Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Reviews

My main use case for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is to deploy applications and maintain security, and we use it day-to-day to handle those tasks.

With Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), we deploy all of our system management tools, as well as standardization of applications and Microsoft updates, which helps us maintain security.

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) has made it possible for us to manage so many machines with fewer people by allowing us to use automation to find and rectify situations on the appliances as well as for mass deployments of software.

Using Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), we have been able to manage three times the amount of machines as other groups while having half the staff, which has positively impacted our organization.

The main use cases for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance are touch management, software and hardware inventory, and software delivery.

The most valuable features include simplicity, which makes systems management easier and faster, especially for device management. It provides a good inventory and complete inventory management, which allows clients to access information quickly. The solution is also easy to use and offers an efficient deployment process.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is set up on a VMware virtual machine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We primarily use our KACE system for imaging, deploying software, and deploying fixes to Windows computer labs. 

We don't use the active directory in our environment, so pushing out changes to local group policy is something we use our SMA for often. 

Additionally, managing over 1000 Windows endpoints of varying models and manufacturers is no easy task. Management of these endpoints involves utilizing the inventory and scripting features on the KACE SMA. 

We even use KACE SMA on our VDI infrastructure, helping to maintain and track those endpoints.

The KACE SMA has helped make our endpoint team work more agilely, efficiently, and productively. 

We're able to deploy software and push out fixes to endpoints faster than ever. 

Our turnaround times for new software installation in our numerous computer labs on campus have never been quicker. 

With KACE, as soon as a request comes in or a report of a broken bit of software, we can quickly prepare and deploy a fix with the SMAs scripting feature - which has proven invaluable to our organization. This makes my team's day easier and our clients even happier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We use Quest KACE Systems Management for things like deploying software packages, inventorying, and versioning what we currently have.

For me, specifically, the use case is for package deployment. When I need to push out a new package. We use a new 8x8 client, or I have Chrome set to update, and if it doesn't, we'll post it here. We use this solution to push packages because we don't have an SCCM solution or anything similar that I am more familiar with.

SCCM is a Microsoft solution, which is now known as MECM.

Right now, it's just a stopgap until we can set up and configure a proper environment. This product was acquired and brought over from an acquisition. As a result, there is some net overlapping and other issues that prevent it from being fully integrated everywhere, and there is a problem with firewall separation. 

It helps in some ways, and for the most part, it makes my life easier. It doesn't seem to hit everywhere.