May
24
2013

Here’s what’s coming up in KACE Kontinuing Education:

Here’s what’s coming up in KACE Kontinuing Education:

KACE Kontinuing Education (KKE) is an ongoing free supplement to JumpStart training. We continue to offer new topics, and sometimes revisit popular concepts. Here are a few upcoming sessions. A complete list along with registration information is always available at www.kace.com/KKE. Send ideas for topics you’d like added!

Date Time Region Topic
28-May 10 AM US Pacific Americas K2000 Useful Scripts
29-May 7 AM US Pacific Europe Supporting Non-Windows Platforms
30-May 10 AM US Pacific Americas Open Forum for Q&A
4-June 10 AM US Pacific Americas K2000 Naming Scripts
5-June 7 AM US Pacific Europe K2000: What is the KBE exactly?
6-June 10 AM US Pacific Americas Open Forum for Q&A
11-June 10 AM US Pacific Americas K1000 Database via 3rd party tools

 

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May
23
2013

Summer special on encryption…free licenses for KACE customers

Summer is here.  Are you ready to take advantage of the ‘free to work from anywhere’ culture that pervades many companies during this time?  But wait … who will protect the data that will be freely floating about…in thumb drives, removable media, maybe in the cloud!  Make sure you maintain the critical trust given to your organization by your customers and business partners.

So what are you waiting for – download your 10 free DDP Personal Edition evaluation licenses.  Be sure to enter the promo code KACE.

Dell KACE customers are ideally suited to operate in close harmony, to reinforce the security of sensitive data through encryption and to simplify and streamline compliance management, systems maintenance, and reporting by a centralized systems management solution. In the face of increasing security risks, organizations of all sizes need to include the protection of sensitive data among their many competing top priorities simply because ignoring these risks threatens the continued existence of the enterprise. Regardless of what drives this decision, the ultimate goal of securing data is to minimize all associated risks so that your attention can be returned to the strategic objectives of your enterprise.  All this needs to happen without disruptions to other network activities. 

 

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May
23
2013

K2000 Kloser Look: Reporting

Did you know the K2000 has some built in reports? Easily overlooked on the K2000 because often we’re just deploying images, and once the machines are imaged we never look back. You aren’t alone, but there are many good uses to systems deployment reports. How do we see patterns in images that are being reimaged ever 4 months instead of 12? How do we determine if imaging is taking longer than is should because of network issues? All of this and much more can be found in the Logs, Reports, and System Performance tools in the Reports module on your K2000.

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May
22
2013

Let Dell KACE work, while you relax.

It’s almost that time of year- summer. For many of us we won’t get the summer off, even though the kids of all ages might, we’re toiling away in a datacenter somewhere getting things going well for the next year. This happens in every industry surprisingly, not just in the education space. Summer tends to be one of the busiest seasons in IT because employee attendance is so low already due to vacations and other absences. Simply put, summer is when stuff gets done.

Don’t let the summer projects consume your life though. Put your Dell KACE appliances to work- let them handle the imaging, software deployments, packing your bags, and patching your machines. Wait… They can’t pack your bags… Okay- you do the packing. Then, go camping, go exploring, go to the couch, just GO. I encourage you to take a vacation this year. So many of the IT Admins that I talk to every year measure time in the number of years since their last vacation. Let’s get that down to months or even weeks- work with your team and management to get some time to recover. Even if it’s a mini-vacation of leaving at noon on Friday to go see the newest movie you can’t wait for. Let the KACE Appliances fill in for you, and go recharge your batteries.

Happy Summer to you!

–Chris

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May
21
2013

K1000 Kloser Look: Asset Types

A common question we get involves when to combine or split Assets into different Asset Types, and when to decide that a custom field should be its own Asset Type. Say you’ve got some printers; Some are network-connected, some are local. Some are printer-only, some are multi-function devices (copier/scanner/printer). Some are black-and-white, some are color. Some are ink-jet and some are laser. Add various manufacturers, models, and other variances, and you have quite the menagerie.

Your options are: (1) Create them as multiple, different (separate) Asset Types, with mostly the same custom fields, (2) Create them all under the same single Asset Type with custom fields that allow you to differentiate between them. For instance, a Yes/No drop-down box for Network; Format: Laser / Inkjet; and one for Function. The list could go on and on.

The question is “which way is better?” though… The answer is, likely “it depends”.

  • First, how many do you have of each? Perhaps it’s not worth the effort of building two full Asset Types.
  • Second, how do you want to reference them in your Service Desk queues?
  • Ultimately, it probably comes down to Reporting. You can only get out of your Database what you put into it. So, the questions you should probably ask yourself when setting up Assets are:
    • What are you wanting to do with them.
    • What do you hope to get out of the relationships you setup between Asset Types?

Let’s pick apart one field for a moment. You will need a Manufacturer field in your Printer Asset Type. You also need one in your Phone, Router, Firewall, Vehicle, Monitor, Software, License Asset Types as well. Everything has a manufacturer almost, so this one is pretty easy. I’m not going to create essentially the same field and A, B, C, D, E, F drop-down list in every single Asset Type; I could make Manufacturer its own Asset Type (just like Vendor), and greatly simplify relating Manufacturer to my assets. That gives me ease of implementation, as well as ease of reporting; generating a list of every asset manufactured by Acme Rocket Corp. should make it easier to see how much money I’ve spent on Wile E. Coyote’s schemes.

While the thoughts above probably aren’t applicable to 100% of our customers, they should give you an idea on a decision making process that works for you.

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