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.

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

May 16th at 8:30 am PST

Register now!

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

Register Now! 

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

Register Now! 

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.

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

• Compliance with government or commercial regulation
• Protection of the intellectual property upon which all future successes rely
• Maintain the critical trust given to the organization by its customers and business partners

Dell Data Protection | Encryption (DDP | E) is a policy-based solution that provides you with the confidence that all of your data is secure, with a solution designed for simple, comprehensive and flexible protection. Coupled with your KACE Appliances- we’ve got you covered end to end. Here’a a whitepaper on the deployment and more: https://www.kace.com/partners/~/media/Files/Partners/DDPE-and-Dell-KACE-Integration-Technical-Reference.ashx

Try it out for yourself!                                                                                                                                         Experience first-hand the level of encryption and compliance Dell Data Protection | Encryption delivers within the context of your own IT environment! As a valued Dell KACE customer, we would like to offer you 10 free DDP | E Personal Edition evaluation licenses.

During the 30 day trial period, you will be able to experience the key benefits of DDP | E Personal Edition, including:

• Easy end user deployment
• Complete endpoint protection
• Flexible encryption for high-level security
• And much more!

To take advantage of this offer, go to https://marketing.dell.com/data-protection-evaluation and include promo code KACE. You will receive an email with software download instructions and your evaluation license key within 24 hours.

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.

I got a chance to teach a Backyard Boot Kamp recently and I talked with customers that had used KACE at other companies, customers that had inherited the appliances from someone how hadn’t done much  and a number of other scenarios. It’s a fact that those attendees learned something that helped them do their job better, and they should be able to apply those skills in the future if they change jobs. Interviewing and someone asks what that KBOX is? RUN!! No, I’m kidding, but you could certainly use it as a talking point to help them reduce costs, increase efficiency, and improve performance. If showing them how to do that during an interview doesn’t get you hired, they may not understand that they need you.

We’re working hard at Dell KACE to keep the konversation going…. Traditionally we’ve published information and announcements to the website and notified via the newsfeed on your appliances. We will continue to do that of course, but we also supplement that with a newsletter delivered directly to you in case you missed an announcement, need more information, or we thought of something really cool we wanted to share!

Already a subscriber? Kool! Get involved- send Dr. K your questions, and let us know what sorts of things you want to see in the news.

First you’ve head of it? That’s okay- Click here to get subscribed:  my.kace.com/inKpadsubscriptioncenter

I need to copy files to an entire label. Should I use scripting or Managed Installs? If I use MI how do I configure it?

Answer:
With Managed Installations and K-Scripts, you can install software and make configuration changes to your machines. But, if you just want to copy files to a machine you might want to use File Synchronizations. Perhaps you’ve got a new version of a textbook, which essentially consists of a handful of .PDF files, or maybe you need to stage a large quantity (or size) of files on a local drive of your computers prior to doing something to/with those files. You can make them a one-time transfer, or persistent. They can be transferred compressed, and either unzipped or not. They can even create the destination folder structure if it doesn’t already exist. Just like MIs and K-Scripts, they can be directed to individual machines, or labels of machines. They are extremely simple to setup. Navigate to Distribution > File Synchronization to give it a try! The KKE team did a show on this a while back: Americas KKE Series - K1000 Koncepts: Using Managed Installs and File Syncs
Thanks for the questions– I’ll get you a prize soon for picking your question! —Dr. K

Sure… Not as impressive as superman and his leaps over buildings, and ability to fly, but awesome nonetheless. We can deploy software to thousands of computers, update scripts in minutes, manage an entire service desk, deploy hundreds of new computers, and keep the auditors happy with accurate information. If superman works for you, I bet he either administers the K-Appliances, or he wishes he were that cool.

In any case, you guys do the work, but we take what you do seriously. I always say “If you’re beating your head against the wall, Stop that! Ask for help!” None of us likes to do that, but it’s very easy and at KACE, we aren’t judgy–Ask questions. Come see us on Thursdays for open forum KKE at www.kace.com/kke or reach out to your JumpStart trainer or support. New to the appliances? We recorded the JumpStart training for your company. Send me an email and we’ll gather up what we have for you.

ITNinja Blog of the Month: Machine Action ideas by AWingren

ITNinja Member of the Month: Dustin Gullett an Enterprise Systems Admin for a hospital in Dallas.

KACE Konnect User of the Month: Georges Khairallah – an IT Admin for about 11 years, and a Dell KACE user for about 3 years. You can Follow him on Twitter –  @babylon78 and, make sure to check out his blog.

Facebook post of the month:

“RSA for the K2000 rocks! Going to save me so much time in the end!” – Perry P. Schiele

Tweet of the month:

“@DellKACE We’ve been moving to Win 7 with our K1 and K2 for a while now. Making it easy. Love seeing the pie chart slice grow into Win 7” – @Cicadymn

• Live Webinar: End Point to Perimeter: Network protection that’s inside out and outside in
  May 16th at 8:30am Pacific Register now!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.

Through Bomgar’s integration with the Dell KACE K1000 Appliance, technicians can launch a secure remote support session directly from the K1000 service desk and inventory features to immediately begin remotely diagnosing and resolving a problem. During remote support sessions, technicians can view and control the remote system, chat with the end-user, check system information, transfer files, and more.  When the session is complete every action that occurred, including chat transcripts and a video recording of the entire session, can be automatically fed back into the associated K1000 service ticket.

Bomgar’s solution is multi-platform, allowing support technicians to remotely manage desktops, laptops, servers and mobile devices across operating systems. Plus, Bomgar allows techs to provide support from their preferred device, working on Windows, Mac and Linux systems, plus iPads, iPhones, and Android devices.

Here’s what some other users are telling us:

• “The combination of Dell KACE and Bomgar is like compound interest, the longer you have these solutions in place, the more benefits you will receive,” said Joe Barnett, director of technology of Frenship Independent School District.
• “When integrating Dell KACE into our environment we were looking for a suitable tool for remote management that would pair well with it.  Bomgar quickly rose to the top as the best tool available, and has by far exceeded our expectations,” said Brian Carpenter, vice president of information technology for Heritage Auctions (HA.Com). “Not only was the direct integration with Dell KACE easy and seamless, but the additional functions that Bomgar offers has made a significant impact on the systems management challenge for Heritage Auctions (HA.Com).”

1. First you will need to download the latest RT7Lite release client for the architecture that matches the Windows version you intend to deploy (version 1.7.0 for both x86 and x64 at the time of this writing).
2. Run the utility and you will see that RT7Lite offers a great degree of customization options for your Windows 7 installation.
3. For the purposes of offline patching, we will be looking at the Integration section beneath Home and Task.
4. Before we go any further with RT7Lite we need to acquire the patch files from Microsoft. Download Windows Updates Downloader (WUD) as well as the latest patch list for Windows 7 x86 and/or x64.
5. After installing WUD, double-click the patch list file to install the updated patch listing into WUD.
6. Now run WUD and choose which updates you would like to download by putting a check in the relevant boxes.
7. Once you are happy with your selection click the Download button in the lower right corner of the WUD interface. Wait for the download process to complete.
8. Now that we have the patch path files we can integrate them into the Windows 7 installation media using RT7Lite.
9. Upload that as your K2000 Media and build a Scripted Install and you’re ready to go! Alternatively if you use images rather than scripted installs- use that media to build your new image and it’s up to date.

RT7Lite free download – http://www.rt7lite.com/downloads.html

Windows Updates Downloader free download – http://www.windowsupdatesdownloader.com/ProgramFiles.aspx

Updated Microsoft Patch Lists – http://www.windowsupdatesdownloader.com/UpdateLists.aspx

It’s very simple to configure and operate – it works just like K1000 Patching! The K1000 can download the available Dell Updates for the Dell computer models (Laptops, Desktops and Servers!) you have in Inventory. You, then, create and run an Inventory schedule to determine, of those updates, which are needed on which machines. After that, all that is left is to create and run your Update schedules to install the updates. You can label the updates so you maintain strict control of which updates you want to push. Of course, you can also select to push them to either individual machines, or a label of machines.

It truly is simple to setup. Navigate to Distribution > Dell Updates to give it a try! Once you get them up and running, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them! Watch this KACE Kontinuing Education recording for more detail, demos, Q&A, and more!

Americas KKE – Using Dell Updates for BIOS/Firmware/Software/etc.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013 – 1 Hour 14 Minutes

KACE Kontinuing Education (KKE) is an ongoing free supplement to JumpStart training. We continue to offer new topics, and sometimes revisit popular koncepts, each week. 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!

Note: This applies to .wim images captured with the K2000 3.3.x or 3.4.x KACE Native Imaging Toolkit (KNIT) that are stored in the petemp\ImageStore share.

Just follow the few steps below to complete the process:

1. Go to the System Image detail page of your .wim deployment and duplicate it. A backup of the original never hurts.
2. Remove all midlevel tasks that do not have to do with the .wim deployment. Some examples of these may include, Apply Computer Name, Set Computer Name, Copy kuid, or a task that injects drivers into the image. We do not want any of these things to run on our clean image.
3. Remove ALL postinstall tasks.
4. Deploy this image to a machine WITHOUT rebooting it afterwards, you must stay in KBE.
5. Capture the image using the Windows Imaging Format (fast compression) radio button on the Capture Image page.
6. Go to the system image detail page of the new image you captured, and configure it with the pre/mid/postinstall tasks you want and save.
7. Deploy the image, reboot the machine and verify that everything works the way you like.
8. If successful, delete the duplicate image created in step 1, as well as the original. In Windows, browse to \\<k2_ipaddress>\petemp\ImageStore and delete the .wim that was associated with that image.

Here are a few Kare & Feeding tips for this year:

• Are your appliances up to date? Compare your version to the ones at www.kace.com/support/customer/downloads
• Inspect Managed installs, do you have any older software versions that could be removed to free up disk space?
• Check your patch settings; do you have any older operating systems we can unsubscribe to? Or new ones you need to subscribe to? Are your deleting unused patches?
• Check your reports and any custom ticket rules. Check the scheduling, do these items need to run on their current schedule or can it be slowed down? Be realistic in how quickly you need this information.
• Are your Post-Install tasks on K2 up to date? Are there extra things you no longer use?
• Is the K2000 Driver Library up to date, yet neat and tidy?
• Are your backups stored off of the appliance? Have you tested restoring them?

Simply keeping up with these and a few other maintenance tasks on your appliances make life much easier on you and your IT department. Not sure what else to look for? That’s okay- contact your sales person and ask for 2 Hours of Additional Training time. Let our training coordinator know that you’d like to schedule a health check with a trainer and we’ll check things over with you and discuss some recommendations for your environment.

Backyard Boot Kamp Locations

• Santa Clara, CA | April 23rd – 24th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Boston, MA | May 14th-15th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Chicago, IL | May 21st – 22nd | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• New York, NY | June 18th – 19th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Austin, TX | July 23rd – 24th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Denver, CO | August 13th – 14th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Minneapolis, MN | September 24th-25th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Boston, MA | October 22th – 23th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here

Seats are extremely limited for these backyard training events, so register now! Just a few comments customers have shared about these Boot Kamps:

“Hands-on Training is great!”, “Real-world experiences of trainers really made the difference”, “Boot Kamp got me up to speed quickly”

This is all too common in Labeling. Whether it’s K1000, K2000, or your inbox, a little laziness here can have major impact later on. Here’s an example: I create a new label, the first of 10 or so that I need to create for some new project, and I tell myself I’ll get to filling in the Notes of each label after I finish creating them all. They’re all very similar labels, so I’ll remember what I typed into the wizard…of the first label…after I finish creating all 10 labels… but I won’t!

Let me explain:
I know I’m not going to remember if I have a particular label, much less what the criteria was that I used in creating it. Especially if I got the SQL from ITNinja.com, and didn’t really understand it in the first place. So, I give it a good name, to aid in sorting my label list to find it when needed, and I type the exact label-wizard-criteria I used in building it, into the Notes field of the label. By following a simple regimen to clarify my work, I never have to worry about forgetting something important about the labels, or more importantly, someone else using them in ways they shouldn’t. I can only imagine a large team with a fair amount of staff-turnover… Multiple techs creating varied labels every day; It wouldn’t be possible to remain successful for long without a very good naming convention and notes-field-usage.

Labels was the example given, but the benefits of some simple organization can be seen across all of the K-Appliances. On the K1000: Custom Inventory, Schedules, Scripts, KB Articles, Roles, Reports, Categories, Labels, LDAP Queries, etc. will benefit from some notes and naming convention. For the K2000: Source Media, Pre- & Post-Install Tasks, Scripted Installs, System Images, KBEs, Labels, etc. are more sustainable with some simple notes left behind. The more of them I have, and the longer it has been since each was created, the more important it is that I name them well, and notate them with all of the detail I might need later. The likelihood of my winning the lottery is much lower than the more realistic notion that I might forget how something was done six months ago.

So, put some thought into your naming conventions before you get too deep. An ounce of prevention beats tons of renaming later! Too late? You already have a thousand objects without notes or naming conventions? That’s okay. Make a policy moving forward, and retroactively fix things as you use them at minimum.

Did you know that you can also purchase additional JumpStart training hours? For a low hourly rate you can get personalized instruction from a KACE trainer on any appliance you own and we’ll dive deep into product-specific topics of your choosing. For more detail on what’s available visit: http://www.kace.com/support/training/jumpstart. Don’t see what you want? Ask us- we can generally help design a program to fit any need.

Your sales rep or the training group can help you decide how many training hours you might need- let us know how we can help! Not sure who to talk to? Feel free to reach out to training@kace.com and we’ll help you decide what training might fit your needs and help you get pricing.

Once you’ve turned your machines off you can now use the Wake On Lan Tool to turn machines on that were shut down overnight, this can be scheduled to run specific time so that machines are on waiting for use when people get in for work. You will need to configure your network environment for the WOL packet to be sent to the targeted machines properly.

Also the K1000 has built in reports; you can view these by using the “View By” option in the top right drop down under the Reporting tab. Some reports estimate yearly savings of the power management settings, you will need to change the default per kilowatt price to your local price.

You can also create custom scripts to help you with your power management settings or modify the existing ones to fit your specific needs.

Be a double hero in your organization by being green and saving money!

www.ITNinja.com brings us more goodies than every holiday combined! This month we wanted to share with you a great write up done by a member of the ITNinja community on: Keeping K1000 Agents up to date. It’s not difficult, but it’s often overlooked- When a new agent bundle is applied to the K1000, it must be then be enabled for machines that check in to update the installed agent- this can be for labels or all machines in an organization. Newly provisioned agents will use the latest version, but we will let you keep old versions by label if needed. It’s usually not needed, but rather, accidentally done. Read the entire article at http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/k1000-updating-agent-software

Features include:

• Windows 8/2012 support
• Additional operating system locale support (Korean, Chinese (Hong Kong), Portuguese, and Hungarian)
• Operational patches now published
• Improved agent and server communication channel
• Server and agent bug fixes
• Custom Inventory Improvements
• And Much more!

For more details check out this release preview from the KKE recordings:
KKE Special Episode: Announcing K1000 v5.4 SP1!
Wednesday, February 20, 2013 – 45 Minutes

Don’t have v5.4 SP1 yet? Why not?! Get it here!

• NIC Link aggregation
• Offboard storage migration within the webui
• Support for new offboard devices
• Mountain Lion (OSX 10.8) support
• Windows 2008/2012 support, with the exception of USMT 5 and WinPE 4.
• Native Imaging (.wim for Windows, .dmg for Mac)
• Driver Feed for system images, customers use a checkbox to enable within each image
• UEFI boot via USB
• Tasks to capture/apply KUID to a Windows system
• K1000 5.4 agent and install commands
• Support for Windows 2000, Power PC Macs, 32bit appliances and IE6 have been removed.
• Unified release of English and International

The minimum version to update is 3.4.54256. This upgrade is only for 64-bit appliances, 32-bit support has been ended.Support recommends enabling SSH root login and reboot the K2000 prior to applying the update. If you have a virtual appliance, we always recommend taking a snapshot prior to updating.

If you’ve been looking at your appliance feed, reading our technical newsletter, the InkPad, or watching out for this announcement on our KACE social channels:

• facebook.com/KBOXBYKACE
• Twitter.com/dellKACE

then you already know that the new releases of the the K1000 and K2000 are available for download.

The K1000 and K2000 feature some great new features to make your job even easier:

K1000 v5.4 SP1 — Enhanced Patch Management

K2000 v3.5 — Hardware Agnostic Imaging 

Make sure to  to stay on the cutting edge of awesome and download it now!

Today we are announcing the availability of our new Dell KACE K3000 Mobile Management Appliance. The version 1.0 release of the Dell KACE K3000 Mobile Management Appliance extends our award-winning systems management technology to now manage and enforce security policies on mobile devices running iOS and Android. With this latest addition to the Dell KACE family of appliances, our customers can benefit from seamless integration with our K1000 Management Appliance. That means they get a comprehensive, easy-to-use way to accurately track, monitor and manage not only desktops, laptops, servers, but now mobile devices- and do it all more efficiently.

By supporting the most popular mobile devices in the workplace, the K3000 enables IT to solve the BYOD challenge, by allowing smart phones and tablets to securely access corporate data. This ultimately empowers employees to choose their device of preference, maximizing productivity by enabling an anywhere, anytime work environment.

At Dell KACE, we understand that as more and more companies adopt BYOD, the role of the IT admin is changing. No longer responsible for just managing desktops, laptops and servers, they’re now tasked with managing mobile devices and policies. The KACE K3000 demonstrates our commitment to deliver to customers a secure, unified solution to manage all endpoints regardless of platform or form factor.

Learn more about the KACE K3000 Mobile Management Appliance.

• Mobile Device Inventory Management and Tracking
• Application Deployment and Management
• Mobile Device and Data Security
• Configuration, Policy and Profile Management
• User Portal
• Automated IT Administration
• IT Reporting and Dashboards

Don’t let the length of features fool you- this appliance packs a big punch! Pre-release customers can’t stop raving about how great it is, and in accordance with Dell KACE general practices- we’ll keep making it even more amazing every chance we get.

All existing K1000 and K2000 customers with active contracts are eligible for a limited time offer – 20% discount on all all nodes and appliances for the K3000
(Offer ends June 11, 2013, and cannot be combined with any other offers)

Visit http://www.kace.com/products/mobile-management-appliance for more detail, demos, videos, and more!

Backyard Boot Kamp allows you the opportunity to:

• Extract maximum benefit from your KACE Appliance by either refreshing or enhancing your skills
• Interact with KACE experts and ask questions pertaining to your issues
• Connect with your fellow users in the local KACE community, to learn best practices and establish on-going relationships
• Save on travel expense and minimize time away from the office

This is two full days of KACE product training (one day for the K1000 and one for the K2000), and we promise not to include any information that is not of direct practical value to your organization. Choose either a full day of K1000 or K2000 tracks, or both days for training maximization!

NOTE: Boot Kamps are designed specifically for new users or those desiring a skills refresh. They are not intended for advanced KACE users, nor should they be considered as a replacement for normal JumpStart new customer training.

Backyard Boot Kamp Locations

• Washington DC | March 28th-29th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Santa Clara, CA | April 23rd – 24th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• JUST ADDED! Boston, MA | May 14th-15th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Chicago, IL | May 21st – 22nd | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• New York, NY | June 18th – 19th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Austin, TX | July 23rd – 24th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Denver, CO | August 13th – 14th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Minneapolis, MN | September 24th-25th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Boston, MA | October 22th – 23th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here

Cost : $695 for one day or $1195 for both days. Registration includes lunch, a limited edition USB drive loaded with goodies and all the knowledge you can soak in.

Seats are extremely limited for these backyard training events, so register now!

• Use the “start /wait” command when deploying software via K2000 Postinstallation Tasks
  When deploying software via an application Postinstall task it is a good idea to begin the task’s command line with the “start /wait” command. This command will open a new command prompt and execute the remainder of your command line. The /wait switch ensures that the application installer finishes all of its tasks before ending the task and moving on to the next Postinstallation item. If you notice your deployments are not installing items of software slated for deployment via a PO task, take a look at each task’s command line and add “start /wait” (without the quotes) to the beginning of the command line.

• Use “call” when utilizing scripts in tasks
  Much like the previous best practice, using “call” at the beginning of your command lines that execute scripts is always a good idea. A deployment, whether it be a Scripted Installation or a system image, is orchestrated via a large BAT script on the backend of the K2000. Placing “call” in your command line will prevent the script being called from inadvertently terminating the main BAT deployment script.

• Keep 20% free space on the K2000 HDD
  We recommend keeping at least 20% of the K2000 hard drive free at all times. The reason we accept this as best practice is two-fold. First, it is possible to over commit the K2000′s hard drive, writing more than 100%. This is due to the way FreeBSD, the OS of the K2000, reports HDD space. Over committing the hard drive will result in an unresponsive K2000, so having the buffer zone of 20% free space will grant us some breathing room. Second, whenever a kimage is exported (or any item for that matter), the resulting .pkg is written to \\k2000\restore. The \restore share is simply another directory on the K2000 hard drive. While it’s true that the K2000 deduplicates image files when they are stored on the appliance, exporting an image requires writing a unique version for each file contained in that image to a .pkg file saved to \restore. Maintaining the 20% free space buffer zone allows these exports to take place without the chance of over committing the hard drive. Which brings us to our next best practice:

• Don’t use the \restore share as a permanent backup location
  We outlined above that \\k2000\restore is a share located on the same hard drive array as the rest of the data stored on the K2000. Let’s pretend a very isolated thunderstorm sends a lightning bolt directly into your K2000′s hard drive, the result being a completely destroyed K2000 RAID array. At this point, everything on \restore has been fried along with the rest of the K2000′s data. Wildly improbable thought experiment aside, you can see that using \restore as a backup location is a bad idea. Instead, export the items you wish to backup and move them off of the \restore share to a safe location. In fact, the K2000 can do this automatically for you using the Off-board Package Transfer settings located in Settings and Maintenance > Package Management.

• Don’t delete if capturing
  The K2000 utilizes deduplication technology for storing kimages. If a kimage is deleted while an image capture is taking place, there is a chance that files thought to be pre-existing before the capture took place get removed. The end result is a captured image that is missing files, as those files got deleted when they should have been shared with the newly captured image. Avoid this problem by not deleting kimages unless there is positively no image capture taking place.

• Avoid using OEM media with Scripted Installations
  This is more of a legal issue than a technical limitation but I think it is worth including in the list of best practices. The OEM licensing model issues a unique Windows license key for each physical system. If OEM media is used to deploy Scripted Installations throughout your environment, make sure that each deployment receives its own unique license key. The ideal model for a Scripted Installation is using volume licensed media in conjunction with either a Key Management Server (KMS) or a Multiple Activation Key (MAK). The results is a no-touch Scripted Installation while still remaining license compliant.

By incorporating these simple practices into your normal operations and being vigilant to not deviate from them you will spend a lot more time basking in the glory of a job well done and a lot less time digging through logs and troubleshooting.

The following is a basic BATCH sample provided by K2000 Support Technician Gerald Mack. The script captures all profiles into a single MIG, assumes that the target system has one partition, and uses the USMT software that was uploaded to the K2000:

@echo off
 net use S: \\sharename\folder /user:domain\user password
 xcopy y:\applications\4\usmt4\%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE% C:\USMT\%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE% /s /q /y
 set USMT_WORKING_DIR=C:\USMT\%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%
 c: && cd C:\USMT\%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%
 scanstate S:\%MAC_ADDRESS% /offlinewindir:c:\windows /all /i:migapp.xml /i:miguser.xml /o /progress:S:\%MAC_ADDRESS%\proglog.txt /v:13 /l:S:\%MAC_ADDRESS%\scanlog.txt

A variant of this might also be useful for capturing with the primary appliance for using profiles with the K1000 or storing profiles for other use cases. Don’t forget– ITNinja can be a great resource for solutions and community assistance!

Whether you are deploying patches overnight, scripting software and other changes, or preparing to reimage a classroom at a time when your computers are not in use – and may powered down – you can wake them up! You can choose computers by Mac Address, or select a label of machines. You can push it out manually or schedule it to be pushed out at a time of your choosing. A scheduled push can be directed to multiple labels on the K1000; immediate actions can be performed by both the K1000 & K2000.

So, next time your Desktops are “offline” during your overnight maintenance schedule, investigate whether Wake-on-LAN is an option for you! Check out some of the discussions at ITNinja!

Question:
My Windows 7 answer file contains sensitive information. Is this file left behind on a system after a Scripted Installation or imaging process has completed?

Answer:
The short answer is: Yes. The longer answer is as follows.

Let’s take a look at why this file is left behind and what can be done about it when sensitive information is contained within.

Beginning with Vista, Windows has used a XML file to process and apply settings during the online configuration phase of a Windows installation. This phase begins the first time the computer boots after Windows setup completes the WinPE phase of installation (if booting from Windows media). You will know the online configuration phase has started when the screen reads: Please wait a moment while Windows prepares to start for the first time.

Much like the online config phase, deploying a sysprepped system image will result in the specialize pass occurring at first boot after the sysprep process has been completed. Both the online configuration phase and the specialize pass utilize a XML answer file to configure OS and hardware settings. These answer files can be customized to automate customization for large-scale deployment.

When installing Windows directly from the media, or from a K2000 Scripted Installation, this answer file is cached to %WINDIR%\Panther\unattend.xml during the WinPE portion of setup. Windows keeps the file in this directory in case there are settings defined in the oobeSystem pass that will be processed on future logins. Windows also removes any passwords that were stored in the answer and replaces them with the text *SENSITIVE*DATA*DELETED*.

Now this is where it gets tricky: there are a few different ways to tell Windows which answer file to use and depending on which method you go with, the XML file may end up getting re-cached and in the process refill *SENSITIVE*DATA*DELETED* fields with actual passwords, and this time those passwords will not be purged during a later pass. On the imaging side, sysprep does not destroy the answer file that was used nor does sensitive data get purged from the original answer file.

So if you either define your answer file location using HKLM\System\Setup!UnattendFile or %WINDIR%\Panther\Unattend\unattend.xml there is a chance that the sensitive data in %WINDIR%\Panther will be re-written and potentially accessed. Or if you house your sysprep answer file somewhere like %WINDIR%\system32\sysprep you could end up leaving passwords behind in your gold master image.

Confused yet? Don’t worry; we can boil it down to a best practice:

• Always delete any cached or embedded answer files before delivering the computer to the End User.

You can script automatic cleanup with the K1000 Scripting module, a Postinstallation task on the K2000, or add this behavior into %WINDIR%\Setup\Scripts\SetupComplete.cmd. As these answer files no longer serve a purpose after deployment they can be safely removed, thus protecting sensitive data without interrupting the flow of your normal deployment operations.

We know that not all of our valued kustomers are able to travel to our annual User Konference, so last year we rolled out the first ever Backyard Boot Kamps, bringing the popular training directly to you! This year we are bringing them back in full force. Dive into your KACE Appliance features and capabilities, and learn directly from KACE training experts – right in your own back yard.

Backyard Boot Kamp allows you the opportunity to:

• Extract maximum benefit from your KACE Appliance by either refreshing or enhancing your skills
• Interact with KACE experts and ask questions pertaining to your issues
• Connect with your fellow users in the local KACE community, to learn best practices and establish on-going relationships
• Save on travel expense and minimize time away from the office

This is two full days of KACE product training (one day for the K1000 and one for the K2000), and we promise not to include any information that is not of direct practical value to your organization. Choose either a full day of K1000 or K2000 tracks, or both days for training maximization!

NOTE: Boot Kamps are designed specifically for new users or those desiring a skills refresh. They are not intended for advanced KACE users, nor should they be considered as a replacement for normal JumpStart new customer training.

Backyard Boot Kamp Locations

• Washington DC | March 28th-29th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Santa Clara, CA | April 23rd – 24th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Boston, MA | May 14th – 15th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Chicago, IL | May 21st – 22nd | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• New York, NY | June 18th – 19th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Austin, TX | July 23rd – 24th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Denver, CO | August 13th – 14th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Minneapolis, MN | September 24th-25th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here
• Boston, MA | October 22th – 23th | 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here

Cost  
$695 for one day or $1195 for both days. Registration includes lunch, a limited edition USB drive loaded with goodies and all the knowledge you can soak in.

Seats are extremely limited for these backyard training events, so register now! 

Disclaimer: Materials/gifts given at this event may exceed $20. If you are a government employee attending this event, please be aware that Dell cannot provide guidance to you on the rules that may govern your acceptance of this event without payment by you. If you wish to pay for the value of your meal or gifts, please make a check payable to Dell KACE.

• Windows 8/ 2012 support
• Additional operating system locale support (Korean, Chinese (Hong Kong), Portuguese, and Hungarian)
• Operational patches now published
• Improved agent and server communication channel
• Server and agent bug fixes
• Custom Inventory Improvements
• And Much more!

Watch for the K1000 v5.4 SP1/AP1 release towards the end of February.
We’ll be having a special KKE episode on February 20th to go over some of the features and enhancements. Please visit www.kace.com/kke to register!

We’re also readying a release of K2000 v3.5! This major release includes some great new enhancements including:

• Offboard Storage Admin UI
• Native Imaging Toolkit Integration
• Driver Feed Support for Imaging
• Unified Language Release
• UEFI Support
• Windows 8, Windows 2012, & Mountain Lion 10.8 Support
• Much more!

Watch for the K2000 v3.5 release towards the end of February.

One of the most popular new features is ticket archiving in service desk. You can now archive old tickets and delete really old tickets via automated policy. This allows you to do reports on active tickets but not archived, though the archived tickets are still around if needed.

To enable ticket Archiving head over to Service Desk > Configuration > Settings. Checking the “Enable ticket archival” box will enable the Archive feature, but tickets will not be automatically archived by default. Each queue has its own configurable time window which must be set before automatic archiving will occur for that queue. That means that each queue can have different retention policies!

Don’t have v5.4 yet? Why not?! Get it here!

• Mobile Device Inventory Management and Tracking
• Mobile Device Provisioning and Setup
• Application Deployment and Management
• Mobile Device and Data Security
• Configuration, Policy and Profile Management
• Notifications, Alerts, Messaging and Integrated App Launch
• And Much more!

For more details about the release of the Dell KACE K3000 Mobile Device Solution click here. The Virtual Appliance is available today, and the physical appliance will be available very soon in April 2013.

Webinar Event – Say “Yes!” to Mobility: Meet the New Dell KACE K3000 Mobile Management Appliance
Date and Time: Feb 14th at 10 am PT

Mobile phone and tablet adoption has skyrocketed. And as the work pattern shifts from an in-office desktop model to an “anytime, anywhere, any device” reality, IT organizations must quickly respond. Mobile device proliferation poses new challenges for IT pros–enforcing security policies, maintaining an accurate inventory and ensuring controlled access to corporate applications and content.

Join us to meet the newest member the Dell KACE Family of Systems Management Appliances: the K3000 Mobile Management Appliance. The K3000 offers effective and intuitive management solutions for iOS and Android-based mobile devices, either stand alone or as a simple extension of existing KACE laptop, desktop and server management with the K1000 Management Appliance. The K3000 will enable you to:

• Maximize workforce productivity, enabling employees to work anytime, anywhere using the most popular mobile devices
• Safeguard corporate information through device security and policy management
• Deploy and manage corporate applications to mobile devices
• View and report on all devices, including mobile devices, from the K1000 console

Register now and join us on Thursday, February 14 at 10 a.m. PT, 12 p.m. CT, to learn more about this exciting new product.

The Dell KACE K3000 extends proven systems management capabilities to iOS and Android based tablets and smartphones. It enables you to securely allow access to corporate content from mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. The K3000 supports both company owned devices as well as employee owned personal devices. You can take inventory of all managed mobile devices, applications and profiles, push applications and profiles to the devices, and secure sensitive business content through remote wipe/lock, passcode management, configuration management and policy enforcement.

In addition a self-help user portal enables your organization to scalably support BYOD by allowing users to enroll their devices for corporate access, push approved applications to them and remote wipe or lock their devices thereby significantly cutting down calls to the service desk. And finally integration with the Dell KACE K1000 System Management Appliance allows you to inventory, asset manage, run reports on and manage incidents for all your devices from a single web-based console.

We announced a Limited Release of the K3000 in December and saw great enthusiasm among customers. We are seeing positive results from our initial customers who have deployed the appliance and have started managing their mobile devices. Join us:

Webinar, Thursday Feb. 14^th at 10am PT

You can learn about the Dell KACE K3000, see a demo and also have your questions answered by our product experts.

Blog of the Month goes to…… http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/how-to-use-the-k1000-5-4-inventory-api-with-powershell

www.ITNinja.com brings us more goodies than every holiday combined! This month we wanted to share with you a great writeup done by a member of the ITNinja community on: Using the new inventory API provided in K1000 v5.4. “The Inventory API is a way that allows the user to submit to the K1000 an XML file that contains the inventory of a machine.

This is very interesting and useful because it is possible to build programmatically an XML file (the format is explained in the K1000 documentation) and send it to the K1000. This is really useful if we want to keep track of devices where we do not want or we cannot (not supported OS, company policies restrictions etc etc…) install a K1000 Agent.” Read the entire article at http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/how-to-use-the-k1000-5-4-inventory-api-with-powershell

Jim Docherty, UK public specialist at Dell KACE, recently wrote a great article about the changing landscape of IT in educational institutions, and how how it’s impacting the management of IT systems in schools and what to do about it. Read the full article after the jump.

• Download the Clamwin antivirus portable application and store it on \\k2000_IP\petemp. Then from within KBE open the Command Prompt utility, navigate to T: and run the Clamwin executable. The program will download the latest definitions available and execute a virus scan on whatever drive you specify. http://portableapps.com/apps/security/clamwin_portable
• Have you started using WIM images but miss the functionality of being able to crack open a kimage and manipulate the file structure? Use the freeware utility GImageX to mount and manipulate WIM images. From a strictly KBE perspective, GImageX can be used to capture WIM images as well. GImageX is a graphical interface for Microsoft’s command line based ImageX utility and can be down-loaded here: http://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit-tools/gimagex/
• Leverage Winmerge for all of your file structure needs. Winmerge can quickly browse, compare, and modify directories using a GUI. If you need to move data to or from a client system while within the KBE, look no further than Winmerge Portable and use the method for running it from within KBE as described above. http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/winmerge_portable 

The examples given were just a few ways you can start using KBE to tackle your environment and make time-consuming processes simpler and easier. If you have a favorite admin utility that you would like to use from KBE, check and see if there is a portable version available. If so, using that application is as easy as storing it on the PETEMP share and navigating to the T: from the KBE command prompt.

Remember– PETEMP is a hidden share so you’ll have to navigate to it explicitly to upload your tools to it.

Now get out there and start thinking kreatively!

Settings>Patch Settings menu. This gives you the control over how you want to download patches similar to the behavior available in Dell Updates. Not all patches are needed at the same time, so why download everything when it’s released? This feature ensures that you’re getting patches when they are applicable to your environment.

This new feature, introduced in v5.4 allows the K1000 appliance to determine which packages to download based on the results of Detect jobs. If the patch package is detected as needed the appliance will then download the needed patch. If no managed machines are detected as needing a particular patch or signature the appliance will not download therefore sparing you from downloading anything that is not needed. In your subscription settings you may need to enable the option to allow detection of disabled patches in some configurations.

Don’t have v5.4 yet? Why not?! Get it here: http://www.kace.com/support/customer/downloads

Configuring OME and K1000

Dell OpenManage Essentials is a Windows-based systems management console that replaces Dell IT Assistant. A physical or virtual server running Windows Server 2008 will be required to run OME. This installation is quite simple and largely self-contained. OME includes Microsoft SQL Server® Express for small deployments. If you plan to manage a large environment, however, OME supports use of Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise. A few simple steps gets you on your way:

1. Install Dell OpenManage Essentials

2. Create a K1000 service desk queue so it can receive emails from OME.

3. Customize the queue to your liking.

4. Create e-mail alert actions from OME to direct mail to the new queue configured.

With the combined solution in place, your staff will be able to review all aspects of the hardware and software you have deployed in your data center and their update status. They will be able to track changes that have taken place over time and by whom they have been implemented. When vulnerabilities are identified, service contracts are nearing expiration, or components fail, your staff will be in a position to address these concerns quickly and proactively. Most importantly, the organization as a whole will harvest the benefits of reliable IT services to achieve overall business objectives.

A full whitepaper and discussion on this concept is available at: http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/integrating-dell-open-manage-essentials-with-the-dell-kace-k1000-service-desk

There are many new features in vPro that can be utilized through integration with the K1000 as well as the K2000. I encourage you to view the KKE recording link from Tuesday 1/8/13 for additional information as well as at www.ITNinja.com

I’m not immune– I’m one of the most connected and compulsively available people that I know. In 2013 I’ve made a conscious decision to change that. I’ll stop searching for WiFi signals at every turn, I’ll use the Do Not Disturb scheduling features on my phone, I’ll decline app notifications on my tablets, I’ll leave the nightly e-mails until morning; you get the idea. I’m not announcing that I’m unavailable here folks– I’m announcing that the Mayans were right. 2012 was the end of the world as I know it– I’m changing my world. This may all seem odd to share, but I look back to a few years ago and ask myself why I got into the habit of being so connected; it was my job to be connected. I needed to be on call 24/7 to make sure our data was flowing and no red lights were blinking, probably much like you. With one purchase order I made the move towards total sanity– I bought a KACE Appliance. Once those appliances were doing their job my calls in the wee hours nearly stopped, but I didn’t. Thanks KACE! I’m going to stop finally– Happy 2013!

—Chris Blake, Dell KACE Training Advisor

Some common scenarios include:

• Deploying Windows 7 systems for use with Bit Locker
• Preserving the Dell Recovery Partition
• Creating a second (or third) Data Partition of a specific size
• Create equal partitions between System and Data partitions
• Or otherwise preparing the drive to match your image

The tools that you will need to begin cleaning and preparing drives are built into the K2000 Boot Environment. These tools are Microsoft’s DISKPART and FORMAT. Other command line utilities can be added to the PETEMP share on the appliance and used if desired. Partitioning and format-ting can also be configured in the answer file for Windows Vista/7/8/2008/2012. Don’t forget– ITNinja can be a great resource for solutions and community assistance!

These are simple laws of IT:

-1- Backup your appliance and offload the backups from the appliance.

-2- Read the release notes and follow any version specific update recommendations.

-3- Never reboot your appliance during an upgrade, even if it appears to be hung. Contact support for guidance.

These sound pretty obvious, but it’s easy to overlook them sometimes. Murphy’s Law suggests that if you follow these rules nothing will go wrong, but if you skip them the universe will punish you. Okay, it’s unlikely that the universe will punish you, but why take the chance?

Current server versions of the Appliances are:
K1000: 5.4.70402
K2000: 3.4.63129

Both appliances are expecting updates in the coming months– watch for announcements. As always, downloads and release notes are available at:

http://www.kace.com/support/Customer/downloads

Both in terms of power and in simplicity there are now 3 appliances for customers to use:

1. The K1000 handles systems management for PC running Windows, Mac OS X and Linux

2. The K2000 for OS deployment and system configuration of Windows and Mac OS X.

3. The K3000 was showcased at the 2012 Dell KACE User Konference. K3000, to be released in early 2013, will manage iOS and Android devices in the enterprise!

For more details about the release of the Dell KACE K3000 Mobile Device Solution please visit: http://www.kace.com/products/mobile-management-appliance

1-2-3… Are you ready? Get set… GO!

Upcoming Sessions:

Find past session recordings and register for these and any more upcoming sessions here: http://www.KACE.com/support/resources/kb/article/KACE-Kontinuing-Education-K1000-and-K2000-Recordings

With On-Demand Patching enabled, the K1000 will not download the full payload until it has been detected as needed on at least one machine thereby reducing download time and disk utilization. Also new in 5.4 is the ability to configure automatic cleanup of unused patches.

Some settings to take a look at after upgrade to 5.4 is complete:

• Package Download Options- You will notice that there is now the ability for you to maintain a full cache of subscribed packages on the k1000 or determine packages to be downloaded using a detect results. If you choose to Let the KBOX determine what packages to download using detect results no payload files will be downloaded until they are needed on at least one machine.
• Package Download Schedule– Used in conjunction with On-Demand Patching, after a detection occurs patches begin downloading on this schedule.
• Cache Clean up options- This gives you the ability to automatically go in and clean up all Patch files after however many days you choose. When a patch or patches become obsolete.  If you need a patch that becomes obsolete it will go ahead and enable it on the next detect and the clock will start ticking again.

We still recommend using Patch Subscription Labels to define the scope and need for your environment, but the automation options in v5.4 can make that effort even more efficient. Don’t have v5.4 yet? Get it here: http://www.kace.com/support/customer/downloads

The updated wizard is in the same location as before, Reporting > Reports > “Choose Action” > “Add new report (wizard)”. Once here you will notice the first change, it asks for the “Reporting Topic” it also has the option to “add subtopic”. For example: you can select Computer from the dropdown and add a subtopic of software, you can even add a 2nd subtopic as well if it is needed for the report. When you click next this will give you all of the options from the previously selected reporting topics you selected. We also added a “back” button to make it easier to go back and make changes to a previous step instead of starting over. There’s also a jump-to option when editing existing reports. All great improvements to the usability of the wizard.

You can specify filter rules for each top and subtopic previously selected for this report. This allows you to narrow your results for each topic and create the report you need with the wizard. With these new options you should be able to create many more reports through the wizard than in past releases. Don’t worry, the 3rd-party tools support and direct SQL is still in there in the case that you still want it, but we hope the improvements allow you more flexibility without the need to brush up on your SQL-fu. Don’t have v5.4 yet? Get it here: http://www.kace.com/support/customer/downloads

When you need to capture an image, you must boot the system to a KBE that is connected to the K2000 appliance. You could do this by temporarily redirecting all systems in the scope to load KBE from the K2000. However this is not the best method. The KBE determines which server to connect to based on information that is built into the boot environment. The menu items that appear in KBE are determined by the server mounted as KBE loads. Therefore, using the KBE manipulator, a tool provided by support on the Useful Scripts page (http://www.kace.com/support/resources/kb/article/k2000-useful-scripts) you can build a static IP address KBE that points to the K2000 server.

1. Simply download the KBE Manipulator on to a machine that has both the K2000 Media Manager and the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) for Windows 7.

2. Open the manipulator and enter the static IP address of the K2000 Appliance and build the boot environment following the options in the manipulator.

3. Once the Static IP KBE has been uploaded, go to Deployments > Remote Sites and synchronize the KBE to the RSA.

4. After the synchronization completes, the static IP KBE is available from the boot environment list on the Boot Manager screen as you network boot a system. Choose the static IP KBE and the machine loads the KBE that connects you to the K2000 appliance.

The Dell™ Client Configuration Toolkit is a free utility that can generate executables to manipulate a client computer’s BIOS settings. CCTK downloads and documentation for Windows and Linux is available at:

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/systems-management/w/wiki/1952.dell-client-configuration-toolkit-cctk.aspx

The installer package includes both the command line functionality and a wizard, which can assist in generating an executable package to apply the desired BIOS settings. In this instance we are only interested in enabling PXE (a full list of configurable options can be found here).

1. Install CCTK with the default settings selected.

2. Open the CCTK Configuration Wizard that should now be in the Start Menu.

3. Click “Create Package” and choose “Multi-platform File” and then click Next.

4. Listed under the Boot Management category you will find the name “forcepxe”.  Double-click that option and change the Value to Set column to enable.

5. Click the check box to apply the settings.

6. Finally click the “Export Configuration .exe” and save the package. When executed on a system, this packaged will enable PXE as the first boot device listed in the BIOS boot order. Deploy this package via your favorite distribution method (Ahem… K1000) and machines will now PXE boot automatically when booted!

As you can see, CCTK is a powerful utility for configuring Dell BIOS settings. This article gave only one example on how CCTK can make your life easier as an IT professional. For example, CCTK can also be used to enable PXE boot for a client machine only for the next boot, or password protect the BIOS, or  For instruction on how to do that along with additional information including command line usage, read through the documentation available from Dell. Other hardware manufacturers often have similar tools for similar needs.

that the role of the IT admin is also changing. No longer responsible for just managing desktops, laptops and servers, they’re now tasked with managing mobile devices and policies.

Our philosophy within Dell continues to be providing end-to-end solutions to customers that offer them a seamless and unified IT experience. Today we unveiled a limited release of our new KACE K3000 Mobile Management Appliance at our annual KACE User Konference in Austin, extending our award-winning systems management technology to manage and enforce security policies to tablets and smartphones. One of the best things about this offering from my perspective is the seamless integration into our K1000 Management Appliance.  This gives our customers a powerful, integrated, easy to use solution to accurately track, monitor and manage desktops, laptops, servers and mobile devices more efficiently.

This solution is a direct result of you, our customers who have expressed a great interest in mobile management. In the spirit of our commitment to listening to our customers’ needs, we’re really excited to be able to offer a limited release to provide an opportunity to implement mobile management into their organizations.

As Dell builds its strategy around Windows 8, consumerization, BYOD and mobile management, the K3000 demonstrates our commitment to give customers a unified solution to manage all endpoints regardless of platform or form factor. The K3000 along with the recently announced Dell Cloud Client Manager will be offered to Dell customers as part of the Dell Mobile Management solution.

Learn more about the KACE K3000 Mobile Management Appliance.

Wsname.exe /N:DELL$SERIALNUM-$CHASSIS

The above example would neme every system DELL followed by it’s service tag, then a dash, then the system type– D for Desktop, L for Laptop and so forth. So a Latitude might appear as DELLDJBGTY6-L Using WSNAME you could also put useful info in the system description; you know, the one no one fills in anyways– you may as well put useful info at a glance since it’s on the main inventory page for K1000, eh? The System Model, Installed OS, and a Date might be useful. Just a thought!

Check out http://newstuff.clarke.co.nz/wsname for downloads, documentation, and if you’re feeling generous make a donation to support a wonderful free tool!

In K1000 v5.4 machine actions are unlimited, in K2000 you can configure up to two actions presently. Now you have remote control of the Mac during an image deployment from your K2000 and access via the K1000 for support and troubleshooting! Don’t forget to exercise, now that you don’t have to walk to the Macs!

• The Secure Browser uses virtualization technology to provide a safer web experience to users and organizations; great for home use too.
• The Virtual Disk Utility provides a new means of managing files and data in a secure and portable manner.
• Process Director for Windows unlocks a world of previously hidden and inaccessible system activity.
• The System Inventory Tool scans your computer and generates a detailed hardware and software inventory report that can be saved or printed for future reference.
• The AppDeploy Repackager is a Windows Installer repackaging tool for converting legacy setups to the Windows Installer (MSI) format.

Check out http://www.kace.com/products/freetools for more details and 100% free downloads!

Take on something useful and fun before you leave for the holidays– it really is the gift that keeps on giving. Freshly imaged machines can make users happier; Power management schemes can save a lot of cash; Software deployments can help the business be more agile; Security testing can help you identify some projects for 2013.

I hope all of you have a safe and happy holiday season. 2013 will be full of new challenges, triumphs, and many great things!

—Chris Blake, Dell KACE Training Advisor

Second, how can you uniquely identify the data to prevent collisions during concurrent deployments? Dynamically name the data using the computer’s Mac Address in the PETemp destination. As KBE loads an environment variable MAC_ADDRESS is set.

Example of BAT Script Pre/Post Installation Tasks to copy a file and it back after reimaging:

Preinstallation BAT Script that gets a file from the computer:

xcopy /Q /Y C:\MyDATA\MyFile.txt t:\%MAC_ADDRESS%_MyFile.txt

Note In Winpe, the first volume, 0, is always assigned the first letter, C. The system (and data) could be located at D.

Postinstallation BAT Script that puts the file back onto the computer (runtime: KBE):

xcopy /Q /Y t:\%MAC_ADDRESS%_MyFile.txt c:\MyDATA\MyFile.txt

To understand more advanced ways of using the method described in this article, such as getting data from the registry, look at Visual Basic Script source in the Collect and Apply Computer Name tasks.

While this is great news for consumers and retailers, what does this mean for retail IT teams who are tasked with ensuring its systems are prepared for the busy holiday season? Today Dell announced the findings of a survey about the anticipated impact to business as a result of Cyber Monday that indicated business are preparing for significant security and productivity impacts.

IT teams at retail companies have a unique set of challenges including the need for increased security, whether it’s to protect customers that are making online transactions or securing hundreds of POS systems and PCs at remote locations. Systems management is an effective way to help IT admins easily gain control over these manual tasks, boosting security and freeing up considerable time while improving their customers’ experience.

Dell KACE Appliances are designed to help manage both back-end processing tasks as well as provide controls at the point of sale. IT teams within the retail industry can leverage these appliances to help control increasing costs, manage systems across distributed environments, and enhance and ensure transaction security. Specifically:

• Cut Rising Costs – Growing retail organizations are faced with the challenge of managing an expanding IT infrastructure with shrinking or static budgets and headcount. Dell KACE Appliances reduce the amount of time IT managers need to spend on system administration, so they can spend more time improving their customers’ experience. Organizations can reduce IT overhead via a centralized Web-based solution that deploys quickly, trains in hours over the web, and is simple and cost-effective to maintain. Adding to cost savings, the appliances eliminate the need for additional hardware and staff investments at each store location.
• Extend Systems Management to the Entire Organization – Frequently, retailers are charged with effectively managing hardware and software across geographically-diverse locations. KACE delivers a fully integrated, comprehensive and centralized systems management solution. Unlike most software-only alternatives, they do not require costly infrastructure investments at individual stores.
• Boost Security and Ensure Compliance – Retailers need a strong security solution that protects both business and cardholder information, and provides comprehensive reporting that makes it easier to validate Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance. KACE Appliances can provide the framework that enables users to quickly gain and maintain PCI compliance using fundamental systems management methodologies. These include automated patching, organization-wide software distribution and detailed reporting, which all help to increase security for point of sale (POS) systems.

In addition to KACE, Dell’s portfolio of solutions for security, systems management, business intelligence and application management software, with companies like SecureWorks, SonicWALL and Quest Software assist their customers in protecting their corporate networks, as well as their employees’ and clients’ personal information during the holidays and all year long.

Don’t get left out in the cold! Learn more about how Dell KACE has helped retailers including Golfsmith, Jordan’s Furniture, Redner’s Markets and more by visiting http://www.kace.com/customers/by-industry/retail.

There are two methods for uninstalling software using the K1000. One method is scripting, we have an un-installer wizard located in Scripting > Configuration policy > Uninstaller wizard, using this wizard it will guide you through creating a script to uninstall the selected software.

The second method that can be used is simply a standard managed install with a two changes; select “Configure Manually” for the installation command and enter the command line that will remove the software you selected above then click “uninstall using full command line” this will change this managed install so that it will remove the software.

The difference between these two options is a script can be set to run at a specific time where the Managed Install will run every time the machine checks in for inventory.

A complete list along with registration information is always available at http://www.KACE.com/kke. Send ideas for topics you’d like to hear to kketeam@kace.com!

Find past session recordings and register for these and any more upcoming sessions here:
http://www.KACE.com/support/resources/kb/article/KACE-Kontinuing-Education-K1000-and-K2000-Recordings

1. Login to a fresh installation of OS X as a local administrator account. Make sure to set a password for this account.

2. Open System Preferences > Users & Groups and create a new admin user with the name of Default and a simple password. This account will be removed at the end of the process but the settings will remain.

3. Log out of the admin account and into the new Default account. Once logged in, install and launch any additional software you would like to be included in your system image. Configure software settings and System Preferences to your specifications. Apply all available Apple system updates. Some updates may require a restart. Customize the Dock with the icons you would like to show for all users.

4. Programs and scripts can also be configured to automatically launch at login. The list of applications that will automatically launch can be found at System Preferences > Users & Groups > Default user account > Login Items.

5. Now we will clean the Default account. OS X Lion and later hide the Library folder but we want to clean it out. Launch Terminal and enter the following:
chflags nohidden ~/Library

6. Now with Finder navigate to /Users/default/Library/Caches and delete the entirety of the folder contents. While still in Finder click Go > Recent Folders > Clear Menu.

7. Restart the computer and login with the admin account.

8. Launch Terminal and enter sudo –s. Input your password when prompted.

9. Now we will clean out the system wide default account. Enter the command:
rm –rf “/System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/*”

10. Next copy the default account settings to the system wide default account:
cp –R /Users/default/* “/System/Library/User Template/English.lproj”

11. Reboot the computer and log back into your admin account. Launch Disk Utility and select your hard drive. Click First Aid >  Repair Disk Permissions

12. Once permissions have been fixed browse to System Preferences > Users & Accounts and delete the default account we created earlier.

13. It’s now time to seal the system and prepare it for image capture. Reboot the system and hold down CMD + S at startup. If done correctly you will boot to Unix Terminal in single user mode.

14. Enter the following commands:
fsck –fy
/sbin/mount –uw /
rm –rf /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
shutdown –h now

If you experience an error at any time when entering these commands you will need to reboot the computer and troubleshoot what has gone wrong in the previous steps. If no errors are received you now have a custom default user account and your Mac has been resealed and ready for image capture!

There are a number of online testing assessment programs including Smarter Balanced, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College Careers (PARCC), Dynamic Learning Maps (DLM), National Center and State Collaborative (NCSC) and Assessment Services Supporting ELLs through Technology Systems (ASSETS). As a first step, national programs such as Smarter Balanced and PARCC are providing “Technology Readiness Tools” to help you identify your current technology infrastructure in preparation for the transition to online testing.

The programs require systems, computers and hardware, browser versions and operating systems to be configured correctly in order to interact with the appropriate systems. Although the new testing assessment programs do not go into effect until 2014-2015, you want to be certain that the systems you buy today will meet the requirements of these new programs.

If you have been looking for a systems management solution, the Dell KACE™ K1000 Management and K2000 Deployment Appliances can help you in two ways: to provide smart and streamlined systems management and to run the “Technology Readiness Tool” to make help you implement the guidelines of the new testing assessment programs. Once the infrastructure components have been identified with the KACE Appliances, you can then determine whether or not you need to buy new hardware or upgrade operating systems to support the testing system.

If you would like to learn about how others who work for K12 schools or school districts used the KACE systems management appliances to address their needs and generate a quick ROI, click here.

To learn more about Smarter Balanced, click here . For information on the PARCC testing assessment program, the link to their web site is here.

As you and your company prepare to make game changing decisions in your environment, we want to remind you that Dell KACE is ready to support your purchasing decisions.  We are uniquely prepared to help your enterprise thrive no matter what OS or hardware you decide to procure.  Which one is better?  That’s up to you.  How to manage and deploy it seamlessly in your environment?  That’s up to us!

We, too, have been busy updating our products and options for supporting your environment.  As announced in September, the K1000 has a new version—5.4. This appliance manages your traditional servers, PC and Mac hardware, software and operating system environment on a daily basis.  The K2000 helps you deploy your traditional PC’s and Mac’s.  A new version (3.5) launches in early 2013.

So what about the myriad of mobile devices and tablets?  Well for the tablets running Windows 8 (not Windows RT,) they are essentially PC’s just with a different form factor so they can be managed and deployed with the existing K1 and K2 technology.  For iOS and Android devices, our forthcoming K3000 appliance is the answer! Watch for the release in early 2103 for managing your mobile device needs.

So it’s decision 2012!  New technology is available!  With the holidays upon us, not only will enterprises make new purchasing decisions but also customers as consumers will make decisions that will come back into the enterprise as they bring their own devices back in the new year (BYOD). Dell KACE has you covered no matter what decision you make!

Now there’s a solution from Dell KACE and Dell AppAssure that can transform the way you provide ̶ and ensure ̶ data protection across your entire organization. Dell KACE and Dell AppAssure deliver a data protection solution that protects systems, servers, and applications. It makes it easier to reduce the risk of losing data by enabling you to quickly identify which systems are unprotected so you can actively remedy the situation.

You can learn about the data protection that both Dell KACE and Dell AppAssure provide at a webinar titled: Smarter, Speedier, Streamlined: Unified Data Protection and Systems Management.

The webinar is on November 8th at 10:00 PT. If you cannot attend at this time, you can still register and receive the link to the recorded session.

The webinar will focus on AppAssure 5, an award winning backup, recovery and replication solution that protects servers and applications. It’ a great product for our KACE customers as it enhances protection by unifying backup, replication and recovery. We will also go into detail about how we work together and allow you to more quickly deploy data protection tools. And, we will explain how these solutions save time in ways you may not have thought possible by eliminating lengthy backup windows, reducing RPO (recovery point objective), and totally streamlining data protection processes.

The 2012 Dell KACE User Konference is quickly approaching, but there is still time to register and take advantage of all that it has to offer. Konference is the best educational and interactive event of the year. Whether learning from other systems management pros, seeing new products in action or taking part in hands on exercises in Boot Kamp or labs, Konference is the place to learn about all things “KACE.”

This year Konference takes place just across the street from Dell World in Austin. And your Konference pass gets you into Dell World for free!

President Bill Clinton - Keynote at Dell World 2012

To make the deal even sweeter, you can bring a colleague to both of these events to gather even more knowledge, without being burdened by the cost. We are currently running a “buy one, get one” registration promotion. Simply buy one full price Konference pass and a second pass of equal or lesser value is free!

Valuable technical content is at the core of Konference, so grab a colleague, choose from the variety of learning opportunities, and empower more of your team to better support the needs of your organization. Register today!

To claim the offer: register for one attendee and pay the Konference fees. Then, send a message to KACEkonference@dell.com to alert us of your interest in the BOGO offer, and we will send you a promo code for your colleague to use for registration. It’s that easy!

The following language applies to you if you are employed by a public agency: All attendees must be aware of any limitations by their own companies or governing institutions that would not allow them to receive goods or services above a certain dollar value. For additional questions please contact KACEKonference@dell.com.

The average user has at least 2 computing devices – a PC (laptop or desktop) and a tablet. As much as users would like to have one single computing device neither the laptop nor the tablet satisfy all of the needs like mobility, portable form-factor, easy touch screen input, and suitability for consumption and creation activities. The tablet is easily portable but is primarily a consumption device for reading and viewing online content like news, social media, entertainment and games. It does not lend itself to heavy duty computing or content creation activities that users have to rely on laptops for. The laptops on the other hand do not offer touch screen inputs and are not as easily portable as the tablets. Hence tablets are used primarily for light weight consumption activities and laptops are used primarily for heavy weight computing and creation activities.

The Windows 8 based tablet is a creation AND consumption device that allows users to seamlessly access their data in both modes. It can be used as a tablet or can be used as a laptop with attached keyboard and users can choose to use the traditional keyboard and mouse or the touch screen input. Another convenient thing about Windows 8 is that it runs an enterprise-ready operating system. That is good not only for end-users who can now easily access corporate applications on their personal devices and vice versa, it is great for IT organizations who can now apply security policies consistently across all corporate and personal devices.

Windows 8 can become the one all-purpose operating system and Windows 8 based tablets can become the one single computing device. They can bring down the walls between corporate and personal devices and bridge the gap between laptops and tablets.

How can Dell KACE help you with Windows 8? We recently refreshed our K1000 system management appliance and announced support for Windows 8, Mac OSX Mountain Lion, RHEL 6, SUSE Linux and Ubuntu Linux. As Windows 8 makes its entry into the market, IT administrators can be ready to manage and secure all their endpoints starting from day one.

New Dell Solution Center in Santa Clara, CA

The new center supports the strategic expansion of Dell’s solutions and services capabilities and highlights a wide range of cloud computing, software, data center and end-user computing solutions.

“Silicon Valley is the center of technological innovation and we continue to expand our enterprise capabilities and solutions footprint in the area,” said Paulette Altmaier, vice president of Applications, Dell Software. “The new Silicon Valley Executive Briefing and Solution Center provides a one-stop resource and ‘living lab’ for customers that want to develop and test next-generation solutions that meet their unique business needs.”

Through a network of Global Solution Centers, Dell is helping customers architect, validate and build solutions—from the data center to the edge of the network. Dell’s solution centers offer on-site resources and experts who can assist customers with proof of concept testing prior to deployments in order to ensure that the solutions work in the customer’s environment. To date, more than 4,500 customer engagements have been completed at Dell solution centers around the world.

For more information about Dell’s Silicon Valley Executive Briefing and Solution Center, visit www.dell.com/solutioncenters.

 Above is an excerpt from today’s press release. You can read the entire press release here.

IT professionals often question whether they can lower the cost of VDI or simplify its deployment, but tend to overlook policy and configuration management of virtual desktops. VDI implies a guarantee to provide a virtual desktop that is more secure than a physical desktop and doesn’t require as much attention. Herein lies the misconception, that by simply implementing a VDI eliminates the need to manage IT policies and configuration of virtual desktops like that of a physical desktops and/or notebooks.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to proactively enforce IT policies and configurations in VDI environments, while also ensuring a consistent user experience without compromising benefits and security? Well, you can! KACE provides an innovative solution that allows IT administrators to easily and effectively address the adoption of VDI, and the management and security challenges it brings.

Dell KACE experts recently published a white paper, Extending Policy and Configuration Management to Dell DVS Simplified VDI, in which the challenges of VDI adoption are discussed and how the Dell KACE K1000 Management Appliance can help. Additionally, if you are considering a deployment of Dell’s Desktop Virtualization Solution (DVS) Simplified Appliance and want to ensure IT policies and configurations are enforced, the authors also discuss how the K1000 Appliance features such as tracking assets, providing updates, and managing and securing desktops can be easily applied to Dell’s DVS simplified VDI solution. Be sure to check it out.

To respond to the sea of change in the corporate environment Dell KACE announced the latest version of the award winning K1000 Systems Management Appliance on September 25, 2012.  You can review the announcement at: http://www.kace.com/about/press/2012/2012-09-25 and watch the recorded webinar at https://www.kace.com/resource-center/resources/OS-Agnostic-Systems-Management

The 5.4 version of the appliance, currently scheduled for release in November, supports the latest versions of Windows, OSX, and various Linux flavors.  This delivers the perfect trifecta for diverse organizations running multiple Operating Systems. There’s a lot more than just new OS agents in this release though!

Dell KACE is very excited about this update to the product.  We encourage you to upgrade your appliance when you see the update release hit your appliance under the “Support News” section in a few weeks.

What should you expect after applying the K1000 5.4 upgrade?

• Over 100 enhancements including:
• Newly supported OSes: Red Hat 6, Ubuntu, SUSE, OSX Mountain Lion, Windows 8, and more via API
• Mass machine selection for forcing updates,
• UI Auto Refresh in select areas
• Unlimited Machine Actions
• On-Demand Patching and Automatic Purging of unused patches, and other enhancements to the feeds.
• Multi-Object Reporting Wizard
• Change History enhancements
• Service Desk Archiving, Unlimited Custom Fields, Queue Cloning, Article Rating System, and more
• Automatic Agent update downloads & notifications

There are many types of labels one can create to suit their environment. There are two basic types of Label- Static (Manual Labels), and Dynamic (Smart Labels, LDAP Labels). Static labels are manually applied and removed, where dynamic labels are applied and removed when the object is seen by the appliance. For example- User labels are evaluated at login, and computer labels are evaluated at agent check in. The most commonly used labels include:

• Computers (For performing actions)
• Software (For for licensing)
• Users (For access restrictions)
• Patches (For deploying to computers)
• Dell update packages (For deploying to computers)
• Label Groups (For grouping similar labels)

Remember Label Restrictions and Behavior…Manual Labels are applied and removed manually, whereas LDAP Labels and Smart Labels are applied and removed automatically. One thing to point out, if you create a label in a particular module such as patching.  It will only be viewable in the Patching module. Also be careful if you group your labels.  If you set certain restrictions on your label group, all the labels in that group will pick up the restriction of the group instead of their individual restrictions.   All label management can be handled here Home > Label > Label Management

Label Groups… If you find yourself creating lots and lots of labels and they are becoming difficult to manage, you can group your individual labels under a master label. We call this Label Groups. You can’t target managed installations or patch jobs or any other workflow against a group of labels. It’s just an easier way to help you organize your labels and be able to find them more efficiently. This can be setup by going to “Home” >”Label” > “Label Management” select the labels you want to group by checking them.  “Choose Action” > “Apply to Group” Give your group a name.

Smart Labels… As agents check in, and when Smart Labels exist, machines, users, patches, etc., are checked against the criteria of these Smart Labels. If items match a smart label’s criteria the K1000 Appliance will automatically move them to the label with the correct criteria. In the circumstance where the label might be temporary, and the work is done, Once the work is completed, the K1000 Appliance moves the items out of the Smart Labels.  One thing to remember about smart labels is they will not show up until the new machines to be added check in according to their Check-In- Interval for inventory. You can create “Smart Labels” in all modules of the K1000 and K2000 Appliance. Under Label Management.

Manual Labels…Manual Labels can be created for labels or jobs that will be temporary or in some cases a repository.   An example of a label for manual distribution might be for rolling back a misbehaving patch in patching.   If you find a pesky patch you can create a manual label and add the patch to it for detecting and rolling back the patch.  (Remember the patch must support Rollback.)  Manual Patches are also used where it’s difficult to find criteria in your inventory to use as a smart label, in this case you can use custom inventory rules to create your labels.   You can also use Custom Inventory Rules to detect correct versions/greater than, etc.) then create a label for that criteria. Manual Labels are often used to determine software a company does not want on their network.  It is sometimes used for Software license compliance as well.

LDAP Labels… LDAP authentication can be a useful way of connecting to your appliance, but did you know you can use LDAP to group Users and Computers also? Using the LDAP criteria and some variables in the appliance to fill in part of the query such as the user name, computer name, and other objects, we can start filtering the User and Computer objects into Labels automatically.

To find out more about how labels can benefit you please watch the following KKE session recordings:
Americas KKE Series – Labels are your friends!
Americas KKE – Am I Compliant? Effectively using your K1 for License Compliance
Australia KKE Series – Wide World of LABELS!

Taking advantage of the mechanism built into the K2000 for handling drivers with Scripted Installations may turn your system images into what we call Hardware Agnostic Images, eliminating the need for multiple images with the same configuration and software. We often find customers that have the exact same image for multiple hardware platforms. Using the method described below, some customers have cut the number of images they need to maintain from 10 to 1.

Implement the same mechanism that installs drivers for a Scripted Installation during the deployment of an image by creating and applying the simple “mid-level” batch post installation as follows:

1. Go to Library > Post Installation Tasks. Click Choose Action > Add New BAT Script.

2. Enter a name such as Install Drivers. Set the Runtime Environment to K2000 Boot Environment (Windows).

3. Enter the following into the BAT Script field: Y:\hta\copy_drivers.vbs Click Save.

Simply add the Install Drivers Postinstallation Task to your System Images and the drivers will be installed during the deployment from the Drivers_Postinstall folder. For more information on installing drivers from the feed for Windows XP images see DriverFeed Workaround for K2000 v3.4.

To monitor software licenses we must first create labels this will allow us to group software so that different versions of the software will be included. This is often done as a Smart Label to ensure that other versions or new releases that you are licensed for (such as minor updates and service packs) are still included in the counts. For example, by searching for software title contains “Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010” we can grab all versions of Microsoft Office 2010. This way when we patch Microsoft Office in the future the label will simply update with the new version when it shows up.

Now that we have our labels created simply create the Software Asset first and link that to the software inventory label we created for that title. Next we create the license asset(s) and link those back to the Software Asset we created in the previous step. After these are created you can use the chart on the homepage or the reporting tool to get alerts and notifications regarding install counts, when they expire and much more.

It's not easy being a CIO

If you are an aspiring CIO or working as a CIO today, you may already know that there is high churn and burn in this role.

We decided to take a close look at this trend and learned there is a “perfect storm” brewing that is resulting in high expectations and extraordinary challenges. Despite the challenges, many CIO’s have learned how to ride out the storm and flourish in this environment.

We will be presenting our findings and learnings from the field in a webinar titled: How to get–and keep–your job as CIO. This 30 minute live session will include:

• The reasons behind the CIO churn, including the latest stats and realities
• Where to focus, and how to deliver measurable results
• How today’s CIOs have stayed on top—or lost their way
• Ways to build your personal brand and solidify your position, presented by Ann  Spoor, CEO/Co-founder, Executive Lattice

Register now!
A live 30 minute Web event
Thursday, October 11, 2012
10:00 a.m. PT, 11:00 a.m. MT, 12:00 p.m. CT, 1:00 p.m. ET

Be sure to block out 30 minutes on October 11 for this important event.  Register now and receive links to the recording and presentation—even if you can’t attend.

You don't have to feel overwhelmed

Are you among the many organizations searching for the right systems management solution that fits your environment? Have you looked at Symantec Altiris? LANDesk Management Suite? Or how about the newly released Microsoft System Center 2012? I bet all that research on product and price comparisons can get a little overwhelming.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have some of it done for you? Enterprise Management Associates recently published a whitepaper that compares top systems management solutions to help simplify the decision making process for organizations. Best Practices in Lifecycle Management: Comparing Suites from Dell KACE, Symantec, LANDesk, and Microsoft outlines a side-by-side comparison of systems management solutions to see which solutions have the necessary features and which don’t. The paper also does an in-depth financial comparison as it breaks down the pricing models, total implementation costs, as well as operational costs.

Discover how EMA analyst, Steve Brasen, arrives at his conclusion: “With its ease of use and fast time to value, KACE Appliances present a very attractive alternative to LANDesk, Microsoft SCCM, and Symantec Altiris CMS, particularly where financial limitations are a major consideration. Mid-sized organizations in particular will appreciate the superior return on investment KACE provides as they are more often challenged with budget constraints and expansive IT business requirements.”

Don’t let the research bog you down. You have enough trouble on your hands, especially if you are in the midst of seeking a new IT systems management solution. Be sure to read the white paper and hopefully it helps you as much as it has many others.

To facilitate mass deployments or simplify single deployments try establishing Boot Actions on your K2000! You can access boot actions by clicking on the Choose Action drop box on any tab under the Systems module.  Setting the boot action for a MAC address allows us to either bypass the boot environment (Boot to local Hard Drive), boot to the KBE environment, or assign a scripted installation/system image to be applied at boot time for a fixed number of PXE boots. (Note that setting a boot action to run “0”times means always perform this task; so if I set a boot action for Boot To Local hard drive to 0, even if I manually press F12 on that machine it will boot to local hard drive until the Boot Action is removed.) Boot Actions allow you to control the actions that a target computer takes the next time it network boots into the K2000 Boot Environment (KBE). A computer can have only one boot action, but a boot action can have 2 tasks/phases.

An example- Populate the MACAddresses field from the Systems drop-down list and then select the Boot Actions to take on the next boot. Click Next to save the action. The next time the computer boots from the network, the deployment starts. Using this along with your K1000 to schedule reboots and even set BIOS options to include PXE (this may vary per manufacturer) we know you’ll love the flexibility this option brings!

The K1000 has the ability to import or export Resources. While this is often an overlooked feature, it can be an excellent utility for various purposes. These resources can be E-Mail Alerts, Managed Installs, Processes, Queues, Reports, Scripts, Smart Labels, Software Inventory, and Custom Ticket Rules.

So, if you have a specific software installer or one of the other items available for import/export you can export and save them. This could be for a very specific backup purpose, or archiving older tasks off of the appliance for care & feeding, but it is mostly designed for sharing information between Org’s if you have a K1200, or multiple appliances if you have more than one, and other K1000 customers to reduce the amount of work we all do!

If you are exporting resources they will be placed on the \\kboxhostname\clientdrop. If you are importing resources you will need to place them at this same location. If you are exporting resources for archiving or sharing, don’t forget to delete the files after you’re finished moving/sharing them.

The latest version of the K1000 helps IT teams address today’s toughest challenges such as security and compliance, while also supporting new and enhanced operating systems such as Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Ubuntu and SUSE Linux Enterprise as well as Mac OS X Mountain Lion.

Since every organization has a unique IT infrastructure, it’s critical that we to support the massive variety of endpoint devices, servers and operating systems. So whether you’re using Dell Latitude laptops running a mix of Windows and Linux operating systems, or are working to ensure your corporate network is secure and easily accessible, Dell KACE has you covered.

These new enhancements are in direct response to our customers’ feedback. You spoke and we listened. As Dell KACE moves into its next phase as part of the Dell Software Group we will continue to rely on our customers to keep us true to our mission to simplify their jobs and save their organizations money.

To learn more about the new K1000 features, please join us for a live webinar on Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. PT. You can also learn how to get even more value out of your Dell KACE Appliances by attending our annual User Conference in Austin in December!

When an upload begins, whether capturing a user state, an image, uploading an application or source media, building a boot environment, or adding drivers- the K2000 does not verify that it has enough space to complete the task. It begins the task and locks up once all the disk space is utilized. This is bad. Very bad. So to avoid that uncomfortable situation, here are a few things you can do to keep things neat and tidy.

In previous Kare & Feeding Articles and presentations we’ve advised that you backup old components and remove them from the disk; this is still true. First, you most likely want to know how to backup (package) components. Go to Settings & Maintenance –> Package Management page and open “Export K2000 packages”. You can select the items you want to backup and click Export. Note that these files ( a PKG and corresponding XML) are exported to the \\k2000\restore share. Each package requires about 1.5 times the amount of space indicated on the Export page. Guess what; you can overfill your appliance by selecting a component to export that is the same size or larger than your remaining disk space. You can take backups a step further by scheduling the Restore share contents to be copied to an External Storage and automatically removing everything that was transferred, but you’ll still want to ensure that you have enough free space for that task as well.

What if you can’t back up because you don’t have enough space? The easy answer may be that the items you’ve already backed up are sitting in the restore share. You can free some disk space by removing the packages from the share. If you still don’t have enough room to backup, make sure that you have recently Purged unused K-image files. Deleting an image or source media from the box doesn’t remove the associated files; Deleting Images and source removes the entry  from the database only until the Purge action is ran manually. Go to Settings & Maintenance –> Appliance Maintenance–>Purge unused K-image Files. Have patience my friend… the nifty pie chart on the Home page only updates every 15 minutes. Whether deleting items or purging you will not see the results of your efforts right away.

Our suggestions for keeping your K2000 clean are as follows:

• Unused Images: Operating systems you migrated away from (Vista, XP, Mac OS X 10.5, etc), images you recaptured with newer versions of software and updates; pretty much any image you don’t plan to deploy. You may want to export these so that if you needed to re-import it for deployment at some future date you could. Don’t forget to purge once you delete it though!
• User States older than a few days: User profiles go stale fairly quickly after they are captured. Note that there are two options for User Profile backups, export it as a package or download the MIG file from the user state details page.
• Outdated source media: Once you have new media, for example Windows 7 SP1, you typically will want to delete old source media (Windows 7 SP0) and purge. Source media also uses data de-duplication on the K2000. Therefore removing it won’t give you as much space back because only the non-duplicated files are purged. However deleting OS media that is no longer deployed typically, such as XP when you only deploy Windows 7, will get you some space.
• Scripted Installs that used your outdated media: Note that you will have to remove the old Scripted Installations before you can get rid of the old media! You may want to back up a Scripted Installation in case anything happened to your box and you had to restore it, but once the scripted installation media has aged to the point where you replace the media of a newer version, it’s time to get rid of the old Scripted Installations as well.
• Inactive KBEs: When you build a KBE the previous one stays on the box until you remove it. KBEs typically are cumulative, you add drivers to the share, re-cache the share, and rebuild it to cover the latest greatest hardware in your environment. Only in rare cases would you build a KBE from which drivers were taken out of the boot environment. Starting in v3.4 you must also rebuild it whenever the password for the Driver/Share changes on the Settings & Maintenance > General Settings page. Therefore KBE typically isn’t a component that makes sense to have several available iterations of.
• Application tasks: Get rid of tasks with older versions of the software. When a new version of software comes out, you may want to just update the post installation task that contains the older version. This way you solve several items at once, you get rid of the old application file and you have automatically included the new one in all the Scripted Installation and System Images where the old one was assigned. If you created a brand new task, you’d be going through all your Scripted Installs and System Images pulling out the old task and replacing it with the new one. Likewise with unused tasks, you can see which Deployments a task is used in on the details page of the task.
• Drivers: Keep only the drivers for the operating systems you are deploying and remove (or archive off of the appliance) drivers that were used for retired or replaced models. Go to Library > Driver Feed and select the items you want to remove, then click Uninstall in the Choose Action menu.

Some of the disk space concern has been reduced or eliminated for many customers in K2000 v3.4 with the inclusion of Offboard storage. The Dell KACE K2000 Deployment Appliance, version 3.4, expands storage by substituting an external Network Attached Storage (NAS) device for the appliance’s internal storage.  It also expands RSA storage by using an additional virtual disk. When external storage is enabled, internal storage is no longer available. Check this article for more detail on that new functionality: http://www.kace.com/support/resources/kb/article/K2000-Storage-TechNote

2. Get buy-in from the business side – Asset Management is a business process, so get a buy-in from the business side of the house. Communicate your plan with senior management and get their support for your new Asset Management process and the investment, and make sure they are actively involved with exploring the improvement opportunities. For example, renegotiate your maintenance contracts, reassign assets or modify your IT usage policies and eliminate redundancy of Assets on your Network. IT Asset Management will most likely drive significant cost saving and help improve your IT efficiency – set your management expectation accordingly.

3. Prepare for the long term – Your business and your IT systems are constantly changing and keeping them aligned is an ongoing effort. An effective Asset Management plan requires ongoing review to allow you to maximize the value of the K1000 Appliance. The ongoing process of IT Asset Management is a source for a constant flow of improvement opportunities which you could adopt to extract even more value from your assets. Examples include reassigning licenses not being used, renewing warranties early for discounts, retiring machines that are costly to maintain, and so on.

4. Definition and the Final Plan – Once you define the goals and requirements for your IT Asset Management Plan you can begin to start the process of designing your K1000 Appliance Asset Management Module.  Your K1000 Server Appliance is the perfect tool that will support your ongoing efforts, help detect improvement opportunities, and will not create a significant administrative overhead. You will be able to track up-to date inventory; Software inventory and usage as well as physical assets such as printers, monitors A/V equipment, and everything else.

5. Establish a baseline – Every good plan starts somewhere. For asset management- an accurate baseline of your assets is the foundation of a successful IT Asset Plan. Your baseline should include an accurate inventory of your chosen assets and include financial records such as contracts and software licenses that your company owns. Once you have established a baseline, the K1000 Appliance will help you keep your inventory accurate so you can gain long-term value from your newly deployed IT Asset plan.

Direct Download Link (requires Dell KACE credentials):
Update File: http://downloads.kace.com/support/customer/release/K2000/3.4_L10N/3.4.63129/k2000_upgrade_3.4.63129.bin

Release Notes: http://downloads.kace.com/support/customer/release/K2000/3.4_L10N/K2000-ReleaseNotes-v34L10n.zip

Who should Update?

• This update does include the English and non-English update to 3.4.
• All 3.3 users in any region should upgrade. Refer to the release notes for full listing of enhancements.
• English-only users on prior 3.4 releases should update– this update includes several enhancements.

The minimum system requirements at each location you need an RSA are:

• Host Machine with VMWare Platform (Fusion, Workstation, Player, ESXi, vSphere, etc.)
• 250GB free space for the Virtual Machine RSA
• 2 GHz processor
• 4 GB of RAM

RSA’s can be downloaded from the Kace Production Appliance Support page, or directly from your K2000 in the Deployments—>Remote Sites tab. During setup, use the same license key as your K2000, and the same administrator password when configuring the RSA. You can also set up LDAP authentication at the remote site similar to the K2000. Note that users are managed separately by the K2000 and the RSAs, so it is possible to grant access to one but not the other. Follow the RSA setup instructions in the Getting Started section of the K2000 Administrator’s Guide for details. Once the Virtual RSA is accessible you must link the K2000 and the RSA and define the RSA as a remote site in the K2000. After the RSA is configured and linked to the K2000- network boots must be directed to the RSA (instead of your K2000) on the remote DHCP scopes.

Next, select the Library items and Deployments to be available for deployment at the remote site:

• Scripted Installations and System Images: Only sync items you plan to deploy at the remote site. You do not need to synchronize all deployments. Pre and Post Installation Tasks used by the Deployment are considered dependencies, therefore they are automatically pushed to the RSA. Note: For images that use the Native Imaging Tool Kit Plug-in, you must also set and configure the Image Sync tool (see the Native Imaging Toolkit manual for details).
• Drivers: Sync drivers for operating systems that you are deploying at the remote site. Drivers from both the shares, “drivers” and “drivers_postinstall” are replicated.
• K2000 Boot Environments: Always sync the KBE you set as default on the General Settings page, this KBE is required when you set Boot Actions. Also, sync any other KBE that you may might want to use at the remote site.

There have been two options for systems deployment on the K2000 for a number of years.  The first and most flexible option is the hardware independent solution of creating a scripted installation to deploy an operating system with associated pre-operating system installation tasks and post-operating system installation tasks.  The other option is to deploy a K-Image, the Dell KACE image storage solution. K-Image also can be hardware independent and flexible, but is more closely related to some other imaging solutions (while remaining file-based).

With the release of the 3.4 version of the K2000 our engineers unveiled their latest feature—the ability to capture and deploy native Windows (*.wim) and native Apple Images (*.dmg).  This introduces a third deployment option for the K2000!

What are native images and why is this feature significant?  Microsoft Windows Imaging Format (WIM) is a file-based disk image format Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista and continues to support in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. For Windows computers, the ability to use WIM imaging provides many benefits.  Here are three that are most notable for Dell KACE customers:

1. Fast Deployment:  Like our existing K-Image format, WIM imaging is file based rather than sector based as a result there is a significant performance gain over sector-based solutions. Some customers with gigabit Ethernet networks are reporting single digit deployment times using the WIM Image option on their K2000.
2. Hardware Independent:  Unlike traditional imaging, WIM imaging shares our K-Image feature of being hardware independent.  This facilitates the ability to use one image across multiple hardware types and models in the enterprise.  The source computer does not have to match the target computer for deployment. This means that you might need to account for drivers for hardware models that you intend to be able to support, but not to worry- Dell KACE engineers have created additional tools to facilitate driver reconciliation for any driver deficiencies thereby increasing the probability of a successful deployment across multiple hardware with one image.
3. Disk Size Matters? Not anymore:  Much like the K-Image, WIM images can be deployed across any size hard disk unlike sector based imaging solutions.  The source drive and target drive do not have to match.

For our Apple administrators, we support the Apple Disk Image (DMG) format.  This format is very common and most familiar to any customer who has downloaded software from the Internet for their Mac.  The most widely used distribution format for downloads is the DMG.  The DMG file mounts as a disk and is accessed using Finder.

To begin deploying WIM or DMG images visit the Dell KACE website to download the update necessary file to upgrade your K2000 to version 3.4.  Then you can download the KACE Native Imaging Toolkit (KNIT).  The toolkit has well-written, detailed instructions for seamless implementation.  There is an accompanying video available that has been designed to make it easy to get up and running with this new option in 30 minutes or less.

So now we have three great options for deploying computers in the enterprise using the K2000 appliance.  The scripted installation has always been a favorite solution for customers seeking a flexible and hardware agnostic solution.  The K-Image with its simple capture and deploy options, ability to be deployed across dissimilar hardware and disk sizes, and file-copy based imaging has been a great option for many customers.  And now, whether you have a Windows or Mac environment we have added native imaging options you can start leveraging today!

What’s the best option for you? That can be a variable best determined by your needs. Want to talk to an expert for help with your decision? Check out our Kontinuing Education sessions at www.kace.com/kke for topical sessions as well as open forum days where you can ask this and any other question!

Dell has acquired some great names in the industry (http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/newsroom-acquisitions) in an effort to build on our strategy to deliver software-based solutions to businesses of all sizes.  Many of these aquisitions are nice complements to the breadth and depth of the KACE acquisition in February 2010 aiming to meet the needs of the small and medium business sector.

KACE and many of the other software company acquisitions sit under Dell’s newly formed software group.  This has become an integrated cloud solutions portfolio, which continuously uses Dell’s assets and IP to enable us to extend more value to you, remain competitive in the marketplace, and deliver innovation to our customers.

Cloud computing will continue to grow and change the IT industry.  Dell is committed to meeting those changes with powerful solutions.  As the cloud constantly evolves, we expect to provide customers with rich access to strong services and products.

The Dell KACE family of appliances is already available today in the form of virtual appliances.  Additionally, as of August 2012 you don’t have to wait to get started with a trial of our products.  We now offer immediate trials via the cloud! Take our appliances for a test drive today!

One of the most complex areas of systems deployment is the area of driver management.  The K2000 strives to simplify the process of driver management in several ways.  Historically, the K2000 relied on a manual process to load drivers to a share on the appliance.  There are semiautomatic upload tools such as the Driver Harvest Utility and other third party products.  For the most part driver management was a manual process until now thanks to the introduction of the automatic driver feed option.

Originally introduced in 3.3, the Driver Feed perhaps, is receiving the most notable attention of all the enhancements.  The Driver Feed gives Dell customers (Only Latitude, Optiplex and Precision at this time) a seamless feed of current drivers automatically delivered to their appliance with the click of a check box.  Essentially, whenever Dell.com updates the driver library the K2000’s feed automatically updates the feed updates the customer’s future scripted installation (network operating system) deployments accordingly.

To complement the Dell Driver Feed, Kent Feid, a Senior Enterprise Solutions Trainer and resident “Scripting Ninja” partner and Corey Serrins, Lead K2000 Support Technician have written some tools to help you out. Our Ninjas wrote a Driver Feed Builder tool.  This tool gives non-Dell customers an automatic channel to facilitate adding drivers to a repository that will automatically deploy during a scripted installation.

As noted in the foregoing, both the Driver Feed and the Driver Feed Builder automatically deliver the necessary drivers for a machine during the deployment of scripted installations.

What about imaging?  Do we have a way to automatically deliver drivers for images?  Indeed!  The work of Kent Feid and Corey Serrins has resulted in a driver feed tool that automatically deliver drivers as a post install task for images.  In fact, this solution has allowed some customers to make one image for all computers—regardless of hardware configuration!  This is an exciting development!

Yes, the K2000, a leader in systems deployment continues to get better and better.  The new 3.4 update and complementary scripts continue to separate it from the crowd!  Drivers made easy!  System deployment made easy! Don’t forget that we’re always looking for your feature enhancements and new ideas at http://kace.uservoice.com – Sign in today and vote for your favorite ideas or submit a new one!

What do I mean? In Windows there’s a set of tools available that lets you build a reference computer with all the latest updates, pre-installed drivers, software, and your own configurations. Then using Sysprep.exe you strip out all the bits that make it a unique computer such as user profiles and their associated passwords, unique computer identifiers, and so on. At the end of this you have a clean install of Windows that you can take an image of and deploy to other computers. The first time you boot on a new computer it goes through some basic setup stuff and away you go. We’ve got several articles at www.kace.com on that process, but let’s take a look at the “Sysprep for Mac” process:

Process:

Create a default install of Mac OS When you get to the Welcome screens set up an account called ADMIN. Don’t forget to setup a temporary password for this account.

1. Install System Updates
2. Install Company Required Software
3.  Create a New User Add a new user called DEFAULT. Make sure they’re an Administrator for the system. As with your other user account, set a simple password for this user.
4. Configure the User Account, Restart, and log into DEFAULT.
5.  Go through System Preferences and set everything the way you want it.
6.  Start each program, particularly if they’ve been downloaded from the Internet, and make sure the startup normally and with no warnings.

System Cleanup

1. Clear caches on the DEFAULT account – using Finder go to /Users/DEFAULT/Library/Caches and delete the contents. Make sure you empty the Trash.
2.  Run Keychain Access (Applications/Utilities), select “login” and delete (from File menu).
3. Clear histories (Apple symbol -> Recent Items -> Clear Menu).

Set Up System-wide Default User Account

1. Restart the computer and log in as ADMIN.
2. Run Terminal (Applications/Utilities) and type “sudo -s” and enter your password for ADMIN when prompted.
3. Clear out the existing system-wide default account: rm -rf /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/*
   NOTE: Sometimes this doesn’t work as expected and you need to remove each individual sub-folder separately, check that English.lproj is empty after this step and delete anything left as needed.
4.  Copy your new default account to the system default account: cp -R /Users/DEFAULT/* /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj
   NOTE: At this point, you’ve now got the start of a system-wide default user profile – this is what gets used every time a new user is created on the system, including the first user when you go through the Apple Welcome process on a new computer.
5. Type “exit” to get out of the root shell and then close Terminal and reboot the computer.
6. Log in again as ADMIN.

System Cleanup

1. Run Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities), select the hard drive and, under the First Aid tab, run “Repair Disk Permissions“. If you got things right to this point you’ll see a whole stack of information where this fixes permissions for the system-wide default user profile you’ve just copied. If you miss this step, permissions issues may get in the way when you create a new user later. Once you’re done, close Disk Utility.
2. At this point, you can now delete your DEFAULT account. You won’t need it any further.

Optional – Reset Welcome Screen

1. Run Terminal (Applications/Utilities) and type “sudo -s” and enter your password for ADMIN when prompted.
2. rm -rf /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
3. shutdown -h now

Create Your Disk Image

At this point, you’ve got a computer that’s turned off and is ready to start as a new computer with no existing users but all your configurations and software installs ready to go. Now just NetBoot to your K2000 and capture your image using K-Image or Native (DMG) capture; we support both.

 - Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn)

We know that the evolution of AppDeploy to ITNinja may have seemed to be too much, too soon.  This Version 2 of AppDeploy was clearly much more than a name change; it was a complete rewrite. ITNinja was a year in the making and beta feedback was sparse so getting it out the door and in front of a live audience was necessary to get your much-needed feedback.

This community has always been, and continues to always be, about you.  We take your feedback seriously and to heart, and based on it, have released seven significant updates to the site since our initial launch.

If you have not been watching, here’s what we’ve been up to these last few months:

• The first feedback we executed on was to bring back the ability to browse the Software Library alphabetically and added powerful filters to help manage its huge database. Taking this even further, we just introduced an additional filter so you can reduce the list to software titles matching specified text.  Second, we listened to you about the look and feel of these Software Pages. The page is now easier to navigate and the information on the page is easier to see so you can now find everything and anything on any version of any software title that is available inside the site. From deployment tips and difficulty ratings to related questions, blogs and links, if you are looking for IT related information on any applications these pages are a goldmine of helpful tips and tricks.

• We’ve had a very positive response to our new Q&A system, but some of you told us that you prefer the traditional forum experience. To help with navigation, we increased the visibility of several topic tags so you can more easily browse discussions by these topics while still leveraging our powerful tagging system. And speaking of tags, we just introduced a new “Tag Home Page” feature so that you can now click on any tag to view a more helpful page of tagged content.

• We still offer the same Google Custom Search Engine that was featured at AppDeploy. However, feedback (and we agree) has highlighted that search results are not as valuable as we would all like to see. To that end, you’ll be happy to hear that we are making great progress toward replacing this search system with our own, hosted custom search. Soon you’ll enjoy a better-looking, more configurable search experience.

• And finally, the activity and the frequency that the site receives new deployment tips has increased to levels higher than ever before, meaning more valuable tips tricks, information and more colleagues to help you with your job.

And that is far from all we’ll be bringing you at ITNinja. We have a huge and growing list of updates and enhancements planned. Please continue to check back regularly as ITNinja continually evolves based on your feedback and participation.

Sincerely,

Bob Kelly

Manager/Founder ITNinja

Register at: https://www.regonline.com/kaceCA2012

For more information about the Backyard Boot Kamp series visit our announcement post.

We would like to raise your confidence level—quickly—and invite you to join us as KACE and SonicWALL’s  top security experts along with one of our customers share their experiences and bring you up to speed on some of the latest security threats. 

Join us at a live one hour webinar: End Point to Perimeter: Network protection that’s inside out and outside in.

When: Thursday, September 6, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. PT, 11:00 a.m. MT, 12:00 p.m. CT, 1:00 p.m. ET

Register HERE

 You will learn about:

• The malware menace – latest stats and facts
• Third party industry firewall comparison tests:  which firewall is best for you?
• Best and easiest practices for securing end points
• How a customer implemented a solution—step-by-step
• And much more…

When you register and attend, you will have complimentary access to webcasts, free downloads and research, live chat and networking opportunities, and more.

Be sure to register even if you can’t attend on September 6, as you will gain access to pertinent content and the on-demand version of our virtual event.

Either way, we promise you will learn how to provide stronger security for your network.

These initial roles are meant to get you started with assigning access to users on the K1000 but many customers prefer to create custom roles in order to give access to the appropriate areas for specific Users. For instance, if you have helpdesk personnel you may want to create a custom helpdesk role.

To create this role we must go to

1. Service Desk – > Roles – > Choose Action – > Add New Item.

2. This will take you to the editing page to create a new role. At the very top you can enter a Role Name, we’ll call ours Helpdesk Staff.

3. After entering the name enter a brief description, something to indicate this is for our helpdesk administrators.

4. After entering that information next click the “expand all”, this will show each available tab on the box as well as all of the sub tabs beneath it. You can select the custom value to give read, write or hide specific sub tabs, or all hide if you wish to hide an entire module from view.

5. Next go through each tab; home, inventory, asset, etc… and determine what you want your helpdesk personnel to have access to. Read means they can see the information for that area but can’t modify, write means they can modify information there and hide means it is hidden from sight. **It’s worthy of remembering that if you leave someone with write access to the users or roles tabs, you’re effectively saying they can grant themselves broader access. Another important point is that there is a different section for the Admin portal and the User portal, the User tabs are at the bottom.

6. Once finished editing simply click save at the bottom of the page.

Now that the role is created we simply need to assign it to users. Users may belong to only one role- so you may need a few roles to support the various worker types in your environment. There are two ways to assign this role one is through the LDAP import under the User Authentication- this assigns the role when the account is initially created; the other method is to manually apply this role to users that already exist in the Users tab, also located in the Service Desk module. To do this simply click the check box to the left of their name(s), next click the Choose Action – > Apply Role. This will change their existing role to the new one you’ve created.

Now it’s time to determine if there are more that you need in your environment. Roles can be used for Users or Administrators, to limit or hide tabs you feel could be confusing, or simply are not needed for their daily work duties. We recommend using roles whether you use Service Desk or not; granting people more access than they want or need can not only be scary for you, but them as well. You’ll find that many people prefer not to have access to tools they aren’t supposed to use. Here’s some examples: Common Users might not need access to the User portal’s software library and the Download log tabs if you aren’t publishing applications there. An Asset Manager role might be useful for someone in Finance that only has read access to inventory, reporting, and write access to Assets, but not metering. Managers might benefit from read access to reporting, helpdesk, and inventory, in the Admin portal, and write access to helpdesk in the user portal but nothing else.

Backyard Boot Kamp allows you the opportunity to:

• Extract maximum benefit from your KACE Appliance by either refreshing or enhancing your skills
• Interact with KACE experts and ask questions pertaining to your issues
• Connect with your fellow users in the local KACE community, to learn best practices and establish on-going relationships
• Save on travel expense and minimize time away from the office

This is a full day of KACE product training, and we will provide only practical, solutions-oriented information that can benefit you and your organization. NOTE: Boot Kamps are designed specifically for new users or those desiring a skills refresh. They are not intended for advanced KACE users, nor should they be considered as a replacement for normal JumpStart new customer training.

Locations

• Orlando, FL | Thursday, September 13, 2012, 8 a.m.–5 p.m. Register Here
• Boston, MA | Thursday, September 27, 2012, 8 a.m.–5 p.m. Register Here
• Palo Alto, CA | Tuesday, October 16, 2012, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Register Here *NEW*

Seats are extremely limited for these backyard training events, so register now!

And remember, Boot Kamps are also offered as part of our annual KACE Konference 2012 agenda, scheduled for December 10-13, 2012 in Austin, TX. With the option to attend either or both K1000 and K2000 Boot Kamps, as well as two extra days of information-packed sessions and networking opportunities, Konference may be the best educational option for your organization. You can find Konference details and preliminary agendas here.

There were a ton of great stories and we’re going to be turning these into animations and posting on our Facebook wall in the next few weeks, so keep an eye out and see if we animate one of your stories.

We hope that you had a great SysAdmin Day and that you join us next year for another fun social event. If you have a suggestion for what we should do for SysAdmin Day 2013, tweet us @DellKACE, we want to hear about what you want!

Finally, thank you to all the SysAdmins of the world for keeping us connected and productive, we appreciate you!!

There are many ways to patch laptops and every environment is different. For some environments it is best to set a company policy that every Tuesday night, or some night you decide, that all laptops must be left on the company network– whether that’s VPN, or in the office is up to your needs. In this case all laptops are on the corporate network and we can patch very aggressively and know that we have a lot of bandwidth to use during the deployment. Machines won’t be available  from time to time due to travel or other needs, but if you can establish this maintenance window it will aide in keeping your laptops current with patching. With this “planned” update window you can reduce, or even eliminate, impact to the users. Often we’ve seen companies that have a catch-all patching job, that is even more aggressive and forces updates, say once a month, to catch any laptop users that miss patching regularly.

There are environments where leaving laptops on the corporate network is simply not possible and some of the machines may be at the end user’s home. This limits our usable bandwidth greatly, so we must do one of two things; ask the employee to leave the laptop on overnight and not use it so that it can be patched overnight or just focus on the specific patches that are a priority and not standard updates.

If bandwidth is a concern, be certain to set up labels to identify machines external to your network, use smart labels to identify specific subnets ex. “IP Address…begins with….xxx.xxx.xxx.”; note that we ended that query with a period– failing to do that simple step could include subnets you didn’t intend. Once this is done set up the appropriate detection and deployment phase on the K1000, I would still recommend having a set policy informing the User that the machine will be patched on a specific night and time so they are aware of this. I would recommend running a detection first on these external machines a few days before, and then generate a report of “Machines not Compliant by Patch”. After reviewing this report you will see what patches the external machines need and you can add them to a manual label. To add patches to a manual label simply go to Security -> Patch Listing simply search for the using the search box located in the top Right corner of the page then put a check mark next to the patch click Choose Action and Apply Label. This allows you to focus on the critical security patches that you want them to have while limiting the bandwidth used during this deployment. Once the remote computers are current on critical security patches we can then focus on other vendor recommended patches.

Keep in mind that mobile users may work differently than we think; they are often working unusual hours or using their machines in ways that we don’t expect. It’s probably a best practice to

• A) Communicate your patching plans regularly
• B) Be a bit more verbose using the options available in the Deploy-type the patch jobs themselves. E.g. Prompting for reboots rather than forcing them, Alerting the user before the scheduled job runs, etc.

These are just a few ideas to help you patch laptops. There is no silver bullet when it comes to patching, every environment is different. Some environments may require multiple patching methods to keep all internal and external machines patched with as little interference to the end user as possible. With the K1000 you’ve got a lot of flexibility, use it!

One possible hurdle that one may encounter when setting up a Scripted Installation is figuring out how to provide the license key and activate Windows. Unfortunately, the answer is not as straight forward as it once was. You see, things change, and Windows Licensing is no exception. Due to piracy, administrative needs, and many other factors, Microsoft has introduced multiple methods for licensing Windows. Let’s take a look at the methods and talk about how to utilize them when preparing scripts to install Windows 7/Vista/2008.

A successful answer file requires no intervention. The most rational thing to do is to put your license key into the answer file, correct? Maybe not… Previous versions of Windows required a key and the K2000 Answer File Wizard has an enticing text box for it in the wizard. Logically, you are compelled to enter the key. Please read on before doing so though; It may seem counter-intuitive, but the best thing to do is to choose a KMS key (yes, even if you aren’t using KMS) and change it with a postinstall task after the OS installs; or leave the license key field blank in the Wizard or set it to /Image/Name and value of Product Name in the answer file you created.

Unlike Microsoft Windows XP, which can’t be installed without the key, Windows 7 can be (and even does better without it).  Having the Win7 key in your answer file typically causes problems ranging from a complete failure, to a prompt for the key during the installation.

What should you do? First you need to understand the relationship between your source media and key type. Installation disks and key types are not interchangeable. Using the same type of key and media is required. What do I mean, well the OEM disk that came with your computer won’t work with your Volume License key. Likewise, the Volume Media that you downloaded from Microsoft doesn’t work with an OEM key. The type of media you use determines how you should provide the license key and activate Windows. The following are some guidelines:

• Retail key: A single key for one computer. Typically this is a small organization that does not have a high volume of installations. Most customers with retail keys choose to install a trial version and manually enter the key (answer file with no key and specified Product Name). Alternatively, you can modify your answer file and enter the new key before each installation (leaving out the product name/image type).
• OEM key: Single computer license used to install Windows 7 at the factory. Typically, used by medium size organizations trying to leverage the license that came with the computer. While this might be the easiest purchase option due to price and availability, this can be the most difficult to administer and deploy in many environments. If OEM is what you have- Leave the key field in the answer file blank and select the Image Type (Product Name). The installation media checks for the manufacturer meaning that your source media is only compatible with computers that came from the same manufacturer. During the installation, Windows 7 automatically gets the key from the computer. An OEM key is tied to the motherboard and other BIOS settings. So if you replace the motherboard or BIOS, the OEM media might not work on that computer any longer. The other caveat is the media should only be used on computers that came with Windows 7 installed. You can’t legally install Windows 7 from an OEM disk onto a system that came with Windows XP for example.
• Volume MAK: A multi-seat license managed by Microsoft, requires internet access to complete the activation. Volume seats are typically used in organizations with more than about 50 computers. Leave the license key field in the answer file blank and selects the Image Type (Product Name). Create and use the following post installation task (batch script) in your Scripted Installation. Simply replace the X’s with your MAK key; also consider separating these into 2 tasks, so you don’t have to activate (“burn an activation”) each time you deploy an image/script for testing purposes.

REM Configure Client using VL MAK
cscript.exe c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs /ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
REM  Activate the machine using the VL MAK
cscript.exe c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs /ato

• Volume KMS: Multi-seat license managed by a KMS server that you host, typically used by larger enterprise customers, but available to many Microsoft Licensing Agreement customers. The client keys are the same for all KMS clients, your Microsoft-issued KMS key does not go on the clients, it goes only on the KMS server. If you don’t have a KMS Server configured and you have a volume key, chances are you use a MAK style key. Even though your K2000 has a drop-down with the keys right there for KMS clients, as tempted as you might be, we recommend selecting the Image Type rather than using Autodetect; feel free to select your key, but also select the image to install. If properly configured, your KMS server should pick up the new Windows 7 installation, automatically set the key, and activate it.

use of tools. And having the right tools has been one of the greatest determining factors in regards to success, regardless of the era or discipline in question.

This has become exceedingly evident ever since the industrial revolution, which magnified the tenet that those with the most power will have the best tools. At the same time, the inverse is also true – those with the best tools will have the most power, and for the actual users of those tools, a better shot at success. And nowhere does this ring more true than in the tech sector, whose entire focus is on developing and maintaining the best tools for success.

As a sysadmin, I have many tools (hardware and software) for different aspects of my job. Some are very specific in focus (screwdriver, USB drive formatting tool), while others have many uses (Swiss army knife, modern OSes). And while these tools can often be pressed into atypical uses (a screwdriver can also serve as a hammer or a knife), they generally produce substandard results in comparison to tools designed for those jobs. Typically, this is done more out of necessity – “I don’t have the right tool for this task… but, I can make due with this other tool or cobble together a tool that will make due”, at the expense of time and more effort. Ingenious – yes; efficient – no.

OK, so this is all probably very obvious and common sense. But one thing I’ve found to ring true countless times over the years is that efficiency in processes (i.e. having the right tools) is the key to success. Often determining that a better tool is needed involves a discovery process, where (after countless repetitions of a task) inefficiencies are found. And if it is determined that the screwdriver is truly being used like a hammer, it’s time to step back and focus on why and how to refine the process (to save more time and effort).

In regards to managing systems, there are basic high-level tasks necessary to maintain operations: recording configurations (inventory), tracking changes (auditing), securing systems (patching), updating software (deployment), maintaining uniformity (machine policies), addressing issues (service desk), documenting solutions (knowledgebase), determining trends (reporting). Just as there is “more than one way to skin a cat”, there are countless options for addressing these needs.

However, there are three major considerations when researching the best tool(s) for the job – these are maintenance, data availability and flexibility. For example, if inventory and patching are handled by separate systems, not only will correlating data between the two require time to export results (typically into a spreadsheet or common database) and scrubbing records, more time will be required to maintain both systems. And if these each use their own agent applications, the maintenance effort will be multiplied across all of the systems running those agents. Widen the scope to include all of the basic high-level tasks, and it should become readily apparent how much time is wasted by deploying standalone management systems.

In an ideal world, everything works, is compatible and standardized – but in practice there are always exceptions and proprietary methods. This is where flexibility comes into play, that is to say, being able to customize solutions to fit the nuances of an environment.

Humans, being the free-willed creatures that we are, will almost always find multiple solutions to complex problems, and nowhere is this more evident than in application development. Supporting the vast array of software that ends up on systems, with all of their different installation, updating and usage methods, requires a high degree of flexibility – both on the part of the sysadmin and the management solution.

So where is this all leading? After many years of many tools to address many challenges, I have not found a more comprehensive and effective, time and effort-saving solution to sysadmin tasks than the Dell KACE K1000 and K2000 appliances. Both address the challenges described earlier more effectively than any other tool I’ve ever seen or used, and the depth of customization possibilities to address issues and provide solutions is truly astonishing. For anyone who is currently dealing with the problems inherent in their current standalone or inflexible comprehensive management solutions, I would strongly suggest looking into these appliances further and either demoing them or speaking with a Dell KACE representative who can review your current processes and help you realize how much time and effort you have had wasted.

Guest Author: John Verbosky

About: John Verbosky has worn many hats in IT over the past 13 years, is a frequent contributor of KACE appliance-related solutions on ITNinja.com, and currently works as Helpdesk Coordinator at Resco Products, Inc.  In his spare time, he enjoys playing guitar, studying Japanese, raising fresh & saltwater creatures, working in the yard, and spending time with his wife and two kids.

Photo by: Peter Alexanderson

This event is so serious that the FBI has been involved with this case for over a year. The hackers were taken down and the FBI brought in clean servers to replace the infected ones, but are now going to be shutting these off at 12:01 a.m. EDT Monday, July 9. Make sure to be ready for it.

The FBI has worked to get a site up to help check to see if your computer is infected. You can send this link to your friends and family who aren’t lucky enough to have you, as an IT admin monitoring their systems for them, http://www.dcwg.org.

Even though many infected systems have addressed the issue, there are still hundreds of thousands who haven’t, and even worse about 50 Fortune 500 companies are still infected. But of course you’re not one of those companies at risk because all your end users are good boys and girls and never ever click on something they shouldn’t with their work computer, right? Riiiiiiiiiight.

Hopefully your organization has invested in a systems management tool, and more importantly is capable of running a thorough security audit, or has the flexibility to script something out quickly and easily to help you catch something like this that you can’t normally catch with security tools or patches; if not, well then, good luck!

Now comes the question of what you can do to avoid the next Malware Monday? First, if you haven’t already done so make sure your endpoints have a secure browser in place, if you don’t already have one, here’s a free secure browser tool you can download. You can use this to help prevent your users from inadvertently exposing their systems to malicious sites. You can use this free tool regardless of the systems management tool you’re using. Next, make sure all patches are up to date to again help prevent any other loopholes. Then, make sure that your systems management tool can run a security audit and has standard steps for remediation. And finally, make sure that your tool is able to deploy, update and manage your Malware software to ensure you’re organization isn’t a victim the next time this happens.

Here’s to hoping your Monday is just your normal manic Monday and you’re not one of the  unlucky ones dealing with Malware.

According to Forrester’s Forrsights Workforce Employee Survey, Q4 2011, 53% of workforce employees bring their own technology for work purposes. Last year the most self purchased technology that made its way into the work place was  computer software. In the last year this has changed dramatically; now, personal computers, tablets and smart phones are taking the lead as the technology employees are bringing into the work place to help them do their jobs, and desktop PCs seem to the lone hardware item that IT is controlling.

Bring your own device to work is going to be, if it’s not already, the norm. You better figure out how you’re going to jump on that wave, if not prepare to get pummeled – big time.

Tell us, what’s going on in your neck of the woods. Are BYOD creeping into your organization?

Don't let the intruders into your financial institution

We at Dell KACE and Dell SecureWorks feel your pain. And, we have helped thousands of financial institutions of all sizes tackle their many security challenges and to become more efficient along the way.
If you are interested in learning exactly how we have helped others in your shoes, please plan to attend a live webinar entitled: Taming the security beast:  How financial institutions can meet escalating threats and bring costs down.

You will hear from SecureWorks security expert, Andy Held as he hones in on the special set of security challenges you face and provides expertise on where to focus and how to provide greater protection for your company and your customers. You will also hear Ben Schreiner share his “war stories” about his many years on the front line, working for multiple financial institutions. We will take a look at a case study so you can learn how some of your peers successfully tackled the security beast.

The webinar takes place on July 11, 2012 at 10am PT, 11 MT, 12 CT. Register by clicking here.

Power management is a concern for many of our customers, particularly in education, who are tasked with not only managing their systems but finding ways to reduce the organization’s carbon footprint. Cutting power consumption of PCs is one of the most obvious and common ways of becoming greener while providing direct savings in utility expenditures. Using the configuration and policy management capabilities of the K1000 Management Appliance, administrators can easily develop, deploy and enforce power management profiles that control how quickly systems go into low power states.

CORE was honored last week at the 2^nd annual PG&E Trade Professional Alliance Recognition Awards in Northern California. A very big congratulations to CORE for this achievement from your friends at KACE!

And just a reminder that Dell KACE is also approved for energy rebates in all 50 states and Canada. Click here for more information on how KACE can help IT teams meet their green agendas.

The first method is fairly straight forward, what you will want to do is have a manual patch label, created under “Label Management”. This manual label can have patches manually added to it on the Patch Listing page, the Patch Listing is located under the Security Tab. This will show you all available patches that you can choose from to add to this label. What you do next is simply click the check box to the far left of the appropriate patch(es), then click the Choose Action drop down box and select Apply Label and viola your label is now updated. This allows you to have a great degree of control over what patches are applied to the machines in your environment.

The second method is a bit more hands off, for those that don’t have the time to go through all the patches one by one you can set up a patch smart label for testing and another for production machine deployment. The way this works is you create a Patch smart label, targeting the appropriate patches you wish to deploy for testing. Next you create another patch label with the same criteria with one extra item, select “Release Date” “>” “DATE_SUB(now(), INTERVAL 30 DAY)” and create the label, name it ex. OS Patches Greater than 30 days Old. Next you will need to edit this label, to go the Home – > Label – > Smart Labels and select the label you just created by clicking on it. Once you’ve clicked on it, locate the ’DATE_SUB(now(), INTERVAL 30 DAY)’) and remove the quotation marks before Date and between the last to parenthesis. This greater than 30 days old will be your production patches because it will allow you to deploy the first label that includes all patches regardless of age to a test group of machines and if there is an issue you can catch it before it goes company wide. What you can now do is take the standard label and deploy it to a group of computers in various departments for testing (or use a labels that includes your standard testing machines), if your other deployment labels are also including a variation of this for GREATER than 30 days- your automated testing of the patches has 30 days before it goes live for deployment to the rest of your network, so you have 30 days to catch any issues that are caused by a particular patch. Adjust INTERVAL 30 DAY to INTERVAL 10 DAY or any other number that you wish to set your release cycle to.

These are just two methods of testing patches before they are deployed to your environment, they vary in the amount of automation for the deployment and both offer better flexibility and security than just simply deploying patches and hoping for the best.  In many environments we see that “testing” amounts to deploying the patches to the IT staff to see if it breaks anything. If not, it just rolls out to the rest of the world. The challenge with that and similar methods is that you’ve forgotten that you use your machines differently than the end users; if I update office and open Word and Excel and say it’s all good, then roll it out to a group of Publisher and Access users and there’s an important feature that’s broken… we might well create more work for ourselves to undo the patch, and worse- we’ve impacted the users. Testing across multiple departments and business functions is ideal if possible. Many companies are taking a tiered approach based on our Label automation noted above- IT First for 1-3 days, Testing Label including various hardware types/OSes/Departments/Etc. for 10-14 days, then all deployed machines within 30 days.

There are three key Elements to managing your IT Assets.

• Physical: Inventory management, Electronic Distribution, License Tracking, Usage Monitoring and Refresh/Retirement and to kill redundancy across your network.
• Financial: Reporting for Procurement of new equipment, creating your IT budget and Operational Efficiencies.
• Contractual/Logical: License Compliance, RFP Preparation and review, Negotiations, Supplier Management and Service Level Management.

Tracking your IT Assets can help you assess which assets have proven beneficial plus highlight where upgrades or new programs or equipment may be needed.  Serious problems can affect the damage your computers and entire networks are suffering in areas you may not be aware of.

The first step in the process in setting up your IT Assets in the K1000 Appliance will require you to make some decisions on what Assets to track.  Which Physical Assets do you want to track and which Logical Assets do you want to track.   Physical Assets being: Hardware, Desktop Network Devices, and Mobile Devices to name a few.  Logical Assets: Cost Center, Warranties, Vendors, Locations, Technical Support, Licenses, and Service Agreements for a few examples. Every business has their own special needs and priorities.  Some major questions to ask yourself and your team to get started are: What do I have? Where is it? What condition is it in? What is its useful life and value?  How does it relate to other Assets? What might be useful to know about this asset someday?

The K1000 Appliance offers you a flexible system for keeping track of resources that your organization uses throughout the life of the resource itself.

• View the present state of history of resources you currently use in your organization. For example not only can you track how many printers you have, you also can more easily track how many are due to go out of warranty and when. You can setup automated email alerts when the warranties become due.
• Create Peer-to-peer and parent child relationships between assets and track them together.  This allows you to track an asset you purchased by its PO, Location, Department, Project, and any other characteristics.
• You can tie Assets into the Service Desk module for even better tracking when it comes to justifying procurement of new equipment.

How do you track your Assets now?  If you currently track your Assets in spreadsheets, or another product that the data can somehow be exported- your K1000 appliance supports .CSV file imports! As long as you have already defined the asset type, you can import a new asset of that type without manually entering it in the K1000 Appliance.  The K1000 Asset Management Module will allow you to change existing assets as well as create additional information you want to track.  You can change and customize our Asset Module to contain all the information you may need or want to change. Do you want to additional information?

Americas KKE – Am I Compliant? – Effectively Using Your K1000 for License Compliance

Europe KKE Series – Getting Started with Asset Management

K1000: Managing Computers and Other Assets with your K1000

Want to hear more about how he did it? Then register for this live web event that outlines the IT lifecycle management practices that can help you control your asset costs, improve the return on your technology investments and reduce the time you spend on configuring new systems. This is your chance to speak with a fellow IT admin who was able to transform his job from firefighting drills to strategic project implementation.

Join us on Wednesday, June 20th at 10 am PT.

Register Now

Kace and Bomgar have several levels of integration. Nearly everyone is familiar with the Managed Actions where you can click on the appropriate Action Icon under the Inventory Tab and initiate a remote desktop connection with the selected machine. The second (and new) place where Bomgar and Kace integrate is in service desk. Once set up, using the steps provided by Bomgar in the whitepaper “Using Bomgar with the Dell Kace K1000 Management Appliance”, this will add a link to the email an end user receives from the service desk stating their ticket was created.

The link provided to the end user allows the user (or “ticket submitter”, if you prefer) to request a chat session with one of the helpdesk personnel. The chat is a secure Bomgar connection; it will give a popup for the helpdesk personnel to accept the request. It then asks the user to allow access to their machine so that the helpdesk personnel can troubleshoot the issue. There are links to pull up the Kace support ticket so that you can assign the ticket to yourself. Using the Bomgar control console you can use standard remote desktop controls as well as the ability to transfer files using a secure file transfer, you can also reboot the machine into safe-mode if necessary for virus or malware removal.

Once the issue is resolved the end user will get notification that the session is closed and will get a feedback questionnaire as well. The ticket will be updated with the information of what system was worked on, any notes the helpdesk technician made about the issue, the chat is added to the ticket comments as well. Bomgar also records the support session so that it can be referred to at a later date for security purposes. It is useful to remember that the information added to the Comments section of a ticket can be searched using the reporting tool built into the K1000. So you can create a report to look for specific systems or information the Bomgar chat session was able to pull from the system and generate a report from this information.

If the end user doesn’t request a chat session with the helpdesk technician, the technician can view the ticket and click a drop down menu, when viewing the ticket, and request a remote chat session with the end user. This functions the same as above just that the request is coming from the technician instead of from the User.

These are some great new tools that can be used to help streamline ticket response as well as giving you more detailed information in the Ticket Comments. If you have a Bomgar box feel free to take a look at the web on Bomgar’s site for more detailed information about this great new tool for the K1000 Service Desk.

Watch for more news on exciting new opportunities regarding Bomgar, coming soon!

We often get asked what the types and differences of Labels are. So, I’d like to take a look at some terminology and define what is and isn’t and maybe what could be.

Label: Is a way to organize together the various types of objects on the K1000. Labels are intended to be used in a flexible manner, and how you use labels is completely customizable. Once included in a label, items can be managed on a per-label basis. All items that support labeling can have none, one, or multiple labels. While objects such as Computers, Users, Patches, Software, and Dell Updates are often separated into their own labels, it is possible to create a label that contains more than one type of object if necessary, though it is only rarely useful to do so.

Manual Label: Manual labels are static labels that are manually applied and removed for each object. An example of a manual label might be grouping computers on a particular sales project so we can distribute software or files to those machines. Grouping the users from that group into a label might be useful for granting access to certain knowledgebase articles that are useful for that group.

Smart Label:  Smart Labels are more dynamic than manual labels; Smart Labels are automatically applied and removed when an object meets some criteria that you’ve defined via a SQL wizard, or directly writing the SQL. Smart labels allow us to be flexible and set policies and automation. Smart Labels contain 2 parts- a manual labels and a linked SQL query. Any labels that have a linked SQL query can only be applied and removed by that SQL evaluation. Most evaluations happen immediately, but Computers are evaluated only at the normal inventory interval. Note that if you want to convert a previously created (and likely populated) Manual Label into a Smart Label simply re-use the name or choose it from the dropdown naming menu in the Smart Label wizard.

LDAP Label: LDAP Labels are similar to Smart Labels, in that they are dynamic and will automatically apply and remove themselves when an object meets certain criteria. The major difference is we’re querying your directory rather than the SQL objects. The LDAP labels can only be applied to Users and Computers, and might be useful for repeating directory structures such as OU’s or Security groups as Labels.

Label Group:  Label Groups are strictly for organizational purposes, such as the “View By” function in the Computer Inventory page. They cannot be targeted for Patching jobs or Managed Installations for example. You can associate labels with one or more Label Groups; membership in one Label Group does not preclude membership in another Label Group. In fact, Label Groups can be a member of another Label Group.

Given the importance and wide range of usues that Labels have- For various reasons it’s a good idea to be very descriptive when naming labels. A good descriptive name can reduce mistakes moving forward, and a structured naming scheme can help later when grouping labels, or referring to another label or set of labels from a different one. Each customer will have their own preferences and needs, but these basics can help you acheive great success with your K1000 Systems Management Appliance.

KACE was recently named “a strong performer” by Forrester Research, Inc. in “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Client Management Suites Q2 2012.” The report highlights the excellent OS management, OS migration, patch and ad hoc reporting capabilities of Dell KACE solutions. Additionally, Dell KACE, was recognized as the “only fully appliance-based solution in the Wave evaluation, and customers report quick ramp-up and excellent results in smaller environments.”

We’ve always taken a lot of pride in building systems management solutions that quickly save our customers time and money. We feel that this independent validation demonstrates that we are on the right track. We believe one of our biggest strengths is delivering an appliance-based approach to organizations with a variety of environments -whether its’ managing 100 or 20,000 endpoints or virtual or mobile environments.

Our integration into Dell’s software portfolio will help us highlight our security offerings in conjunction with SonicWall, Dell Data Protection and Encyrption and Secure Works –providing data protection regardless of location or device enabling systems administrators will be able to do more than ever.

Now what does this mean to the IT administrator when an employee makes a frantic call for help from the airport asking to fix his blue-screened laptop that has the earnings report that he of course did not back up and needs to turn in yesterday? Fear not for vPro is here! The blue screen of death just lost its grip over hard-working IT professionals like you! Dell KACE supports Intel vPro technology that allows IT admins to remotely take control of, diagnose, recover and remediate systems even when they are only connected through WiFi.

The vPro “fast call for help” feature allows IT administrators to configure Intel-based systems that have the latest vPro technology with information about a pre-designated server that can handle connections from the client. Once configured with this information the client will be able to establish an out-of-band channel of communication with the server in the event of a blue-screen or a crash. This allows the IT administrator to then connect with the system and control, diagnose, remediate or recover it even if it is only connected over WiFi.

Intel vPro technology is now offered on a wide range of enterprise clients from Dell and other manufacturers. The latest Optiplex/Latitude line of Dell business desktops and laptops clients come with the latest vPro versions. Dell KACE supports the latest vPro technology on all Intel-based systems regardless of the manufacturer, thereby enabling the IT administrator straightforward access to remote systems that just cannot be accessed via conventional means.

Register for 1 hr live webinar on June 7^th at 10am PT

And learn how KACE and vPro can dramatically cut the time and resources needed to manage distributed endpoints.

Dell KACE Appliances are one of the many tailored solutions available to Latitude/OptiPlex customers for cost effective security, management and end-user productivity. KACE’s unique appliance-based approach is changing the face of systems management and offers a comprehensive and easy-to-use solution to help customers solve their most pressing IT issues; from imaging new systems, upgrading to Windows 7 or maintaining their entire inventory of hardware and software.

So what’s the direct benefit of using Dell KACE if you’re a Latitude or OptiPlex user?

In a nutshell, we can help speed through the drudgery of provisioning and protecting new systems whether it’s a desktop, laptop or server. From new system imaging, software distribution, compliance reporting and ongoing maintenance, KACE can greatly simplify the life of your IT teams. 

 How do we do it?

Systems admins can leverage the Dell KACE K2000 Deployment Appliance to create an image of your current OS and approved applications and send to the Dell factory. From your premier page, you can then directly order your systems with your customized image already deployed – saving you hours per system for provisioning.

Once the systems arrive, Dell KACE provides complete configuration covering pre and post deployment, reducing costs and increasing PC provisioning reliability and control by automating the full deployment life cycle.

 Additionally, say you’re an IT team working on a migration project with existing systems. Dell KACE can help address migration challenges such as Windows 7 by reusing existing assets to deploy images across a variety of OS environments.

 KACE’s vision is to simplify the systems management process through innovative software that makes it easier for IT managers to do their jobs. KACE Appliances together with the new Latitude/OptiPlex products is perfect example of ‘two great tastes that taste great together. Together we have worked to make the Latitude and OptiPlex products the most enterprise efficient option on the market while redefining what it means to deliver a durable, powerful, secure and manageable product to our customers.

Most of you know that deploying the agent from the appliance is a great way to get the agent deployed. Have you ever had a need for an alternate method of deployment though? We’ve got several options that can get you well on your way, such as Group Policy, Login Script, Remote execution, and imaging.

Let’s take a look at each. But first things first… some minor modifications to the agent file for v5.3 can simplify the whole process regardless of which method(s) you choose. We want to make sure the agents will communicate with your server once installed, so we need to give the installer the hostname of your K1000.

The 5.3 Agent is very easy to configure for custom K1000 host names. For these steps we will assume that your K1000 is called kboxhostname.company.com.

1. In a file manager browse to \\kboxhostname\clientdrop\agent_provisioning\windows_platform This is the writeable fileshare. If necessary, see documentation on how to enable this share.
2. Copy the msi file to a network share or other location that is used for distribution of software packages.
3. Rename the ampagent-5.x.xxxxx-x86.msi to include your host name. e.g. ampagent-5.3.44367-x86_hostname.company.com.msi

Group Policy is the favored method for most of our customers right after provisioning directly from the appliance. An Active Directory Group Policy can help you get the machines that miss their scheduled deployment, or in cases where you aren’t able to configure the pre-requisite for agent provisioning from the appliance (File/Print Sharing, UAC, Simple File Sharing).

To publish or assign a computer program, you must create a distribution point on the publishing server:

1. Log on to the server computer as an administrator.
2. Create a shared network folder where you will put the Microsoft Windows Installer package (.msi file) that you want to distribute.
3. Set permissions on the share to allow access to the distribution package.
4. Copy the MSI you previously renamed to this location.

Next we want to create the GPO. The recommended methos is to use the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) Snap-in from MMC.

1. Start the Group Policy Management Console. To do this, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Group Policy Management Console
2. In the tree, expand your forest; locate your domain and find the Group Policy Objects section
3. In the right-hand pane where the Group Policy Objects are listed, right-click and choose New
4. Enter the Name as KBOX Agent.
5. Click and Drag the newly created object onto the OU you want to deploy it to. In this case we are using an OU called TestForGPOInstall.

Next we need to assign the GPO to some computers:

1. Find your group policy object called KBOX Agent. Right-click on it and choose Edit . The Group Policy Object Editor will open.
2. Under Computer Configuration, expand Software Settings.
3. Right-click Software installation, point to New, and then click Package.
4. In the Open dialog box, type the full Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of the shared installer package that you want. For example, \\fileserver\share\ampagent-5.3.44367-x86_kboxhostname.company.com.msi
5. Important: Do not use the Browse button to access the location. Make sure that you use the UNC path to the shared installer package.
6. Click Open.
7. Click Assigned, and then click OK. The package is listed in the right pane of the Group Policy window.
8. Close the Group Policy snap-in.

For older versions of the agent and variations on methodology check out the full article.

Login Scriptsare used by many companies to check conditions on workstations when each user logs in and remediate anything that might not be quite right. Many companies have moved away from this method in favor of alternate tools because of logon delays and maintenance issues related to complex scripts. Here’s an example batch script that can be assigned to your users to check for the client and install it if missing:

REM ***BEGIN BATCH***
REM ...Other parts of your login script here

:K1000AGENT
:CHECKEXISTINGINSTALL
if exist C:\Program Files (x86)\Dell\KACE\AMPAgent.exe GOTO :NEXT
if exist C:\Program Files\Dell\KACE\AMPAgent.exe GOTO :NEXT
if exist C:\Program Files\KACE\KBOX\kbscriptrunner.exe GOTO :NEXT
\\fileserver\share\ampagent-5.3.44367-x86_kboxhostname.company.com.msi

:NEXT
REM The rest of your Login Scripts here...

Remote Execution of processes is a tool that can often help in certain situations where other methods such as GPO or Login Script are not an option. Utilities like PSEXEC from Microsoft SysInternals let you execute programs on remote systems. PsExec’s most powerful uses include launching interactive command-prompts on remote systems and launching installers or other utilities such as IPConfig that otherwise can’t run remotely. Note: some anti-virus scanners report that one or more of the tools are infected with a “remote admin” virus. None of the PsTools contain viruses, but they have been used by viruses, which is why they trigger virus notifications. These tools are generally considered dangerous, but are very useful if needed. Here’s an example How-to for the agent:

1. Download PsExec (http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/PsTools.zip)
2. Create a text file containing the hostnames you need to execute against with each PC listed on it’s own line. I’ll refer to it as hostsfilename.txt below.
3. Copy both to c:\pstools
4. Make sure the local Administrator account is enabled. In Windows 7 the default is for this account to be disabled. You can use domain credentials if preferred to run the remote program, but you’ll need local administrator access to your own machine to launch PsExec.
5. From an administrative command prompt launch it with

c:\pstools\psexec.exe @hostsfilename.txt -i -s "\\fileserver\share\ampagent-5.3.44367-x86_kboxhostname.company.com.msi" -u administrativeusername

or, Alternatively, you could launch against all domain computers with

c:\pstools\psexec.exe \\* -i -s "\\fileserver\share\ampagent-5.3.44367-x86_kboxhostname.company.com.msi" -u administrativeusername

Other uses and command combinations are certainly available; See the vendor-provided documentation for PsExec or other remote execution tools that you might be using for more options of course.

Imaging is commonly used to ensure the agent is part of the mix from day one. While we discourage including the agent in the image we do provide an installer switch to allow you to more safely include the agent. We recommend installing the agent as a post-installation task after the OS is provisioned regardless of which systems deployment technology you are using. This is quite easily done using the K2000 Systems Deployment Appliance by adding a Post-Installation task of the Type “K1000 Agent”; simply follow the steps on the screen to upload your latest agent to the K2000 and give the proper command line.

In the case where you’d like to install before sysprep and capturing your image you’d want to use the following command to do the install:

msiexec /qn /i ampagent-5.3.xxxxx-x86.msi HOST=kboxhostname.company.com.msi CLONEPREP=1

or

msiexec /qn /i ampagent-5.3.xxxxx-x86_kboxhostname.company.com.msi CLONEPREP=1

Check the K1000 Administrative Gude and the Kace Knowledge Base for more articles and documentation on K1000 Client deployment. Happy Provisioning!

You may ask, “why would I need SSL on my K1000?”   In most cases with the K1000 Appliance customers are seeking to provide support to end-users outside of the primary network.  Allowing users to utilize the Help Desk and submit tickets through the “User Portal” or be able to manage machines that do not connect to your Network via VPN can be a huge benefit to both end users as well as IT staff.

The primary reason why SSL is used is to keep sensitive information that is sent across the public networks (such as the Internet) encrypted and private so that only the intended recipient can understand it. This is important because the information you send on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the destination server. Any computer in between you and the server can potentially see sensitive information such as usernames and passwords if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate.

The first step is requesting a Digital Certificate from a Certificate Authority (CA).  A certificate authority is an entity which issues digital certificates to organization’s or people after validating them.  Certificate Authorities have to keep detailed records of what has been issued and the information used to issue it.  Some of the many top qualified CA’s are VeriSign , Thawte, Comodo, and GeoTrust .  Different Certificates can have different costs and there are  multiple types of Certificates.   You can see examples in the links above.

Before setting SSL please note the following recommendations:

• Backup your database files and copy them off of the K1000 appliance.
• We highly recommend that you keep port 80 enabled and that you enable SSH on the security settings. In the event something goes awry support will need these options enabled in order to assist; if they are not enabled you might have to reimage your appliance as it will not be accessable.
• Your webserver name must be the FQDN of your certificate. See this article on setting your webserver name (http://www.kace.com/support/resources/kb/article/Setting-your-KACE-K1000-appliance-Web-Server-Name-Server-Configuration)
• When you enable 443 all of your K1000 Agents are going to switch to using SSL. Therefore, we recommend you plan to implement your certificate after hours so you can disconnect your K1000 appliance from the main network and test before you put it back on the network.
• If you are using a self-signed certificate for testing or a secondary vendor for your certificate then please note that your clients will have to have the certificate installed. So you will need to install the certificate on those PCs. This is usually done by group policy see here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770315.aspx). SSL settings should only be adjusted after you have properly deployed the K1000 agents on your Network in non-SSL mode.
• We remind you that you may contact support@kace.com to discuss your implementation plan before you proceed to make sure everything can go smoothly.

Steps:

1. Make sure that you are using your fully qualified domain name and it is properly setup in the Network settings.  (See link above for instructions).
2. Next go to K1000 settings > Security Settings make sure SSH is enabled and Port 80 access is enabled.  Open the SSL Wizard and fill out the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) for the Certificate Authority (CA) to verify your company information. Fill them out according to legal documentation for the Country/State/City you reside in. Set CSR Options.
3. Once the CSR Options have been selected you will see the CSR which you will need to submit to your CA. This information includes enough information about the K1000 and company for the vendor to generate something that matches your signing request and private key.  How this submission is done varies between CA’s.  Typically: Paste your request into a text editor and save as a .csr under file format of UNIX.  Upload file to whatever web form is required from your CA on their Website.  Generally you will get your certificate within 1-2 business days.   If they ask for OS you want Apache X509.
4. Below the signing request is the private key that this web server will use, it’s the private key so don’t give it to anyone! It is included in case you want to deploy the certificate to another web server and for information only.
5. Now that you have created a private key and a CSR you have two options.  By far the most recommended option is for you to send your CSR to a reputable certificate supplier.  The other option is to create a Self Signed Certificate.  Just a reminder, this is a certificate that will not be accepted by any of the K1000 Agents until the certificate is added into the trusted certificate database on every machine with an agent on it.  Refer to the group policy link above for instructions on that deployment.
6. The last step is to upload your certificate.  That is done under K1000 Settings > Security Tab. Enable SSL and you can Browse and Attach your private key and certificate.

The good news: You can make these adjustments without having to Sysprep and recapture! The registry is technically ‘just’ a file that gets loaded during the startup of Windows. Therefore, you can modify the registry contained in the image by downloading the hive file, manipulating it on another computer’s registry editor, and then replacing it within the image on the K2000 appliance.

Let’s take a look at the overall process:

First, we’ll need to get the registry hive from your image.

1. Go to Deployments > System Images and open your image.
2. Click on Browse Files, the file system of the image appears in a new window.
3. Navigate to the directory that contains the registry hive, for example C:\Windows\System32\Config.
4. There are four hive files: SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM. Click the name of the hive you want to modify and Save the file to your local system. The file tends to be around 22-30 MB.

TIP: Sometimes when you click System32, the K2000 script that loads the file listing takes too long and times out. System32 is a large directory, this timeout is not uncommon. Because you only need to access the config directory, you do not need to continue to run the script if prompted.

Now that you have the registry file on your computer, you’ll need to load it within your local machine’s registry, make the changes you want, and export it. Here’s the general steps for that:

1. Open your computer’s registry editor.
2. In the File menu, click Load Hive, and locate file you downloaded.
3. You’re prompted for a key name. The registry from your image will be loaded under the name you enter. You might name it something like “TEMP-SYSTEMIMAGE-ImageName”.
4. Make your changes to the registry that loads under this key.
5. When you’re finished, right-click on the name of the key where the registry was loaded (TEMP-SYSTEMIMAGE-ImageName) and select Export.
6. Change the Save as type to Registry Hive Files, enter a name (it does not have to match the downloaded file because the K2000 will use the same name when you replace it in the image), and click Save.

Now it’s time to inject that file back into the K2000 System Image:

1. From the K2000 image, choose Browse Files.
2. Locate the registry file you modified, hover over the file name and click the icon with the green arrows.
3. The replace dialog opens, click Browse, select the modified hive file that you saved on your local machine, and then click Submit.

You’re not quite finished yet! After making a change in Browse Files window you MUST Commit the change.

1. Close Browse Files and click the Commit button.
2. Do not leave the page or scroll down and click Save; either of these actions will revert the change.

So what can you do to easily step up the security on your systems, particularly those that travel with important company information on them?  If you are already a KACE Kustomer, you can provide encryption protection with Dell Data Protection|Encryption (DDPE) using your KACE console.  Dell KACE and DDPE now work together to complement and reinforce systems management best practices and strong data protection.  The solutions work side-by-side to more easily enable you to manage the configuration of systems and applications, and protect the data on those systems.  Equally importantly they reduce the work of both enforcing policies and proving compliance by simplifying the deployment, configuration and auditing of systems and their security.  This allows you to save significant time over doing manual processes, and helps to ensure policies are enforced and the organization is in compliance.  Using a single set of tools, you can easily provide and demonstrate encryption across an organization, helping to ensure that devices are protected and the organization is compliant.

If you are not yet familar with DDPE, it delivers endpoint encryption to organizations with Dell and non-Dell notebooks, desktops, workstations and external media devices that enforces policies and provides auditing capabilities.

Are you interested in learning how you can provide this extra security for your organization?  Please make plans to attend a live webinar event on May 24 at 10am, PT entitled:  New levels of security: The power to do more with Encrytion.  To register, click here.

For those of you who may not know about Deep Freeze, it provides the ultimate workstation protection by creating a “frozen” snapshot of a workstation’s configuration and settings. Deep Freeze is invaluable in institutions where both employees and students need full access to their workstations/laptops and need to have the confidence that their computers are up and running at all times.

Dell KACE customers who are looking to strengthen PC security and reduce technical support costs can use Faronics Deep Freeze to ensure that you will never again have to repair a computer damaged by a user’s accidental or malicious activity by including Deep Freeze as part of the Dell KACE K2000 imaging process. Any changes that a user makes to a protected machine will be eliminated upon reboot. The result is a computer that remains in the same perfect working condition it was setup in — days, months, and even years later! Another option is to use the K1000 to automatically “thaw” Deep Freeze computers and securely make changes REMOTELY from a central console such as updating software and performing critical patches and then have them now restart to the new “frozen” baseline.

This integration between the two companies provides enhanced security and lets you automate some of the time-consuming tasks that are necessary to keep systems safe.

If you would like to see a live demonstration, there is a webinar on May 3rd, 2012 at 10:00am PT. To register, go here. If you can’t make the live webinar, it will be recorded and available in our resources center on our website.

There are hundreds of applications with multiple versions each that the IT administrator has to keep track of and add to that the dozens of different platforms and OS versions that these applications need to be installed on – the permutations runs into obscenely large numbers. The proliferation of applications, releases, operating systems and patches and user roles can quickly become unmanageably complex! Thankfully there is application virtualization technology that can whip the bull and tame it.

Dell KACE now supports Microsoft App-V technology that enables IT organizations to transform traditional applications into a service oriented demand based virtualized infrastructure. Together KACE and App-V help IT organizations cut complexity and improve efficiency through application isolation, accelerated deployment, increased visibility, better control and improved end user productivity. With App-V support IT administrators can do App-V sequencing which is converting a traditional application into a virtualized application, as well as package, distribute and manage virtual applications.

Join us for a round-table of experts from KACE, Microsoft and the Big Hat Group for a 1 hour live informational webinar on May 10th at 10am PT to learn application virtualization best practices with KACE and App-V.

Power management is a concern for many of our customers who are tasked with not only managing their systems but finding ways to reduce the organization’s carbon footprint. Cutting power consumption of PCs is one of the most obvious and common ways of becoming greener.  Power management provides direct savings in utility expenditures that by itself justifies the effort. For example, Bennie Driskell, supervisor of technology and support for Antioch Unified School District says, “We reminded people to shut down computers when not in use. However, even after the end of the school year when teachers and students had been gone for a month, technicians would find countless computers and printers powered on in classrooms and computer labs – a waste of energy and money to the District.” The school chose Dell KACE Appliances to assist in their green IT initiative and received more than $60,000 in rebates!

Regardless of the reason for wanting to manage your power consumption, the Dell KACE K1000 Management Appliance Power Management features provide an easy to use interface for developing a power control profile for an entire population of client systems, or unique profiles for specific groups of clients, whether they are Windows or Mac. Once created, the power profiles are deployed and enforced using the K1000′s powerful configuration management capabilities. A potentially complex and time-consuming process, power policy implementation and enforcement using the K1000 is both easy and fast.

Dell KACE is also approved for energy rebates in all 50 states and Canada – saving you even more money! Learn more about how the Dell KACE K1000 Management Appliance can work for you: http://www.kace.com/products/systems-management-appliance/features/power-management

Visit www.earthday.org for history, donations or to make a pledge to take action.

Happy Earth Day!

Join Dell KACE and VMware experts for a live web event, Thursday, April 19 at 10 a.m. PT, 12 p.m. CT.

• Get an in-depth look at setting up a virtual environment from VMware
• Determine what tools will best complement your virtual infrastructure
• Hear from a customer who virtualized 90% of their IT environment and how they did it.

Register for the Event

Make sure that your virtual infrastructure plan doesn’t go off track with poor setup or tools that don’t function as needed. Join us on Thursday, April 19 at 10 a.m. PT, 12 p.m. CT, to learn more.

]]> http://blog.kace.com/2012/04/17/setting-up-a-virtual-environment-the-right-way-the-right-tools-a-live-web-event/feed/ 0 http://blog.kace.com/2012/04/12/securing-your-network-via-the-k1000/ http://blog.kace.com/2012/04/12/securing-your-network-via-the-k1000/#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:20:09 +0000 Christopher Blake http://blog.kace.com/?p=889 Continue reading →]]> Did you know that with your K1000 Management Appliance you have the ability to discover security and ensure the health of your Network?  The K1000 combines the use of OVAL (Open Vulnerability Assessment Language) and SCAP Scanning (Security Content Automation Protocol).  These tools combined with K1000 Patching can ensure your Network is safe from many thousands of vulnerabilities.

To export the Managed Installation, log in to the K1000 Management Appliance administration portal. Next, click Settings > Resources > Export K1000 Resources. Select the Managed Installation(s) that you want to add to the K2000 as Post Installation Tasks, and then click Export to Samba from the Actions menu. The K1000 creates a K-package file in the \\k1000host\clientdrop share. Note that by default, the client drop share does not have a password, but you can set one on the Control Panel > Security Settings page.

The package is ready to import to your K2000. On your K2000 Deployment Appliance, click Settings & Maintenance > Package Management > Import K2000 Packages. In Choose Action, click Upload Package for Import. Click Browse, enter the path to the K1000 client drop (\\k1000host\clientdrop) share, select the Managed Installation K-package, and then click Import Package.

Uploads from a browser is limited to around 1.5 GB. To import larger packages, copy the k-package from the client drop share to the K2000 restore share at \\k2000host\restore. You can also use this method to import several files at once.

The Managed Installation automatically displays in the Import List based on what is in the restore share. Just select the package(s), and then click Import Selected.

Now go to your Library > Post Installation Tasks list and verify that the command line of the Post Installation task will work properly on the K2000. For some commands you may need to add the file name or slightly alter the command.

To create one of these simply click on the Reporting module then Email Alerts tab, then click choose action and add new Computer Notification. You will now be taken to the page where you can select the criteria you wish to use. To alert someone of machines with UnwantedSoftwareX simply click the first drop down and select Software Title and simply type in UnwantedSoftwareX or whatever software you wish to monitor. From here simply enter the title for this Email Alert and the email address of who needs to be the Recipient. This can be an individual, or an email distribution group on your mail server.

As you can imagine, there are many more possibilities for the Email Alerts than what I’ve mentioned here, dive in and see what will work for you!

On the online K1000 you will need to go into the Patch Settings page and set the K1000 as on online source. Now when you click on ‘update patching’ or wait for your next patch download schedule it will create a new folder on your kbox share called patches. Wait for the update process to complete and then copy the Patches.tgz file off to a USB key or other location accessible from the “offline” K1000. You will need to ensure that both appliances have the same subscription settings, the samba share is enabled on both (the offline K1000 could be re-enabled/disabled for copy purposes), and consider setting a samba share password in the security settings before you start.

On the Offline KBOX, make sure you have set ‘Offline Target’. Once you click save it will also create a Patches folder on the KBOX share where you can copy the Patches.tgz file. Once copied simply click on ‘Update Patching’ and the patches and signature files will be loaded into the offline K1000 ready for labeling and detect and deploy schedules.

To add drivers for your machines, first gather the drivers for the computer. Unzip (extract) the drivers from their executable, and put them into corresponding folders such as Network, Storage, Audio, and so forth, on your local system or on a network location. A tool like 7-Zip works pretty well for this task.

From a computer of the target manufacturer and model, run the driver installation tool: \\ikbox\drivers_postinstall\feed_tools\Get_Manufacturer_Model_OS.vbs. You can do this from the KBE (Boot Environment) or by running the script by navigating to it from the host OS on the machine. This script provides the information you need to create a directory structure for the drivers.

After running the script create a folder in \\ikbox\drivers_postinstall named for the manufacturer you are working with, for example HP or Lenovo. Then create a subfolder for the OS type, for example, if the tool reports “Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise” you create the folder “windows_7_x86”. Finally create a folder for the computer model, for example “HP_Pro_E6XXX”. Your results will be something like \\ikbox\drivers_postinstall\HP\windows_7_x86\HP_Pro_E6XXX.

Simply transfer the drivers you created from your network share or local system to the folder you created for the model. The next time you target a system of the same type with a scripted installation, the plug and play drivers you provided are installed automatically.

What is the User State Migration Tool (USMT)?  USMT is a utility tool created by Microsoft to make it easier to migrate user files and settings during large deployments of new operating systems such as Windows 7.  USMT captures desktop and application settings as well user accounts and profiles and migrates them to the new Windows Installation. Dell KACE has leveraged this tool within the K2000.  There are two ways to capture “user states” using USMT within the K2000.

Offline Scan- Enables “Scan State” to run inside a WindowsPE operating system capturing profiles, application settings, Data and registry keys to be deployed using a post-install task in your scripted installations prior to formatting the source system.

Online Scan – Allows you to scan a PC prior to deploying the new operating system and put user profiles that have been captured, using a scan, on target computers by assigning the “Deploy User State Post Install Task” to your scripted install or System Image.

Need more in depth information? Check out all of the support articles. They include Power Point Presentations and Demonstrations. You may need your support credentials handy to access some of the articles.

A great example of this includes one of Dell KACE’s customers Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School (MICDS). The organization lacked a systems management solution to efficiently reimage and secure their growing number of student-assigned laptops and PC tablets. MICDS found comfort in the Dell KACE Appliances –now they can complete their annual reimaging of several hundred laptops much faster than their previous methods. Additionally, the IT team was able to streamline its service desk, asset inventory and other systems management tasks, ensuring technology remained a core delivery component of the school’s curriculum.

Are you interested in finding solutions for your complex environment? Dell KACE, along with Dell Latitude, is teaming up with Datamation Systems to share tips for managing computers and devices in a K-12 environment. Dell Latitude can help in the selection of the right mobile devices to encourage student success, while Datamation’s all-in-one mobile platform will organize, charge and secure those devices, while the Dell KACE Appliances can provide comprehensive systems management capabilities that save organizations money and give IT staff more time to focus on strategic initiatives.

Join experts for a live web event to learn how they work together to deliver a secure, productive and cost effective solution that is essential to students, educators and IT administrators alike.

Kace Kontinuing Education (KKE) is an ongoing free supplement to JumpStart training. We continue to offer new topics, and sometimes revisit popular koncepts, each week. Here are a few upcoming sessions.

A complete list along with registration information is available at our KKE page.

They can be your best friend when you set them up. They can handle software distribution, use them for patching, group software logically with them, use them to group your organization,

Great, so now that you know what some of the benefits and some of the uses of smart labels, but how do you actually set them up?

I could give you the technical run down, but I think you’d prefer to hear it from straight from a KACE Kustomer. Check out Matt’s example of how he set up Smart Labels.

With the ability to use HTML code on the User Portal main page, and Knowledge Base, we can add links to the Company Newsletter which could be a knowledgebase article; we might add notifications on the Portal that are related to known issues, such as an Exchange server outage. Putting this information on the User Portal lets users know that we are aware of an issue minimizing the likelihood of creating additional tickets for a known issue.

Some other ideas we’ve seen in use include:

• Video Log from the organization leadership
• New product training
• Company news
• Service level agreement
• News aggregators, and much more.

Be creative!

The abilities of the portal are limited only to your imagination, so brainstorm and experiment. Talk to your users and find out what’s useful to them. When we engage and inform users effectively, helpdesk calls decrease. Your Portal could be as valuable as an extra team member could be– letting the users self-service on some common needs can really free up some time for your team to focus on other projects and priorities, instead of telling someone how to change the toner in the printer…again…

The new ITNinja community still has the rich knowledge base that has made AppDeploy a top destination for IT admins looking to share information and advice about software deployment. It’s just that now we can expand the scope of the site to introduce a wealth of new features and enhancements to help you easily share and find information, including:

• Biweekly Releases and Updates Based on Community Feedback
• Customizable Activity Feed
• Earn point for your actions

If you’ve had a chance to go to the new site you’ll see that a lot has changed. Join me, Bob Kelly, founder of AppDeploy and now ITNinja, for a live walk through of the new site, this Thursday, March 22, 2012 at 10 am PT.

Learn why we switched to ITNinja, learn where to find all of their favorite AppDeploy content on the new site, and get a chance ask me questions all of your questions.

Register for the live tour of ITNinja

Looking forward to “seeing you” there,

Understanding that we’ve retained almost 90 percent of our employees, grown our workforce by almost 4x, and more than quadrupled our installed base of customers tells only part of the story. The real story is that in the last several years Dell has proven that it knows how to acquire and grow innovative software companies.

Importantly, that means that customers can expect Dell to deliver a steady stream of innovative, high value products from Dell; products that dramatically simplify their technology life and give them the power to do more than ever before. For long-time KACE customers, it means that we can spend more on R&D, more on global support and more on improving their KACE experience than ever before. Our commitment to client systems management, to cross-platform support and to easy-complete-affordable solutions has never been stronger.

This commitment to the success of our customers has resulted in tremendous progress for KACE in market recognition, product innovation, and most importantly, customer success.

To give you a snapshot of our recent milestones:

• Built a 6,000-strong customer base – that’s about 13 new customers per day!

• 71 percent of KACE users realize ROI in six months
• Recognized as a ‘Value Leader’ in EMA’s Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) Radar Report for both enterprise and SMB environments

On this second anniversary, KACE thanks you, our customers, and we thank Michael Dell and Steve Felice for including us in your vision for Dell and continuing to invest in our business at levels we’d have thought unimaginable just a few years ago.

Keep an eye out this year for many new and exciting ways that Dell KACE can save time for you and money for your organizations. And as always, we will welcome as many of you as can make it to our annual User Konference in San Francisco. Hope to see you there!

What does this mean to Dell customers and more specifically to KACE customers? Server crashes and mal-functions can incur millions of dollars in losses for organizations. Server monitoring lays the foundation for a healthy IT infrastructure which is essential for the long term success of an organization. Dell OpenManage Essentials offers server monitoring capabilities that now communicate with the Dell KACE System Management Appliance service desk to enable customers to leverage their existing Dell investments and enhance IT efficiency by providing integrated information on the status of Dell desktops, laptops and server systems.

Our most recent customer survey revealed that more than 50 percent of KACE customers are using the K1000 to manage servers and the integration of Dell OpenManage Essentials with the Dell KACE K1000 Systems Management Appliance is a boon to organizations with Dell servers because it provides a simple, cost-effective, and comprehensive approach that meets the needs of most enterprises. Dell OpenManage also delivers remote access management, BIOS and system chassis management, and active hardware system monitoring via SNMP or IPMI.

Dell offers a wide range of products and services across the end to end IT infrastructure such as desktops, laptops, servers, storage, systems management etc. KACE Appliances offer many capabilities that make systems management even simpler for customers with Dell systems. KACE Appliances support and integrate with many of Dell’s products at various levels to provide streamlined user experience across the IT stack. The integration of Dell OpenManage Essentials and KACE is a classic example of how beneficial synergies can be realized by combining two proven technologies.

To find out more about how KACE and OpenManage can ensure a healthy IT infrastructure, check out the recently published whitepaper titled, “Proactively Managing Servers with Dell KACE and Open Manage Essentials.”

IT departments in educational institutions are grossly understaffed and underfunded. “A recent national survey shows that school districts average about one technician for every 400 computers, compared to one technician for every 100 computers in the corporate environment,” says Doug Prouty of the Contra Costa County (Calif.) Office of Education.

Add high expectations from teachers, administrators and of course parents; short, seasonal purchasing cycles; licensing compliance requirements; increasing security risks and the endless pressure to do more with less, and it’s enough to drive any IT manager out the door.

Dell KACE offers industry leading system management solutions that are easy-to-use, comprehensive and affordable appliance that perfectly align with all of the systems management needs of educational organizations.

IT teams at K12 and higher ed schools under stringent budgets have been able to justify purchasing the KACE solution as it has been proven to provide immediate cost savings and pay for itself in a matter of months.* The other big benefit for IT people in education is time. The K Series appliances simply take over the many tedious and repetitive tasks that are required to support teachers, students and faculty. This includes managing PCs and software assets from deployment to retirement, protecting heavily utilized PCs in lab environments, providing crucial patching and software distribution, and streamlining Win 7 migration. The increases in efficiency mean IT can do a far better job of supporting everyone with a solution that is perfect for every school.

If you want to hear just how the Dell KACE appliances can change the way you work directly from some IT managers in education, please register to attend a live webinar event called: Systems Management in EDU: Extra Help without the Headcount on February 8^th.

According to a recent study by Ponemon Institute data breaches increased in the last two years but organizations that were PCI Compliant had significantly fewer breaches than those that were not. And yet only 12% of the organizations believed that PCI Compliance reduced data loss or theft. Clearly there is lack of awareness about how important and critical PCI Compliance is, which seems to be the biggest factor against the adoption of PCI Compliance standards.

This is where Dell KACE and Dell SecureWorks can help by offering initial evaluations, and products, solutions and consultation services to get companies started on the path to PCI Compliance. Dell SecureWorks offers managed and hosted services to help organizations plan and implement PCI compliance and also offer ongoing monitoring and assessments. Dell KACE provides critical tools to achieve and maintain PCI compliance. A comprehensive list of PCI compliant Dell partner products that deliver various capabilities across the IT stack are also available to customers. Together Dell KACE, Dell SecureWorks and Dell partner products provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution that enables organizations of all sizes to achieve and maintain PCI compliance.

Join experts from both companies to learn how we can make PCI compliance and customer data protection more obtainable and affordable

Last week Dell KACE was positioned as a ‘Visionary’ in Gartner’s Client Management Tools Magic Quadrant. KACE has consistently been placed in the visionary quadrant for the past three years and we’re thrilled to be recognized among other systems management vendors such as Microsoft SCCM, LANDesk and Altiris.

Analyst Terry Cosgrove praised KACE’s appliance-based solutions for its affordability and ease deployment along with our user interface that makes OS deployments intuitive. He also highlighted KACE’s rapidly-growing business as evidenced by our 5,000 plus strong customer base. His recognition of our fundamental design principles is noteworthy – KACE’s success has always been grounded in making the challenging simple, so that IT managers can spend less time on systems management and more time on strategic initiatives.

Gartner stresses that Microsoft Windows 7 is giving users an opportunity to re-evaluate their PC management systems and is one reason driving many organizations to switch products. Mobile Device Management (MDM) is the second major driver with between 50 and 75 percent of desktop groups receiving requests to support Apple iPads. Cosgrove also estimates that between 50 and 60 percent or organizations are going to support mobile devices in the desktop group.

We believe that Dell KACE is well positioned to extend our comprehensive, cost-effective appliance-based approach to managing desktops, laptops and servers to offer our customers the ability to respond to changing needs within their organization. As our roadmap rolls forward, and KACE provides new, innovative, and intuitive solutions to all the new challenges created by MDM and BYOD, we look forward to taking an even stronger position in the market and securing even greater industry recognition by Gartner and others.

It’s not easy being an IT Manager at a law firm. This one of the most heavily regulated industries around and now there is a frightening new trend that has the attention of the FBI—much to the alarm of many IT Managers who are losing even more sleep than usual.

The trend is real—sophisticated hackers are targeting law firms as an easy source of information about their client companies. If your law firm is in the midst of a major acquisition for a client, be aware of the possibility that international hackers could be targeting you.

The numbers are dismal—80 law firms in the U.S. were hacked last year. What’s behind this trend? Sophisticated hackers have found that law firms, for all their focus on creating and keeping client information super secure, have failed to implement some key security processes. The result—sophisticated hackers find their way in to access client information. The rewards for them are enormous—particularly when there is a big M&A deal in the works.

What’s an IT Manager to do? One option is to examine their current processes for systems management. Are ALL PCs protected? Do they have the latest patches? Can you get into “optimal PC lockdown mode” by allowing IT teams to assign flexible user privileges so that security and end-user productivity can be maintained? Can you easily identify target machines via network scanning and determine their hardware specifications and driver requirements? Would you like to confirm you are compliant with organizational security compliance requirements by using OVAL or custom configuration scans?

If the answers to these questions are haunting you through the night, you may want to attend a live demo of the Dell KACE Family of Systems Management Appliances and learn how IT managers around the world are keeping the hackers away.

Could you be more demonized? For a change, how would you like to be the ever-smiling and helpful angel instead of the ugly demon? Now you can! Bomgar and Dell KACE together enable support organizations to enrich the user-experience and improve customer satisfaction through a comprehensive and easy to use service desk solution with integrated remote collaboration capabilities that offers superior quality of service and faster resolution times. The service desk is the face of IT and the Bomgar integration with KACE helps save it!

The integration of Bomgar with KACE allows end users to start chat and remote support sessions with the support organization and have their request be automatically transferred to the least-busy technician. Support staff can associate sessions to the Dell KACE K1000 Management Appliance help desk ticket, and invite end-users for remote support sessions from within the ticket. The K1000 ticket is automatically updated with the session content allowing support staff to pass tickets around with full historic information thereby saving time on having to gather the previous actions on a ticket. These remote collaboration and tracking capabilities deliver superior Service Desk user experience that leads to high customer satisfaction for support organizations through better service quality, improved first call resolution rates and faster resolution times.

If you are an IT organization looking to enrich the user-experience and improve customer satisfaction register for a free live one hour webinar to learn how Dell KACE and Bomgar can help you.

Get an ITNinja T-shirt!

I’ve got them and want you to have them. I just can’t get away with mailing stuff to people for nothing so I’d like to send them to you as a reward for your participation in the beta; just score 176 Ninja points before the end of March and we’ll ship you a free shirt! This offer is exclusive to Beta invitees.

Start scoring points and be sure to fill in the T-shirt size and mailing address fields in your ITNinja profile so we can get them to you! For more on points and what various site activity is worth, visit: http://beta.itninja.com/faq/ninjapoints

Examples of things that will help you score points:

• Ask a question about any IT Topic.
• See a question you know something about? Rate existing answers or post your own!
• Post a blog about how to address a problem you recently solved.
• Post a blog sharing your opinion of some software product.
• Share link to your favorite (or your own) IT related blog.

And please, if you see something missing or something that doesn’t work quite like you’d expect, please let me know; you’ll see a feedback button floating on the right of every page so it is easy to find!

Currently Open to User Konference Attendees Only

At this time access to the beta remains exclusive to our User Konference attendees. If you attended but did not get the code written in a safe place, I’ll be sending that to you via email again shortly, so watch out for that!

Didn’t Attend but Wish to Participate?

Please come sign up to participate at http://www.itninja.com as I will be reaching out to an increasing number of those interested as we get closer to a public launch.

Bob Kelly

ITNinja Community Founder

So without further ado, here are my top five trends for 2012:

• Mobile Device Management Becomes a Reality

The management of mobile devices will become a standard practice within the enterprise as the number of corporate and employee-owned devices continues grow. Enterprises and educational institutions are now beginning to understand the nightmare of managing both corporate and personal mobile devices, as well as managing applications and network access. As classic device management penetrates the industry in greater discipline, a parallel effect of innovative new security measures will be applied to those same devices.

• The Rise of the Anti-cloud

With the prevalence of high performance computing, high bandwidth and proliferation of storage both in the sky and on-premise, a new computing mesh will form giving way to the anti-cloud in 2012, providing consumers, professionals, and even businesses a new (local) private cloud source of energy to harness.

• P2P Architectures Will Support Backup

The maturity of peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures along with sophisticated encryption will give users the means to securely store their data across P2P networks. Users will no longer be dependent on a single point of storage, which will provide end users with more choice; and an extremely elastic and complementary source of storage.

• Home Media Networks Converge

The growth of home media networks such as Internet TV and smart TVs will blur the distinction between television, desktop computing, and Internet media. The continued evolution of the home media network with content available across multiple devices will mean less differentiation between the TV and computer resulting in much broader and more consistent access to all forms of content.

• Big Data and Cloud Monitoring Collide

Big data and cloud monitoring will collide in 2012 creating new challenges for enterprise IT teams tasked with managing growing amounts of IT data housed on PCs, laptops and servers (switches, boxes, devices, etc.). Businesses will not only need to monitor and analyze data from a growing amount of physical devices and cloud services, they’ll also need to be able to monitor and make sense of a new mountain of information coming from the exponential growth of deployed virtual machines in all forms.

So what do you think, is this on par with what you’re seeing in the trenches? We’d love to hear your thoughts on these trends so leave a comment or drop us a line.

Learn more about how other educational organizations use KACE Appliances to save time and money by visiting www.kace.com/customers.

I work in Tech, I know that having my personal information online is a risk, but like most people, buying online is something that I still do.  I know that I’m  putting myself at risk, but being aware of this risk doesn’t really prepare you for the punch in the gut feeling you get once you receive that notice that your information has been breached.

But enough about my sob story, what does this mean for retailers like Zappos — a lot. Retail organizations like Zappos who experience a breach, now face the uphill battle of rebuilding customer confidence in their brand and website.  Zappos is relatively large retailer, and with the online retail giant Amazon.com as its parent company, one would think that they’d be a difficult site to hack into, but it just goes to prove that no one is safe, not even retail giants.

Looking at the way Zappos handled the leak of information shows that they had well thought out breach strategy in place. They stored user passwords and credit card data in separate databases, they were very timely in letting users know about the breach and what steps they needed to take. But, all of this is like having a cleanup crew on standby, how do retailers prevent the mess to begin with?

The most fundamental of security for retailers to follow are PCI regulations; unfortunately most retail organizations don’t. In fact, a whopping 67% of retail organizations that require PCI compliance aren’t in full compliance. But even if a company followed the PCI requirements, they are the bare minimum of security measures that can be easily hacked and reversed engineered. Retailers need to more than the bare minimum.

Retailers also need to stop seeing traditional defenses such as antiviruses and firewalls as effective as they once were. They need to consider new approaches and technology to help with security. New technologies that are considered more effective include: vulnerability assessments, effective and timely patch management, secure browsing, and security management platforms.

Retailers need to get their security solutions together, and stop trying to piecemeal tools and comply with the bare minimum of requirements because they just don’t cut it. Get a plan together for a solid security strategy; pick up a few tips and tricks for building your PCI security strategy.

If you are like me you buy most of your stuff online and use credit cards. If you are like my mom, you buy all your stuff at stores and use cash.  Clearly the face of Retail is changing and retailers need to adjust to changing modes of shopping all the while reducing costs to meet stiff competition and comply with increasing regulation that is focusing on security.  Retailers have to contend with security as it applies to customer data (privacy) and credit cards records (PCI regulations) as mandated by regulatory agencies.  The reason for this is that hackers are getting more sophisticated at compromising payment systems.  Case in point – my local grocery store’s self-service check out card readers were tampered with resulting in losses for the store, the credit card companies, the local banks (who had to reissue 1000 atm cards) and inconvenience and loss of trust of the local community.

KACE has a number of solutions that can help retailers save money, reduce costs and comply with new industry payment rules.

Combat increasing costs – the KACE Appliances help IT managers reduced overhead with web-based solutions that don’t require staff or infrastructure investments in each store.  From a central location you can update / patch / manager all your terminals saving the time and cost of travel.

Simplify store management – The KACE solution is fully integrated so that you can get a complete hardware and software inventory on all your terminals automatically.  From inventory to service desk the KACE appliance is a complete solution for staff-strapped retailers.

Increase security and compliance – retailers need a strong security solution that protects both the business and cardholder information along with reporting to achieve compliance.  KACE Appliances help accelerate compliance with PCI standards (and don’t forget to use Dell Secureworks as your QSA).

Stop by the Dell booth at the NRF show next week in New York (Jacob Javits Center, Jan 15 – 19) and talk to KACE.  If you can’t wait or won’t chance the snow in New York, read our KACE solutions for retail.

You can also read about KACE and PCI solutions in the latest edition of Dell Power Solutions Magazine.

The problem with most organizations isn’t that most organizations don’t have a service desk tool in place, but that they’re wasting time in dealing with inefficiencies resulting from using multiple point solution systems that are not integrated as a service desk portal.

So how does an organization tighten up its IT face? Why, with the right tools of course.

Dell KACE integrates with Dell OpenManage to provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution for managing Dell servers. Dell KACE Appliances offer many advantages for users of Dell systems. Dell offers a wide range of products and services across the end to end IT infrastructure such as desktops, laptops, servers, storage, systems management etc. What many may not know is that KACE Appliances support and integrate with many of Dell’s products at various levels to provide seamlessly integrated solutions across the IT stack. The integration with Dell OpenManage, a set of freely available tools that help manage servers purchased from Dell, is a classic example of how beneficial synergies can be realized by combining two proven technologies.

An increasing number of KACE customers are using the K1000 to manage servers and the integration of Dell KACE K1000 Systems Management Appliance with OpenManage is a boon to organizations with Dell servers because it provides a simple, cost-effective, and comprehensive approach that meets the needs of most enterprises. Dell OpenManage delivers remote access management, BIOS and system chassis management, and active hardware system monitoring via SNMP or IPMI. Read the recently published white paper that discusses the integration of KACE with OpenManage.

Are you charged with managing all your IT systems with limited staff and resources? Do you want a solution that will put you in control, one that is comprehensive, easy-to-use and affordable? Well, come on down and join us for an event to see firsthand how Dell KACE Systems Management Appliances will help you save time, money and headaches. While you’re there, you’ll also have the opportunity to network with system administrators in your area. The event is on us – the time you’ll save on IT chores will be yours!

Here’s the scoop:
We are hitting up several major cities across the U.S. this month. If you’re nearby, join us for a free meal/activity. You deserve it!

What you need to do:

• You must  be a System Admin, IT Admin or be part of IT
• You must register with your company email address.
• Bring a business card with your name, company and title

Make sure to tell you System Admin friends and invite them along too!

Lunch and Learns

Visit us in a city near you! Space will book fast so be sure to register early!

Register Now!

Disclaimer: The value of these events may be more than $20. If you are a government employee attending this event, please be aware that Dell cannot provide guidance to you on the rules that may govern your acceptance of this event without payment by you. If you wish to pay for the value of your meal, please make a check payable to Dell KACE.

How would you like to be able to fix your blue-screened PC that is located several thousand miles away through a few clicks from your KACE Management Appliance? No surprise, we saw overwhelming enthusiasm from our customers when we asked them this question during our recent KACE Konference in San Francisco. Well good news! The KACE Appliances now integrate with Intel® vPro™ technology to help manage and secure clients allowing system administrators to fix remote clients with hardware and startup issues without requiring a desk visit.

Specifically, the KACE K1000 Management Appliance uses software techniques to manage and configure remote clients which require a software management agent to be running on them. If the remote agent cannot be started for some reason then the communication channel to the remote system is lost. This can be caused by multiple conditions like system being switched off, system failing to load network driver etc. In this scenario it is necessary for an IT professional to physically be present in order to rectify the issue.

With the latest version of the Intel vPro technology, the KACE Appliances allow the IT administrator to take full hardware control of the remote client and recover it thereby enabling them to address hardware issues without having to fly out an engineer or have the system shipped in. This helps organizations to save on shipping and travel costs, optimize IT labor costs and resolve issues much faster than ever before.

Interestingly, in an informal survey at Konference we asked customers about their interest in the vPro technology. Several customers mentioned that they are either already using it outside of the KACE Appliance or are very interested in using it. Additionally, many customers were already dabbling with the technology and had a good understanding of the benefits of the technology. They found the announcement very timely and rated the integration very high in terms of capabilities that they liked to see in the KACE Appliance. The verdict was loud and clear! Kustomers loved it, they wanted it and they wanted it NOW!

Want to learn more? Join us for a one-hour live webinar on December 1, 2011 to learn how you can tap into the benefits of integrating Dell KACE appliances with vPro technology. Also check out our technical whitepaper or YouTube video on how KACE integrates with vPro technology.

Dell KACE’s 2011 User Konference is in the can and boy was it a doozy! This was our largest user conference to date and the enthusiasm and excitement was felt throughout The Palace Hotel.

Check out some of these stats:

• 351 attendees
• Two sold out Boot Kamps
• Enthusiastically-received keynotes from Dell KACE executives Marty Kacin, Rob Meinhardt as well as product previews from Lubos Parobek and team
• Hundreds of Facebook posts and tweets
• Nearly 20 video testimonials from customers
• One fabulous party at AT&T Park

We want to thank everyone who made this year’s event a success including our sponsors Intel, SolarWinds, Bomgar, Lumension, Datamation, APC, BlueCoat, Emerson and Dell.

And of course the biggest thanks goes out to all of our customers who made the trek out to San Francisco. It’s truly one of the highlights of our year to be able to spend time talking with you and learning how your organization is using Dell KACE!

To see live stream feeds of select presentations and closing ceremonies check out our UStream feed.

To view any of the 2011 KACE Konference presentations check out the replays at Check out the replays at www.kacekonference.com/slides.

You can also re-live all of the action on our Facebook page or on Twitter @DellKACE.

Over the next several days attendees will have the opportunity to: 

• Participate in KACE’s popular Boot Kamp training – in fact so many have signed up that we’ve added an additional Boot Kamp session after the show!
• Attend technical sessions, hands-on labs and presentations on a variety of topics surrounding the KACE Family of Appliances
• Talk with KACE experts at the Genius Bar
• Network with their peers

This is really an exciting time not only for attendees, but for KACE as well as it give us a chance interact with our customers and hopefully inspire them with new ideas on how KACE solutions can be put to work to make managing their organization’s IT environment even easier.

For those who can’t attend Konference, don’t worry! We’ll be keeping you up to date on all the highlights though the KACE blog, as well as our Facebook page and on Twitter. Follow us on @DellKACE and track Konference conversations using hashtag #kace11.

Stay tuned for more updates from KACE Konference 2011!

Software deployment and management is a huge PITA.  The problem is, it’s not something you can put on the back burner, especially considering the fact that software vendors are getting  serious about software licence audits and fees; there are rewards for information about software piracy, license breech fees are on the rise, and companies are increasingly facing multiple audits. Software deployment isn’t just about deploying, but managing the actual software as well.

As you can see in the landscape graphic to the right, EMA’s evaluation of KACE placed us above and beyond our competitors. This recognition demonstrates our continued commitment to providing easy-to-use, comprehensive and affordable systems management technology, and reinforces the value that KACE’s proven technology brings to its customers around the globe.

 To view the full EMA Radar Report™ for Client Lifecycle Management, please click here.

Yup, that’s right, you’ve got to migrate all those endpoints to Windows 7 and you’ve got to do it fast. Nope, there’s no way around it (that is, unless you’re Scrooge McDuck swimming in your vault of gold coins and can pay the hefty price tag for extended XP support). But here’s the good news, there are some tips and tricks  that can make your Windows 7 migration easier. And, if you’re still not convinced that you can’t skip it, keep reading…..

About a year ago KACE started hiring a UI team, who embody the skills of designers, technologists, and artists to focus on making a good user experience even better.

Their work on the M-Series user interface showcases how KACE doesn’t sacrifice when it comes to functionality or aesthetic appeal. Based on that successful design, they have been working on a refresh for the K-Series.

The design goals for the K-series user interface refresh include:

• A contemporary look and feel – more readable fonts, icons and widgets
• A streamlined interface – customizable fields, cleaner navigation and menu
• New palette and a bolder look that makes it easier to find the things you want

As the K-series products have evolved and more and more features were added, there was a need to repeat actions on different pages.  One of the problems was that although the action may be the same, it was in a different place on the page, it looked different and the language for the action may have been different. It’s these kinds of things that, overtime, build up and clutter the display making it progressively more confusing to use.  As an existing user, you can understand these actions and incorporate them easily into your work flow, as a new user it can be just down right confusing.  So the design team has worked to make similar actions on different pages consistent in look & feel.

The intent is NOT to radically change the fields on each page, but to make each page simpler to Navigate.  In early 2012 we plan to start testing the new interface with our existing customer/ users, and will look towards rolling out the final product mid-2012.

One of the great things about the KACE appliance is that it is Web based. So, you might ask, does this mean that the UI folks are designing the interface so I can easily use it on my mobile phone or tablet?   The answer is…yes.  You can access your KACE appliance from any Web enabled device, and based on your feedback, we now have plans are to incorporate browser detection to enable dynamic rendering for the appropriate screen size.

Mid-sized organizations have traditionally been an underserved market with a unique set of pain points when it comes to managing its systems. Most industry offerings fall under two categories: low cost limited functionality ones that serve small businesses, and higher cost advanced functionality ones that serve enterprises. Medium sized organizations face the challenge of having to manage scale and to expand with limited budgets. They need enterprise level capabilities at affordable prices and this has largely been unaddressed. Not anymore.

Dell KACE’s K Series Advanced appliances offer enterprise capabilities at “pay-as-you-grow” affordable pricing. The new appliance addresses a key pain point of organizations in the mid-market segment – the frequent need to upgrade IT infrastructure to match their growing scale. Time and budget constraints often keep them from upgrading since most IT system upgrades require rip and replace of older systems. This severely limits their ability to grow and introduces inefficiencies that result from using obsolete IT systems. With the new appliance growing organizations can realize more powerful system management capabilities in terms of the ability to image more systems, inventory more frequently, higher volumes of patching and software distribution and more reliability in general — all at affordable node-based pricing. They enable rapidly expanding businesses to accelerate along their growth path without having to constantly upgrade or to compromise on their systems management quality of service.

With the launch of the new line of appliances KACE now offers 3 lines of appliances within the K-Series — the K1100/K2100 for organizations with up to 1000 end points, the K1100-ADV/K2100-ADV for medium sized businesses with 1000 to 3500 endpoints and the K1200/K2200 to manage up to 20,000 clients. The K1100/K2100 and K1100-ADV/K2100-ADV lines are priced per node and the K1200/K2100 line is priced per appliance.

Join us for a 1 hour webinar on System Management Basics for Organizations of All Sizes on September 29th at 10am P.S.T and learn how you can address your system management needs.

Here’s the scoop:

We are hitting up several major cities across the U.S. this month. If you’re nearby, join us for a free lunch. You deserve it!

What you need to do:

• You must  be a System Admin, IT Admin or be part of IT
• You must register with your company email address.
• Bring a business card with your name, company and title

Make sure to tell you System Admin friends and invite them along too!

Lunch and Learns

Visit us in a city near you! Space will book fast so be sure to register early!

Register Now!

Hit a Home Run with Us!

It’s hard work managing all of the technologies in your organization and putting out fires each day when your time is limited. With the Dell KACE Systems Management Appliance you hit a home run by freeing up your time and saving money for your company. To celebrate that, we are inviting you to a baseball game in your local area.

Here’s the scoop:

We are hitting up several major cities across the U.S. this month. If you’re nearby, join us for an exclusive box seats to a game in your local area – Yes, Beer, hot dogs, and popcorn are included.

What you need to do:

• You must  be a System Admin, IT Admin or be part of IT
• You must register with your company/business email address.
• Bring a business card with your name, company and title

Make sure to tell you System Admin friends and invite them along too!

Here’s what Games we’ll at and when:

Space will book fast so be sure to register early!

Government agencies are in the top 3 most attacked segments for data breach attacks constituting around 17% of all data breaches in the first half of 2010*. In 2010 an average of 1.8 billion attacks per month were targeted at the Congress and other government agencies**. Attacks had risen exponentially from a mere 8 million a month, back in 2008 and the seriousness of the threat lies not merely with the numbers but also with the increasing sophistication of these attacks. A major chunk of the attacks target Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, which may not have the latest security patches.

One of the many measures put in place to protect federal agencies from security attacks is the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) specification that standardizes security configuration for desktop computers. U.S government agencies are required to be FDCC compliant and an FDCC Scanner helps them achieve it.

FDCC compliance reduces the risk of security breaches by closing known gaps that are used by hackers to get access to a system. However it also places extra burden on the already over-worked IT administrators who have to manage the security configurations in addition to performing the day-to-day system management activities. The K1000 offers the perfect solution that saves time for system administrators by automating routine IT chores through an out of the box appliance that accomplishes complex and repetitive tasks with a few clicks while enabling them to implement FDCC Compliance.

The KACE solution allows users to schedule, run and report on desktop security configurations. The appliance also provides an intuitive interface that enables users to check how systems performed against the standard security checklists and cross link the systems with other features like asset management, inventory, patching and software distribution, to easily diagnose and remediate issues. Find out more about the K1000′s security audit and enforcement features.

*http://www2.idexpertscorp.com/press/39-breachs-in-1st-half-of-2010-experts-predict-more-attacks/
**http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/33987.html

The Consumerization of IT seemed at first to be a sort of fad or trend.  But the numbers of personal devices in the last couple of years have skyrocketed and everyone seems to agree this is one trend that won’t be going away or receding anytime soon.

We decided to ask our customers what they really think about this phenomenon.  741 customers and site visitors graciously completed the survey, sharing their opinions about many aspects of this onslaught of personal devices in the workplace and the related challenges of managing these devices.  These survey participants revealed their concerns, their estimates about the size of the problem and their plans—or lack of plans—to harness this growing challenge.

We think every IT manager would like to hear what their peers are doing—and what they think their employees are doing with their personal laptops, tablets and phones —attend our Webinar presentation, “The Consumerization of IT -IT Managers Talk Prevalence, Plans and Pitfalls“; Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10 am PT.

Register for the event

Moving up to the number three spot in Gartner requests means a lot of IT admins must feel like you’re up a Windows 7 creek without a paddle.  Grant it, it’s a daunting move, user state migration, OS deployment, image management, application testing, inventory assessment, forklift upgrades vs attrition; I bet a root canal without anesthesia is sounding a lot less painful right about now.

Not making the move to Windows 7 isn’t an option, and yes it’s painful, but there are several things IT admins can do to simplify and properly manage images that have a major impact on PC deployment. Creating hardware agnostic images and thin images that are updated at least once a quarter with patches, application updates and other configuration changes will ensure that deploying PCs stays simple over time; now, none is actually anything new, but the way to do them is.

Most organizations do not have a fully matured PC deployment model. Creating and maintaining thin, hardware independent images, and deploying PCs is still a very manual method for most organizations.  This is deployment method is not only time consuming but costly as well. According to IDC a Basic PC deployment model, with little automation, cost an organization $795 per PC.  As an organization automates the process, PC deployment cost and time to deploy drop dramatically.

But how do you fully automate PC deployment? Investing in the right tools will help any organization move from a manual PC deployment method to a fully automated method. Join us for a live webinar event to find out how to automate image creation, management and PC deployment this Thursday August 25^th at 10 a.m. PT.

Register for the live event

So, in order to make sure that you have been properly appreciated for all of your hard work, we are rolling out the red carpet and taking you to the movies on Systems Admin Appreciation Day to celebrate you and all that you do for us.

Here’s the scoop:

We’re hitting up several major cities across the U.S. on July 29^th. If you’re nearby, join us for an exclusive screening of Cowboys and Aliens, popcorn and snacks – on us!

What you need to do:

• You must  be a System Admin, IT Admin or be part of IT
• Make sure to Register on our Systems Admin Appreciation Movie page.
• Bring a business card with your name, company and title

Make sure to tell you System Admin friends and invite them along too!

Find out what cities we’re visiting and Register Today! Space will book fast so be sure to register early!

Register Now!

This is the one day Systems Admins are celebrated and we want to make ensure that these folks get priority in joining the celebration. Kindly refrain from registering if you do not hold one of the titles listed above.

The M300 was specifically engineered for IT administrators at smaller organizations, who are stuck managing hardware and software inventory using spreadsheets or other manual methods. With an intuitive dashboard and user interface, the Dell KACE M300 simplifies day-to-day operations and reporting. The M300 was engineered to be setup and deployed in minutes, and requires no formal training—it’s a true plug and play solution.

Sign up for the event, see the M300 in action, engage in a live Q&A session with our VP of engineering, and find out how to win one.

Event Details:

Date:

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Time:

10:00 am Pacific, 12:00 pm Central, 1:00 pm Eastern

Register Now

• Device discovery and inventory for easy real-time assessment of hardware and software on all devices network-wide.
• True compliance assessment permits IT administrators to manage multiple software titles with various licensing structures and reconcile software installations with license ownership.
• Patch inventory tracks installed security updates and Windows service packs on computers connected to the network.
• Dell warranty integration automatically retrieves warranty information for managed Dell computers and alerts administrators of pending expirations.
• Alerts and notifications of PC inventory and software license compliance issues and the automatic creation of a “to do” list for achieving compliance.
• Dashboards display network activity including recent changes and outstanding tasks.
• Plug and play deployment allows the appliance to immediately begin providing hardware and software inventories.
• Intuitive Web-based user interface accessible from the convenience of any desktop, laptop, or mobile device.

With the M300, even for a novice IT professional can be up and running in less than five minutes, and that’s just the beginning. An intuitive user interface allows IT administrators to streamline IT procedures with just a few points and clicks of a mouse. If you manage IT resources for a small business you can’t afford to miss taking a closer look at the M300. You’ll be amazed at how much time and money you save.

Join me for a live in depth web event and a closer look at the M300.

Register Now For the Event:
Thursday, Jul 21, 2011
10am PT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET

Watch the Dell KACE M300 Asset Management Appliance in action

KACE sponsored a recent study by Dimensional Research of hundreds of IT professionals on latest trends in service desk. The survey uncovered some surprising trends and truths surrounding what organizations really need and want today as they strive to provide effective IT service to their customers. Join systems management experts from Dell KACE and Dimensional Research for an eye-opening live webinar and learn about what really matters in a service desk tool! And hear this not from us but from IT professional like yourself who have shared their experiences through our survey!

The IT help desk or service desk is the primary contact point to IT and hence becomes the face of IT to its users. The effectiveness of the service desk largely defines the reputation of the IT department. Dell KACE Appliances offer an easy to use, comprehensive and affordable service desk tool that is fully integrated into the systems management solution. As the service desk becomes the “internal face” of IT in many organizations, register here to see how you can improve and simplify your own.

Because I’m not a thug and don’t feel like suckerin’ you out of your money, I’m going to share some of the patching deet’s:

• Most organizations today take at least twice as long to patch third-party application vulnerabilities than patching operating system vulnerabilities.
• Vulnerabilities in software commonly found on PCs shot up 71% between 2009 and 2010.
• Most vulnerabilities in software, were due to problems in third-party applications rather than in the Windows OS or Microsoft apps.
• 98% of Windows machines have at least one un-patched application.
• There are at least 2.7 billion un-patched applications running on machines within the U.S. alone.

So, are you still willing to make that bet?

Let’s face it, current methods of securing systems still lag behind a hacker’s ability to find vulnerabilities, and even though almost every organization has some sort of security method in place, there are still huge security breaches happening. Just take a look at the Sony PlayStation megabreach, Conde Nast’s $8 million dollar payout, the recent discovery of a DIY Crimeware tool kit that specifically targets Macs, and a new Fake AV called Mac Defender that specifically targets Mac OSX.

Most organizations still focus on patching their OS’s first, and rely on free tools to cobble together some type of patch management solution. The reality is these free patching tools just can’t cut it. They can’t effectively handle patching the multitude of third-party applications sitting on all of your endpoints. And need I remind you that most vulnerabilities are due to third-party apps?

The frontlines of security breaches are happening at the patch management level and the free tools out there suck at handling third-party patches, but worst of all, free patch management tools can end up costing you more. Face it, you need a better patch management solution.

Get your security solution together, stop trying to piecemeal your tools, because you know you don’t have the time, and they’re not working together as well as you’d like. Get a plan together for a solid security strategy; pick up a few of our tips and tricks for building your security strategy.

The payment card industry has come down hard on both retailers and other organizations that store or has access to credit and debit payment card information by imposing heavy penalties for PCI standard violations. The problem with PCI is enterprise retail corporations have a more stringent set of PCI compliance standards than a smaller local bakery chain, for instance. Though research has shown the smaller local shops have a higher chance of a security breach because the required security steps can be expensive and complicated to manage for a smaller business.

This is where Dell KACE comes in.

PCI compliance requires organization-wide processes to be put in place. Systems management support is a critical piece to the security puzzle — Dell KACE systems management appliances help companies quickly gain compliance by providing critical tools and capabilities, such as automated patching, software distribution (even remote) and industry-leading reporting. The appliances accelerate PCI compliance and offers better security for users.

But don’t just take it from me. Suarez Corporation Industries, a worldwide leader in direct marketing, has been keeping its POS systems safe and sound using the Dell KACE Management Appliance. The company’s IT Security lead, David Simmons, had this to say:

“I am happy to give credit where credit is due. PCI compliance is becoming a bigger issue to companies, and the Dell KACE Management Appliance has helped us meet many requirements, such as patching, change controls and adding or removing Active Directory users in a process-driven manner. Prior to using the appliance, we ran a very manual security check process. Our Service Desk was on sticky-notes and we manually installed software and updates. Now, those tasks are fully automated and fast—the Dell KACE Management Appliances offered the low-cost, capability-rich product we were looking for.”

KACE appliances are well known for saving IT administrator’s time, as well as their organizations money. Now you can add one more area and that’s helping companies achieve PCI compliance. To learn more about Dell KACE Management appliances and how they can help your organization stay secure, visit www.kace.com/products .

Many of our customers tell us that one of their biggest initiatives for this year is the deployment of Microsoft 2010.  This is a huge initiative and one that can be daunting for even the most sophisticated and savvy IT departments. If Microsoft 2010 deployment is in your “to do” list,  listen to our recorded webinar, that was delivered live on March 31st at 10am PT.

AppDeploy.com founder, author and application deployment expert Bob Kelly for a discussion on how to best streamline the challenging undertaking of deploying Office 2010. In this technical webinar, systems administrators will learn some needed fundamentals, including how to:

• Select the appropriate edition of Office 2010 for your deployment
• Address document compatibility and user training concerns with Office 2010 deployments
• Demystify licensing and activation considerations
• Customize Office 2010 for a tailored deployment
• Perform pilot testing and gauge options for managing the deployment

This educational event is designed to be beneficial to every IT professional who plans to deploy Office 2010, regardless of the desktop management system in use.

Download the recorded event.

• There was a split between the use of IT within the classroom to improve teaching and engagement on one hand, and the role of ICT and management on the other. It was not a straight divide between “front-office” IT and “back-office” management, but there was a recognition by just under half of those that entered that there is a requirement for better management in order for IT assets to be useful

• Online tools and collaboration software are a big trend for systems management in education and will play an even greater role in the classroom over the next year, as teachers can use these tools to expand pupils’ knowledge and ways to learn. One of the respondents called this “bringing the world into the classroom.”

• Another big trend in systems management in Education is students and teachers are all potentially interested in bringing in their own IT assets into the classroom. As more people get their own laptops or smart phones, they would like to use these devices in the classroom as part of their day-to-day learning and teaching.

This trend of individuals wanting to use their own laptops is referred to as the “consumerization” of IT in business circles – as everyone gets more familiar with computers and IT, they tend to want to use these devices more in their daily lives; this is not only a trend in systems management in business it is not becoming a trend in education. Instead of the school providing a device, pupils want to bring in their own laptop from home – this can be because it is their personal device that they are familiar with, and sometimes it can be because the laptop or other device is much newer than the one that the school owns and so performance is much better.

For IT professionals that support computer networks, looking at these trends can show them what they will need to consider in future. Managing ICT assets so that teachers can get the most out of them within the classroom is an ongoing concern, while new trends like IT consumerization and pupil-owned devices entering the network will make systems management in education an area where schools may have to invest in order to keep pace with the needs of the teachers and students.

These shifts in systems management for educational institutions increases pressure on IT administrators to  increase efficiency without sacrificing educational quality.The Dell KACE Family of Systems Management Appliances meet and overcome these challenges; multiple educational institutes from k-12 to higher education  leverage the Dell KACE Management Appliance to help them quickly, easily, and cost effectively manage their  IT environments. Find out more about Dell KACE Educational Customers.

Some may think that after one year the “honeymoon” phase would be slowly waning, getting a bit soft around the middle, and hitting a plateau; but, the reality is this marriage is the kind that changes history, transcends time and will forever alter systems management.

Not only has there has been a strong customer success and rapid growth in our first year following our acquisition by Dell, but there have been multiple new product releases all stemming from direct customer feedback through Dell KACE’s UserVoice. The rapid evolution of the Dell KACE System Management Appliances demonstrates how Dell KACE is devoted to investing in new product innovation and  technologies that directly help IT managers solve enterprise pain points while driving down overall IT costs.

Every day, Dell KACE adds more than five new customers worldwide, making us the industry’s fastest growing systems management provider. In the past year, Dell KACE has grown 147 percent and added more than 1,200 customers and 108 new certified channel partners. Dell KACE has also been recognized as a “Visionary” in Gartner’s 2010 PC Configuration Lifecycle Management Magic Quadrant¹.

Dell KACE users are not just happy with their systems they are ecstatic. Some of our favorite quotes, Tweets and Facebook posts from the past year are:

“If you were to take [Dell KACE] off me now it’d be like chopping off my left arm..” – Anthony Kennedy, ComputerWorld, Australia

“I’ll give you my Kbox when you pry it from my cold, dead hand!” – FaceBook wall post by Tom Himes

“It’s mine. Don’t touch it. Mine I say. BEST. PRODUCT. EVER.” –FaceBook wall post by Chris Blake

“Nothing like using the @DellKACE K1000 to make an install distro on the fly while on the phone troubleshooting and delivering it immediately” – Tweeted by @bbevard

“i hadn’t ventured into the security tabs until today, had no idea i had all this functionality to my disposal. Awesome”! @DellKACE – Tweeted by@_Blessing

“@DellKACE Almost every friend I have within the IT realm has purchased a K1, K2 or both in the last year after seeing ours “– Tweeted by @ zerinSSL

“Just provisioned typing software to 9600+ workstations while in a meeting from my iPhone. @KBOXbyKACE rocks.” – Tweeted by @andyctwit

The Dell KACE marriage s a powerful combination that has and continues to deliver a systems management and deployment solution that  fulfill the systems management needs for organizations of all sizes, from initial computer deployment to ongoing management and retirement.

Join us for a live web event, “Systems Management Back to Basics: The Good, the Bad and the Mandatory” on Wednesday, March 16 at 12:00 p.m. ET.  Register for the event.

If you own a Dell KACE appliance then you know, the sky parted, rays of sunshine came shining down upon your face, birds began to sing, and your little heart went pitter-patter as you quickly and easily unleashed the awe inspiring power of the KACE Appliance. For all of you IT admins who don’t own a KACE Appliance, you’re either a bit of a masochist, were very bad in your past life and have been reincarnated into a life of IT hell, or you haven’t been exposed to the glory of the KACE Appliance; in any case, I bet your IT job is a bit rough right now.

Well, what if we told you that we’ve one-upped the awesomeness of the KACE Appliance and have made it even easier? You’d probably tell us that it’s an IT urban legend. Well, get ready, because we’re myth busting.

Dell KACE now offers our appliance-based products with new remote configuration capabilities from Dell Services*, because let’s face it, sometimes you just don’t have the time and bandwidth to do it all yourself.

With Dell’s professional services for KACE, experts can now handle remote configuration tasks related to asset management, patch management, service desk and software distribution for you, resulting in faster service and also lower costs through the elimination of travel and time associated with on-site support.

In addition to system configuration, Dell’s new services help IT admins create custom reports. For example, you can work with Dell experts to create custom reports for the K2000 Appliance to accelerate planning for a Windows 7 migration. Or for the K1000 Appliance, Dell experts can create a custom report that shows the latest status of software updates and patch management tasks. And as always, the new Dell KACE services have been engineered to be monitored and viewed via smart phones. Find out more about Dell KACE professional services.

* Currently available for North American Customers only at this time.

The reality is you’ve got to protect your end users from themselves. It’s not that they’re dumb or intentionally downloading malicious applications (or at least the majority aren’t); they’re just not experts in security and don’t always do the right thing. They often assume that IT has enough security measures in place to prevent web threats.   

The hard part is it’s a bit of a Catch-22. In order to prevent network security breaches, IT admins often need to lockdown browsing activity; but, the minute IT begins locking down the Internet, they turn into Mommy Dearest. And then the griping begins. End users begin complaining about how they can’t get anything done, and then start ranting about how some recent study, from some obscure college, in the middle of nowhere, proved that being able to Google the latest gossip about Charlie Sheen actually boosts work productivity.

So how do you give end users the ability to freely roam the Internet and still protect their computers? Simple, use a Secure Browser tool. A Secure Browser tool is a great security tool that allows IT administrators to prevent malicious activity without impeding productivity. By providing a virtual instance of an Internet browser that is fully contained from the system, the Secure Browser stops malicious attacks by containing them within its virtual space that runs fully contained from areas normally written to during browser activity. A simple reset option is provided to undo any and all changes made during browser sessions.

Dell KACE has developed a Secure Browser tool for Firefox that runs in its own virtual space, and is available to download for free. The Secure Browser provides an isolated instance of Firefox to secure what has become a common entry point for malware and viruses—Internet browsing.

This FREE Secure Browser tool features:

• A virtualized and contained Firefox v3.6 Browser with Adobe Reader and Flash plug-ins
• The ability to rapidly reset any changes made during normal use back to their initial state, enabling easy recovery from infections or attacks
• Controls to set white and black lists to limit access to known good sites, or prevent access to known bad sites to limit the risk of attack and infection
• Controls to set white and black lists to limit which programs can be launched by the Secure Browser to further limit the risk of attack and infection
• A way for administrators to view statistics related to the number of processes detected and blocked
• the ability to preserve certain settings during the reset process, specifically to retain bookmark and home page changes

Watch the Secure Browser video demo and the new features video demo.

Download the Free Secure Browser tool

We are looking for superhuman coding ninjas to join our Bay Area team. Prove your coding ninjaness (I know, it’s not a real word but work with me here) by accepting our coding mission.  

Pass the challenge, young grasshopper, and you will then be told next steps in proving your superhuman ninja coding skills; only the best will be chosen.

ご幸運を祈ります。!

Large-scale security attacks are reaching across all industries and are leaving organizations of all sizes, including US government agencies, scrambling to counter them.

The responsibility of protecting networks rests squarely on the shoulders of IT administrators, but how can they protect their organizations’ networks when their end users are ripping movies off torrent sites, and searching for information about Prince William’s marriage, all while downloading the latest web app that will let them access all of their social networks in one place?

The best way to improve endpoint security is by taking a systematic layered approach: establish policies, enforce configurations, scan for vulnerabilities, remediate vulnerabilities, and then manage the whole process.

Traditional defenses such as antiviruses and firewalls are no longer as effective as they once were. Organizations need to consider new approaches to endpoint security. New technologies that are considered more effective include: vulnerability assessments, secure browsing and security management platforms.

The Dell KACE Systems Management Appliance has eased endpoint security by integrating several new security technologies for addressing vulnerabilities with integrated endpoint security support, including an updated Secure Browser for Firefox and SCAP scanning. Dell KACE is  one of the only vendors to offer easy-to-use, Secure Browser tools, integrated SCAP scanning for FDCC compliance, and pre-packaged compliance reports that deliver the most comprehensive, integrated, security solution to enterprises of all sizes.

New, extended support of Secure Browser technology for Firefox; will be available free on KACE.com on February 10. The updated Secure Browser for Firefox will have some additional improvements; users can optionally preserve settings such as bookmarks and favorites when resetting the Secure Browser. K1000 users will now also benefit from a feature that allows customization of the Secure Browser which easily allows administrators to install add-ins or implement other changes and then generate Windows Installer setup based on those changes. Previously, the Secure Browser included only Adobe Flash and Reader, but soon administrators may create their own corporate baselines for deployment within their organization.

Also available on February 10, the K1000 will include a Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) Scanner that enables companies of all sizes to audit their systems to ensure compliance with company security policies. SCAP is a configuration scanner developed by the National Institute of Standards (NIST) that automatically scans endpoint systems and produces a report that identifies configuration information that can be compared to a standard to determine if a system is in compliance.  This technology applies equally to enterprises and governments that want to bring consistency and added protection to their computing environments.

These new features allow organizations to easily take advantage of endpoint security best practices established by government organizations. Organizations requiring SCAP scanning and reporting capabilities for purposes of FDCC compliance are not longer required to install expensive, complicated software. They can now get the benefits of SCAP scanning as part of the easy-to-use K1000 Systems Management appliance at no additional charge.

If you would like to learn more about the new Secure Browser tool and SCAP features of the K1000, check out our recorded webinar.

Got questions? Ask in the comments section below, or by following us on Twitter and Facebook.

Are you a UK resident? Do you want to win a Dell Inspiron duo?                Then join the @DellEducation conversation! 

As part of our activities at BETT 2011, Europe’s largest technology fair in London, we’re holding a Twitter contest that is open to all UK residents following  @DellEducation. We’ll be giving away a Dell Inspiron duo to a randomly selected individual who tweets an answer to our technology in education question.

Here’s how it works:

• Follow the Dell Education Twitter conversation @DellEducation.
• Answer this question: What’s your systems management priority in Education for 2011?
• Answer the question using the following formats:
  • “#BETT2011 @DellEducation my #ITpriority is [Your Answer Here]“
  • Tweet mentions or direct messages to @DellEducation will be accepted as well.

All correct tweets to @DellEducation answering the question above posted between 8:00 a.m., January 12, 2011, and 5:00 p.m., January 21, 2011 will be entered into a drawing for a prize.  The winner will be contacted via Twitter on or before Tuesday, January 25, 2011 and we’ll add and update to our blog soon after.

@DellEducation is intended to be a source of two-way conversations between people using technology in Education and Dell Education news and activities that have a bearing on educators.

To enter the Dell Education twitter drawing you must be a legal resident of the United Kingdom and 18 years or older at the time of entry. We recommend you review the full terms of the drawing.

Photo Credit: London Bus, by E01, taken February 8, 2008.

Migrations are difficult, error-prone projects that require IT managers to update major portions of their users’ software without interrupting their work. Dell KACE is introducing new capabilities to its systems deployment appliance to simplify and accelerate Windows 7 migrations. The latest version of the Dell KACE K2000 Deployment Appliance includes valuable new features to simplify the lives of IT managers during this transition.

Policy-based migration enables IT managers to define system images and installation scripts so they can upgrade systems from a central appliance and ensure standardization, network-wide.

Using a new offline migration capability, offline systems can be accessed, the new OS upgraded and user data and settings copied over from a central location, without end user interruption.

Dell KACE Appliances now support direct driver feeds from Dell so that the new software drivers can be automatically downloaded and installed, saving IT valuable time searching for compatible drivers on the internet.

To learn more about the K2000 Deployment Appliance and hear best practices for a successful Windows 7 migration, by accessing our recorded webinar event, Windows 7 Wide Open: Tools for a Swift and Successful Migration.

For those who are interested, check out our whitepaper Windows 7: Tips and Best Practices for Simplified Migration, or see a wider range of our other whitepapers. Find out more about the Dell KACE K2000 Deployment Appliance and how it fulfills the systems provisioning needs of an organization including inventory assessment, OS deployment, application distribution, configuration and recovery.

And feel free to share your feedback in the comments section below. Thanks!

Our recently commissioned market research study on industry adoption plans for Microsoft Office 2010 revealed that almost 90 percent of the 95 polled throughout North America, Europe and Asia plan to migrate to Office 2010, however, concerns around complexity of migrating to the new productivity software will delay broad deployment until 2011. Enthusiasm for Office 2010 is high but almost 70 percent stated they have significant concerns about the complexity of the migration. Only four percent have fully deployed Office 2010 to date, and only 18 percent plan to broadly deploy Office 2010 this year. This is the fifth study of its kind KACE has conducted to gather data about current plans and attitudes within mid-sized corporate IT organizations regarding Windows OS and Office 2010 adoption.

This is the fifth study of its kind KACE has conducted to gather data about current plans and attitudes within mid-sized corporate IT organizations regarding Windows OS and Office 2010 adoption.

Why are businesses delaying adoption of Office 2010?

The primary cause of delayed deployment by IT organizations is the complexity of supporting multiple versions of Microsoft Office and the concerns over business interruption during the migration process. According to the survey, the leading causes of concern include: training for the new ribbon interface, compatibility with current applications, and licensing.

How can KACE help IT administrators save time and their organizations money in their upgrade to Office 2010?

IT administrators are under pressure to minimize the cost and complexity of software upgrades and KACE’s appliance-based approach is the perfect solution to ensure a quick and easy upgrade to Office 2010.

KACE’s System Management Appliance integrates with Microsoft’s configuration tool and enables IT managers to create custom upgrade paths based on the individual need of the entire organization. Once upgrade needs have been assessed, the Dell KACE appliance automatically provisions and upgrades user systems, which eliminates manual processes and saves IT administrators time and the organization’s money in the process.

Alleviate your customers’ migration concerns and provide confidence in a speedy Office 2010 migration through Dell KACE. Share your experience in selling KACE System Management Appliances here on the blog.

For some companies, ITIL seems like a formidable undertaking and one where they struggle to see the value. This is where “practical ITIL” comes in. Practical ITIL involves knowing where the biggest benefits from ITIL can be derived, and where the ‘quickest wins’ are. The aim for this is to move from a reactive help-desk over to being more proactive, delivering services that follow best practice as well as speeding up problem management and incident resolution.

This practical ITIL approach is based on five key points:

• Implementing a configuration management database (CMDB) – this is at the heart of any ITIL programme. Getting this right is important, as everything else flows from this central point; it also makes incident response faster, as agents have all the data they need at their fingertips.
• Keeping records up to date automatically – Following on from the CMDB, activities such as configuration management and change management can be made simpler – proactively keeping up with any alterations to the IT infrastructure is essential.
• Moving from a help-desk to a service desk – the distinction here is important, because this is all about offering more value back to the business. The investment in a service desk approach ultimately offers more value back to the organisation than the equivalent spent on a “help-desk only” approach.
• Supporting future business IT initiatives – larger projects such as rolling out patches, new application versions or new OSes require a thorough overview of what exists on the network, and what condition it is in. With a CMDB, these infrastructure projects can be tracked automatically and issues resolved before they become real problems to the organisation.
• Managing workflows around user problems – this involves standardising how the service desk deals with problems in the first place. For some companies, this is just a process of setting down the processes that exist in stone, while for others it means setting these up from scratch.

The practical ITIL approach covers some critical areas of IT, but also makes it easier to translate these IT-focused ideas into real business results.

While individual consumers have been finding it easy to move over, companies have a bigger challenge. Whether you have five or five hundred desktops, moving them all over to a new OS is a big deal. The service desk can play an important role in making this go smoothly before, during and after the migration takes place.

Ahead of a migration, the organisation has to know what IT assets it has. Knowing what condition desktops are in allows the company to see what it can move over easily and where there may be more challenging assets to migrate. For companies with a service desk in place, the CMDB can help to provide this data.

Some desktops might be too old to move over, and need either replacement or upgrades. Applications may not run on the new OS, either due to license issues or not being supported; the underlying IT infrastructure may need an update to support the new OS as well.

Based on this information, organisations can prepare themselves for a move. During the migration the service desk can provide information to the whole organisation, so that there are no surprises encountered during the move.

Once the implementation of Windows 7 is complete, the service desk will undoubtedly be the first port of call for users with questions on their new environment. From finding where that command button has moved to, through to getting users familiar with any new functionality that can help them be more productive, the service desk will have a role to play alongside any training programme that the company implements.

By looking at how IT can make the whole process easier, the service desk can play a critical role in any Windows 7 implementation being successful. For companies interested in moving over to Windows 7, I’ll be discussing this topic at the Service Desk and IT Support show this week – if you are at the event, feel free to stop by the Dell KACE stand, #626.