Distribution Tips Software Deployment Forum Package Knowledge Base Other Deployment Tools
KACE KBOX IT Management Suite 2.0 by Bob Kelly	Page 3 of 5 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Organizing Client Systems
In KBOX, clients are not placed in groups, but have “labels” applied to them. The concept is just a little bit different as compared to the more common “group” method, but the result is the same. A client may have any number of labels applied to it, and it is these labels you specify when performing operations such as deployment or inventory.

Some very good news here: KBOX truly does support Active Directory (LDAP). Many products claim support, but I am often disappointed to learn the implementation is no more than a static import of the hierarchy which is either a one-time manual operation or employs some sort of internal caching mechanism. I’m glad to report that this is not the case with KBOX which allows you to apply filter rules in order to dynamically apply labels to clients based on Active Directory. This means any changes in AD are reflected in KBOX right away with no need for further intervention.

Inventory
Inventory is just as detailed as you would hope, with hardware and software details provided for all managed systems.

Reports may be generated in a HTML, PDF, CSV or TXT formats. A good number of helpful reports ship with the product, and if you are familiar with SQL, KACE publishes their database schema to customers to facilitate custom report generation. Not familiar with SQL? Support will create a custom report for you, and then place that custom report information on their support site so that all KBOX customers may take advantage.

Software Deployment
All software deployment is configured as a command line installation. In an interesting approach, you actually base deployment packages on existing software inventory information. In the software inventory record for any item, you can associate files that are uploaded to the KBOX. You are then able to create a deployment package by choosing the software from a drop-down box and specifying the desired command line parameters that will dictate the installation and how it is performed/automated. It is quite simple, but there are other options you can specify as well, including a message to display before or after, an option to allow user to delay the installation, valid installation times, etc.

Deployments are then directed to systems, normally to a specific label (group). The clients check-in at a configured interval (also taking into account a configurable offset to help avoid too many systems trying to install at a time). Additionally, KBOX offers a throttling option- not bandwidth throttling, but an option to limit the number of clients receiving a package at one time. For example, if you set the throttle to 75, and 75 clients are receiving a package, the next client to attach will be deferred until one of the existing deployments is complete.

Because packages are download to the clients and executed locally, you have the option of specifying if these source files should remain on the system or not. For MSI packages, the source location for repair and install on demand features is automatically updated to reflect the location of the source files on the KBOX (there is also an option to specify a secondary location when configuring the package in the web console).

 

[Page 3 of 5]     1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

• Log on
• Register
• Survey Results