KACE Product Support

I've been running 5.3 for a few weeks and I would hold off unless you need any of the features of 5.3. I've run into a few bugs that are annoying.

Casey

Thanks Casey, is there anything in specific you can tell me without waisting too much of your time? We were looking forward to the enhancements to patching on WinXP machines and a few other features, but aren't looking for any added bugs.

The largest problem I've found so far is I now have more agents that aren't checking in. (I had a few on 5.2, but now I have more with 5.3).

From an annoying standpoint:
- The enter key isn't recognized when you do a search (inventory screen is where it kills me)
- The last logged on user isn't always recorded
- The Security tab is very very (did I mention very) slow
- Patching seemed slower than normal (and I ended up with just 39% complete) but until another patch night happens, I'm willing to call this one a fluke.

From an "interesting" standpoint:
- Debugging is on by default
- The location of the logs, conf, etc has all changed

Casey

Wow, that doesn't sound too appealing. Patching is one of our main concerns and we've just worked so hard to get a decent success rate on 5.2 I don't know if that sounds worth it.

Thank you for your time to repond to this, it's very much appreciated! You sound like you've had the same frustrations as us with the appliance.

To my knowledge, 5.3 has not yet been officially released. Anybody running it pre-release is bound to have issues as they work through the bugs - you've basically signed yourself up for beta testing and don't really have much room to complain. As soon as your K1000 automatically downloads 5.3 and prompts for install, you can consider that the official release.

I spoke with support a few days ago, and they stated they are holding off on official release due to last minute bugs. The fact that they are fixing the bugs before official release makes me a happy administrator. I'd rather not beta test software in my production environment, and I expect an official release to be fairly bug free. If that means I have to wait a few more weeks, so be it.

This is an official release, I have the the release notes, weblinks and everything else straight from support as well as spoke to numerous engineers on this.

They've been saying they're making last minute tweaks on this agent since back in February when it was first said to be close to release.

If they labeled this an official release, then pulled it afterwards, that's another story, but if you search around here you can see me and Casey aren't the only ones who got this release even though it wasn't automatically downloaded to the appliance.

I signed up for and was an actual beta tester of the 5.2 agent, which they ultimately decided to skip altogether due to issues and move on to 5.3, so seeing as they've had over 6 months to work on these issues that have continuously been brought to their attention I was hoping when I was told the 5.3 agent and server update was released that it included fixes, not more bugs.

I agree that waiting for a stable release is better, I'm just not OK with the time it's taking for these engineers to get a stable release as it wasn't what we were promised when we purchased the appliance. Without an agent that is independent of .NET there's many companies, like ours, that can't utilize KACE on a lot of servers that are incompatible with .NET 1.1 and therefor requiring us to maintain systems and agreements specifically to keep servers patched and up to date. Bottom line, it's costing us money every month we don't have this stable release.

I agree they overpromised, but 5.3 has never been released in an official context. There was a window of time where support had the "green light" to let people have 5.3 on request, but it still wasn't officially released.

The agent was completely rewritten to get rid of any reliance on .NET, so I expected it to take a while. My company is growing a bit impatient as well, but I'd rather wait than end up with bugs.

The worst thing they've done is consistently say "it's due out next week". I'd rather hear "it's scheduled for September" and if it releases early then I'll do a nerd dance in my cubicle.

"The worst thing they've done is consistently say "it's due out next week". I'd rather hear "it's scheduled for September" and if it releases early then I'll do a nerd dance in my cubicle. "

Ahmen to that! That's all I've asked for out of them since March! If we could accurately plan around this, it would be a lot easier to swallow.

Also thanks for taking the time to weigh in on this Andy, the more info the better for me!

A quick update, I just contacted an engineer at Kace, and they said they did in fact pull the 5.3 release and they advised to hold off on using it until an updated release is made public.

I downloaded and installed both 5.3 client and server. The server seems stable but the client is JUNK on MI's. The agents throw's up a message box if an MI is using any of the messaging boxes or snoozing options. The 5.3 client does not remove/delete the installation files/folder after the MI is complete.

I found 5 issues with the 5.3 agent within 2 hours of testing on my production clients.

I reported some of these issues back with 5.2 and they are still not fixed. Do get me wrong, I appreciate the effort - but come on!!! Deliver a stable product and test it out!!!

Now I'm stuck. I can't seem to roll back to my 'stable' 5.1 agent.

D

5.3 hasn't been released yet - so you are running a beta. Did you upgrade based on a suggestion from support?

With all due respect, this link looks to be an official release and there is nothing stated on the page about a beta version.

http://www.kace.com/support/kb/index.php?action=artikel&cat=1&id=1119&artlang=en

I was working with support on a security bug I found. This is supports statement when they gave me the link:

I do have some good news for you. I have tested this with the newist version of the K1000 software 5.3.45496, and even though the option is still available to select this does not apply the labels to the system with the read only account. If you would like to upgrade to the latest version please see the following link. If you would like to wait until a later time that is fine as well. I will close the it if you would still like.
Thanks,
D

There is no mention of a 5.3 release anywhere on the page you linked... 5.2 was posted in April, but there is no mention of 5.3.

If support suggested you upgrade to 5.3, then you should let them know of your concerns about the agent. I still don't see any evidence that they've "officially" released 5.3 yet. I have heard that support will suggest upgrading in cases where 5.3 is known to resolve certain issues. Then again, I've heard most of those users would have rather stuck with 5.2 while the kinks are worked out of 5.3 beta.

Odd... I took a second look at that link you posted and it took me to a completely different page. I now see the 5.3 upgrade page, but that still doesn't mean it's an official release. Take a look at the Downloads page under Production Support and you'll see that 5.2 is the latest official release. That 5.3 KB article was most likely written to assist those users who want to upgrade early - or users told to upgrade early by Support for specific bug fixes.

Testing the new MSI agent out on my virtual boxes. I dig the new folder structure (now located in %ProgramFiles%\Dell\Kace). Only one process running as a service called AMPAgent.exe. KLaunch seems to be a new executable that starts runkbot and KInventory when forcing an update as well as KDeploy when pushing tasks.

Only one item in Add/Remove Programs now called Dell KACE Agent.

Will test out the server update this weekend, cause I like to live dangerously. =P