting critical issue resolution.

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Pros review quotes

TH

Laboringenieur / Computeringenieur at HTW Berlin

Apr 21, 2021

The scripting part increases IT productivity because of the specialized software in our environments for students' courses. You need to use software which is not programmed by developers. A lot of software for building houses or other things is developed by normal guys, who do not have much skill in programming. When you need to install this type of software, it is very difficult. You have to install registry keys, etc. For that, it is very good to use the scripting part of this solution. So, you can automate this part as well.

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Director of IT at CCOF, INC

Nov 24, 2021

The big pros of Quest KACE Systems Management are its simple interface, and simple, direct management. It's very easy to maintain and manage the device, and it's easy to get it up and running. You can have it up and running in an hour...

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reviewer1677819

Help Desk Technician at a hospitality company with 51-200 employees

Sep 22, 2021

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.

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Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

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Learn what your peers think about Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.

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reviewer1506942

Security Systems Integrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Feb 10, 2021

KACE has made our life much easier since we got off the Microsoft solution. The Microsoft solution was a lot harder to image over different ports and stuff. They would only have this one place where we could do all the imaging. Now, we have a whole building where we can image from. This means that we can image from our storage area, where we have a place to do our imaging. We can also image right at our desks, which is a lot easier.

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TW

Sr. IT Support Technician at Hill Brothers Transportation, Inc

May 26, 2021

The scripting is a very valuable feature, as it saves us time on pushing certain things out to the users, such as software and patches.

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reviewer1508673

Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 13, 2022

The Systems Deployment Appliance is magical when it comes to automating deployment... Not only can we have multiple images, specific to end-users' uses, but we have a plethora of post-installation tasks to install or configure the system, tasks that can be re-used for each system. You just have one basic base image, and then you use the post-install tasks to customize everything else. It is amazing.

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SW

Stephan Williams

Computer Support Specialist at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Oct 13, 2021

Using this solution saves us lots of time, especially when it comes to performing updates.

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reviewer1512810

Enterprise Service Desk Systems Manager at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 17, 2021

We have our KACE agent deployed on all of our workstations and servers, and it provides us with reports on the hardware and software inventory for those.

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MW

Muhammad Waseem

Works at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

Apr 26, 2021

The most valuable feature of KACE is the mass package deployment. There are a lot of endpoint management solutions in the market. The way KACE responds is with the installation management feature, which is done in a very intelligent way, as well as scripting. It's wow. It's really wow. On top of that, there is a mass undeployment feature as well.

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CB

Carsten Buscher

IT Systems Administrator at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 1, 2021

It also does patch management. At the moment, I'm rolling out a new feature update, 20.8.2, and it's a great challenge because we have to deploy it to 1,200 computers in the home office. We want to do it without interrupting production, but KACE is reliable and it's easy to adapt it to my needs for how and when to deploy the feature update.

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Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Cons review quotes

TH

Laboringenieur / Computeringenieur at HTW Berlin

Apr 21, 2021

It is a little bit difficult to use the license compliances because you need to decide when you are using the software catalog if you are using it with their license compliance or the normal software part. Under the inventory, you can use software as a menu link or software catalog. Most of my specialist software is not in the software catalog. When I try to import them, in my license compliances overview, there are cryptic names for this software that I have to import. That is not very good for the reports that I use. When I take them to my bosses, they see cryptic names of software that they don't understand. It would be much better for me if I could use software and the software catalog as well for the license compliances.

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Director of IT at CCOF, INC

Nov 24, 2021

The problem is that it's harder to directly emulate a lot of the stuff that the group policies do, using the KACE solution. With regular group policies, you just specify the various settings you want to change on the workstations, and then you specify the workstations and—while it's kind of an ugly mess—it does it. Whereas on KACE, you really have to know what you're doing with scripting to effectively script those exact same changes.

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reviewer1677819

Help Desk Technician at a hospitality company with 51-200 employees

Sep 22, 2021

When we have to do a rebuild on these machines, although it is rare, I would like to be able to do more than 10 at a time. With the current limit, it slows me down because I have to set up 10, then the next 10, and so forth.

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Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Free Report: Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.

824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer1506942

Security Systems Integrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Feb 10, 2021

They could make the booting solution easier for different things, e.g., easier to insert drivers. They could make it easier to create a new image and put it onto the server. Those would be some nice solutions. They could make it so that somebody who has no knowledge at all can do it. That would be really nice. Because every time, until I get it memorized, I still need to go back to the training, the manual, or Google it to figure it out again. If they would make it a lot easier, to where a nine-year-old could do it, that would be really cool. If they made it easier, I could have more people managing the images on the server, instead of just one or two people.

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TW

Sr. IT Support Technician at Hill Brothers Transportation, Inc

May 26, 2021

The KACE Go Mobile App crashes a lot, and it always has. I would love to see that get fixed because it's very convenient when it does work properly, but most of the time it does not.

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reviewer1508673

Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 13, 2022

I would sure like them to be able to copy and paste out of OneNote. That drives me nuts. You can't copy from OneNote into KACE.

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SW

Stephan Williams

Computer Support Specialist at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Oct 13, 2021

The software asset management functionality is an area that needs to be improved. It could be more automated because when connections need to be made, such as when I connected Adobe and my malware removed, the process was pretty much manual.

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reviewer1512810

Enterprise Service Desk Systems Manager at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 17, 2021

Scalability is my primary concern right now.

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MW

Muhammad Waseem

Works at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

Apr 26, 2021

There should be a mini toolbox, like the competitors of KACE have, with the small features for KACE administrators. That would make their lives easier. If you are troubleshooting a specific endpoint, remote control is available as is Wake-on-LAN. But if you want to execute some commands, you have to use a third-party tool, the PS tool. If they would integrate those small things, it would make KACE more powerful.

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CB

Carsten Buscher

IT Systems Administrator at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 1, 2021

KACE implemented the possibility of reducing the network speed of the KACE agent. You can set it so that it takes whatever network speed you want or you can set it to 5 Mb, to save network speed. You set it for all the computers, but it would be preferable to separate between VPN connections in our home office and the local area. It would be great to be able to set separate speeds for different VLANs.

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Configuration Management

Endpoint Compliance

Patch Management

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Configuration Management

Endpoint Compliance

Patch Management

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Microsoft Intune vs Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

BigFix vs Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

AWS Systems Manager vs Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

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