Kace?

[#1]

Hey Folks-

Just curious... if anyone's company/school is using the Dell's Kace (K-box) solution? We just got approved for the whole schebang. Servers are racked and we started to configure them. So far so good. During proposal time, I had to take a look at it just a routine, but I, of course, was in no way going to give up Casper Suite! But.. we will be hopefully transitioning from Symantec Ghost to Kace for our Win7 upgrade project this summer. Any thoughts/comments welcome!

Thanks!
-
lauren

-
LAUREN NICHOLAS
User Support Analyst - Hurd Campus
Center for Information Technology - CIT
Moravian College
ph. 610 861 1633
lpnicholas at moravian.edu<mailto:lpnicholas at moravian.edu>

|JAMF certified casper administrator|

[jmclaughlin]

Lauren, My system is in the midst of evaluating KBOX. We're probably going to
use it solely for our Windows computers. We're hoping to use it for our
ticketing system as well. The pricetag is pretty high and there appears
to be a lot of configuration required but it looks like a decent product.

John McLaughlin
Technical Support Specialist
Newton Public Schools

"Nicholas, Lauren" <lpnicholas at moravian.edu> on Tuesday, May 04, 2010 at 3:29 PM -0400 wrote: Hey Folks- Just curious

if anyone’s company/school is using the Dell’s Kace (K-box)

solution? We just got approved for the whole schebang. Servers are racked and we started to configure them. So far so good. During proposal time, I had to take a look at it just a routine, but I, of course, was in no way going to give up Casper Suite! But.. we will be hopefully transitioning from Symantec Ghost to Kace for our Win7 upgrade project this summer. Any thoughts/comments welcome! Thanks! - lauren — LAUREN NICHOLAS User Support Analyst – Hurd Campus Center for Information Technology – CIT Moravian College ph. 610 861 1633 [ mailto:lpnicholas at moravian.edu ]lpnicholas at moravian.edu |JAMF certified casper administrator|

---

Casper mailing list Casper at list.jamfsoftware.com http://list.jamfsoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/casper

[Kedgar]

We looked at KBOX here a couple of years ago... it was pretty inexpensive at
the time, maybe things have changed since. For the Windows environment, our
company has gone to using Microsoft SCCM... it took a very long time to
setup... I'm not impressed at all with it. KBOX seemed like a much simpler
solution, however I don't do windows anylonger ;)

Cheers,
Ken

[uurazzle]

Question, what is the price of Dell Kace compare against Casper Suite? How do you handle support, do you need to pay for support?

One, issue with our superiors is the cost of the Capser Suite JumpStart. IMHO, I really think JAMF needs to expand it support options, with the initial cost of JumpStart they really are pricing many smaller organizations using Casper Suite. Why not have pay for support options per incident or per client fee in addition to the JumpStart? Many of the smaller or budget limited organizations using Munki would be more likely to consider Casper Suite if there wasn't the requirement of JumpStart for initial setup.

[Carlos]

I have used KACE in the past, it's great for PC management....I wouldn't use it over Casper for Mac management, it was originally created for PC's only and started adding Mac support...which, for the most part, means it's still a PC focused management utility. Just my 2 cents. :)

[uurazzle]

Does anybody have a list of drawbacks with using KACE for OS X client management? Similar to this post on SCCM vs Casper Suite?

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=11982

Specifically...

Posted 10/1/14 at 5:54 PM by calumhunter SolvedSolved
Ok biggest drawbacks are
1. it can't do OS deployment, so if you need to take a machine and put an image on it, you'll need to do this with something else ie netboot/netrestore or deploystudio or something similar
2. It can't install packages in unattended mode. So basically if you have a bunch of machines sitting at the login window that you wish to deploy software to it can't. When a user logs in they will get a prompt to install each item you have targeted to the machine, the user must accept and wait for the install to happen. Or the user can ignore the prompt and the software will not be installed
3. It will not force install packages on deadline even though you specify it. This again goes back to the unattended thing. A user gets a prompt to install but can simply dismiss this and the software does not install.
4. Support is terrible, over 4 months from the public release of 10.8 before they added support for 10.8 in sccm. without this update 10.8 clients could not connect to sccm at all
5. currently still broken with 10.9.3+ clients. there is a dylib called MACVideoController.dylib, this gets installed by the sccm client package, on a 10.9.3+ machine this crashes the sccm client app and prevents it from communicating with the sccm server, you must remove this item. this also prevents sccm from being able to get inventory about the video controller for the machine though because god knows why MS choose to use these dylibs instead of the tools already built in like you know system_profiler but ok.
6. Your application packages must be wrapped in a special .cmmac format which is kind of a zip format. There is a restriction on the size of these files of 4GB so if your trying to package a large installer ie Adobe CS and the package is larger than 4GB - no dice you can't wrap it in .cmmac and so you can't deploy it with SCCM
7. MS official support for OS X releases is "within 180 days" so you could be waiting months for them to provide support for a new OS. and as shown from past history 10.8 took 4 months. don't hold your breath for quick updates to support Yosemite - especially considering that the 10.9.3 bug was reported to MS in May 2014
8. Hmm what else as mentioned no FV2.
9. it can not do remote control - you will need to enable remote management via a script and then use a mac to connect to a remote mac. Or set a VNC password and access the mac via a PC using VNC
10. the inventory information is very basic and i don't believe you can do custom inventory items - i would have to double check that but from memory you can't - so in casper its trivial to add an extension attribute to say get information on a client about for example if the bash shell is vulnerable. this would not be possible in this way using sccm inventory
11. it doesnt do MCX 12. it doesn't do config profiles
13. no VPP for applications on the app store
14. Its not a MDM - so no APN for config profiles etc
15. for iOS you need to use InTune ie Public Cloud
16. for every setting you make via compliance in sccm, you need to test for a setting ie check gatekeeper status via a script, then write a conditional ie if result of gatekeeper status script is off then run the remediation script which enables it. tedious to say the least. So you will need to maintain a massive amount of scripts and your scripts will need to take into account all versions of OS X that you manage and have logic to run the correct commands for each OS Version if there is a difference as SCCM can not target the OS correctly for 10.9+ clients you need to target to ALL OS versions.
17. enrolling the client in to sccm will require the end user to enter their AD account credentials. So if you have a freshly imaged machine or a machine out of the box, how do you enroll the machine without an account on there? you can create a package of the sccm client package and run a post flight script that does the work but you will need to use the expect shell as the sccm client binary does not support putting the username and password into a command line argument instead it requests an interactive prompt for the user password. You will then need to install this package as a first boot install package via deploystudio or similar tool

I guess it could be useful if you have like 10 macs that are owned by say senior executives and they need some basic apps and basic config like wireless network settings and the users can be trusted to install the

but if you have a decent amount of macs and you need to go from out of the box to desired state in an automated fashion then its not really possible with sccm.

Theres a bunch of stuff I've missed for sure but that just of the top of my head.

[uurazzle]

Another question about KACE, does it support mobile device management (MDM) for iOS/Android systems? I believe system will be moving more and more away from desktops to mobile devices and having a system management system that supports desktops and mobile devices is a plus, which Casper Suite does.

[RobertHammen]

I can't give specifics, but know that KACE has a lot of limitations vis-a-vis Casper for supporting OS X. It does have some built-in patch management functionality that is not present in the current version of Casper Suite.

Sending up the bat signal to @rtrouton as he's worked with KACE on the Mac before.

[uurazzle]

Ok, but it would be nice to a comparison list. I am actually really surprised that JAMF doesn't provide a comparison chart with other popular system management products. I know there is this community list:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ane3dV9FGdGLdEU5Skc4QTl4dU1kcTY3Vm8wTm84ZWc&usp=drive_web#gid=0

And don't see any mention in Gartner, which many at our institution blindly follow. But, it is used as a metric, but many people that supply and justifying budget use it.

Here is one post for on Enterprise iOS, but don't see Casper Suite? Why not?

http://www.enterpriseios.com/wiki/Gartner_Magic_Quadrant_for_MDM_2012_2011

[rtrouton]

@uurazzle,

I think you'd need to ask Gartner why Gartner didn't include Casper Suite in their study. Enterprise iOS has their own MDM comparison available from here:

http://www.enterpriseios.com/wiki/Comparison_MDM_Providers

[uurazzle]

Hello Rich:

So, I don't reinvent the wheel, I am curious if others already to subscribed to Gartner have already contacted them about it. Since some big corporations are using Capser Suite, seems like someone probably already has contacted them and can share details.

[bentoms]

@uurazzle][/url, Gartner tbh isn't worth the subscription costs.

If you want to spew the lastest buzzword babble, then go ahead.

If you want to buy "a magic quadrant market leader" that buys into them & has great sales speil but a poor end product.. Then go ahead.

If you want to use a best of breed enterprise Apple Lifecycle Management system.. Then welcome.

Leave the sales bull at the door.

We are heavy into Gartner, but I keep on dismissing it. The new trends/fads they push are laughable at times.. Either for being an unfeasible pipe dream, or for being behind the curve.

Many of my projects have been born out of Gartner reports, many have been shelved because there isn't any reports on them.

Now? Others are starting to see what I'm saying & not the Gartener marketing speil & I can get on & do.

[uurazzle]

Right, I agree. But, trying to find options for solutions that many of the administration use to guide them. Instead, I will find workarounds "Gartner" or provide other respected documentation that administration can hopefully will trust.

[calumhunter]

@uurazzle
You could flip that argument
Why doesn't Dell KACE provide a comparison of its offering against other MDMs / Management products for OS X

I'd try to get some info out of Dell about its capabilities, case studies, white papers ect ect

Compare that to the ones that Jamf have.

I think that will answer your questions pretty quickly.

[bentoms]

@uurazzle, there is someone who frequents IRC that is using KACE for Mac management now, well trying too.

There product is years behind the Casper Suite, I'll see if he can report back some of the difficulties he has had (there are many). Or failing that, you could pop into the ##OSX-Server IRC & someone there could advise you who it is.

I know he's waiting for the next school year to try & move to something new.