Author Archives: Christopher Blake

End Point to Perimeter: Network Protection that’s Inside Out and Outside In                    

May 16th at 8:30 am PST

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Are you concerned about network security?  We have a webinar for you.  Dell SonicWALL and Dell KACE will provide strategies for defense, including how to quickly implement a solution that provides the protection you need without impacting your network performance or reducing employee productivity.  You will learn how to better protect your networks from the inside as well as the outside, with solutions that reduce work for IT and security teams.

Solving Three Problems by Eliminating User Administrative Rights                         

Multiple Dates. Next date: May 22nd at 11 am PST

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It’s time we eliminated the role of Administrator from our Windows servers and desktops. Why? Inside Microsoft Windows, the notion of Administrator and administrator rights was never well designed in the first place. With that design, we’ve long been suffering under what amounts to a binary view of privileges: Do you have administrator rights or don’t you, have been the only options at our disposal.Yet simply killing off Administrator doesn’t solve the problem. Something must fill the hole its death leaves behind. In its place, IT dreams of a more granular approach to privilege management that aligns the actions users want to accomplish with those that you’ve specifically permitted.

Enhanced Remote Systems Management and Recovery with Intel vPro and Dell KACE                                                                                                                                     

May 23rd at 10 am PST

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It can be an IT manager’s biggest headache managing the growing number of remote users that are on the go and exclusively work from their laptops over wireless networks. And when a system fails to restart, a site visit often times is the only option for recovery. Now, with the powerful combination of Intel’s latest vPro technology and Dell KACE Appliances, IT managers can enjoy remote systems management and recovery that is both effective and economical. Discover how KACE Appliances together with vPro technology dramatically cut the time and resources needed to manage distributed endpoints.

We’ve got a couple of seats left in Chicago!- Join us for the whirlwind training event that we call Backyard Boot Kamp. Whether you’ve had your appliance for years and you have new staff, or you’re a new customer- there’s something in Boot Kamp for everyone.

Chicago, IL | May 21st – 22nd | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
Only a few seats remain for Chicago, so register now!

Looking for other upcoming events? Click Here

Did you know that your K1000 has some cool alerting capabilities? The most convenient is using our feature called “Email Alerts” it gives you the ability to setup email alerts and notifications to send to yourself or your team to let you know when important information is triggered about your Machines, Software, Assets, and more. Want to know when a warranty is expiring, or a license is due for renewal? E-mail alerts can be a handy way of doing that.

For a more direct and immediate alert- Broadcast Alerts enable you to display messages in a pop-up window on machines that are checking into your K1000 appliance. This is very useful to let your end-users know when the mail server is down, when your performing routine maintenance such as patching; however when we marry broadcast alerts with smart labels, the sky is the limit! Think of a smart label that detects a disk filling up, notifies the end user to clean up their stuff, and how to do that.

As an Information Technology Specialist your job can consist of many various tasks, and duties.  One of those duties may be keeping track of License Compliance Expiration dates, Dell Warranty Expiration information as well as some other tasks that sometimes you just forget about in your busy day.

Email Alerts:

The K1000 Appliance has many ways of reporting information to you; the most convenient is using our feature called “Email Alerts” it gives you the ability to setup email alerts and notifications to send to yourself or your team to let you know when important information built in with criteria becomes close to end of life.  Examples may be things like your Dell Warranty Information is coming close to expiration.  Maybe you want your team to know when disk space is running out in a particular group because you are getting ready for a large deployment.

When you create an email alert the appliance will check it against your inventory update.

When you pick the “Choose Action” Drop Down Menu you have a few options to choose from.  “Add new Computer Notification, Add new Asset Notification or add a new Network Scan Notification’.   Dell Warranty info could be a computer or Asset notification; Disk Space would be a computer notification.   Under whatever option you choose you will be given some similar and some different information in the drop down menus to create your alert.

Below your filter selection area you will see a place you can enter a name for your alert and a place to enter your email address or distribution list of the team members you want to be alerted when machines checking into the you K1000 Appliance meet that criteria.

Alerts (“Broadcast”):

Broadcast Alerts enable you to display messages in a pop-up window on machines that are checking into your K1000 appliance.   This is very useful to let your end-users know when the mail server is down, when your performing routine maintenance such as patching.   A good scenario is one I have talked about with many of our customers. Especially if they want to patch at night and WOL does not work in their environment.  I recommend they warn their users the day before that they will be patching their machines on such a date and then also warn them again before the day your going to patch their machines.   Let them know to log off and not to shut down their machines due to routine maintenance.

Keep Alive:  Under the message window there is a keep alive menu.  It is a drop down menu that will allow you to decide just how long you want to keep the message up on their screens.   You can keep it there for 24 hours if you want.  All the end-user has to do is click “OK” and the message goes away (something you may want to make note of in the message window)  Sometimes what is obvious to us is not always obvious to the end-users, and prevent phone calls to you asking how to make it go away.

You can then schedule your Broadcast Alert for whatever times you want to run them, or you have the “ Run Now” feature which will kick it off immediately for those times that unexpected things happen and you want to notify your users thins such as “The phone system is down; We will contact you as soon as it is repaired” so that you do not have your end-users barreling down the doors of the IT department.

Alternatively, and potentially just as useful is basing your alerts on a smart label to alert the end user to a situation based on criteria on their machine like unauthorized software installations, filling disks, and much more.