How to do an Advanced search or run a report on total number of PC deployed within a time frame
Hi Guys,
I am pretty new to KACE and learning on the job. We have been replacing old Lenovo laptops with dell laptops at my organization to make it easier for us to manage our assets and inventory in Dell Kace K1000 and my boss recently asked me if it was possible to do an advanced search or generate a report on how many PCs we have replaced since September of last year. While playing around with KACE advance search, I noticed I could run a search based on when the KACE agents were created on the new PCs. But the first problem I noticed is that if for any reason, a KACE agent is uninstalled and reinstalled on any PC, the date the KACE agent was created resets to the current installation. So that makes my search not accurate since pretty old PCs can show in KACE like their inventory was just created recently (Is there a way to stop this from happening?). I thought of other options like serial numbers and mac addresses but I don't see or know a way on how to query when these PCs first showed up in K1000. Can someone please help me out?
An example of what I am trying to do is I am trying to generate a report of how many PCs have been deployed since September of 2015 till date. I am not good with creating SQL queries or scripting so any assistance will be greatly appreciated.
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Posted by:
SMal.tmcc
8 years ago
You can do it a couple of ways
can you use the Operating system Installed on date?
You can also create a CIR to bring the image info like
can you use the Operating system Installed on date?
You can also create a CIR to bring the image info like
ShellCommandTextReturn(type C:\ProgramData\Dell\KACE\k2000_deployment_info.conf)
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if you use the created under device identity that is when it was brought into Kace - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
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Thank you for your prompt response Small.tmcc. "Created" under device identity was the field I was referring to in my previous post and I noticed that field date changes if the KACE agent is uninstalled and reinstalled. The "installed On" field might be the closest to what I can use to generate the report. However, The New PCs were not imaged using K2000 but with another imaging software so I am guessing the CIR might not be helpful. But I am hoping that Kace can still tell when the OS was installed. Usually we don't replace the PCs on the same day the new PCs' OS were installed but we install the Kace agents on the same day the PCs were replaced. Which is why I was hoping information about the agent will be the best bet.
Can you please walk me through how to run a report using a couple of suggestions you have in mind? That will be really helpful and much appreciated. - eskoredem 8 years ago-
are your images syspreped? did you apply the kuid from the old machine that was replaced or do you create a new k1000 device? - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
Posted by:
SMal.tmcc
8 years ago
will this work?
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if you run this report with no filters you get the verbage to put into the filter > window - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
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Good Morning and thank you for your response. To answer your question about our images, we actually use "Acronis Backup and Restore" to create and deploy these images. Re:Kuid, we create a new device. Is it possible to use the same kuid on a different device or to retain the same Kuid when you do a fresh OS installation on the same machine? If yes, can you please tell me how?
On another note, I tried generating a report using the OS installed on field you suggested and came to a realization that will not work. Because the new PCs are generally the same model and are imaged using the same image originally created in Acronis, Their OS time stamps are retaining the same date the original image was created :(. Do you have any other suggestions? It will be greatly appreciated. Thank you. - eskoredem 8 years ago-
to have the machine take the place of the old machine in kace so assests stay tied to it.
harvest the reg keys:
on 32 bit
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Dell\Kace
on 64 bit
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Dell\Kace
"InstallId" & "MachineId"
merge those 2 keys prior to installing the client on the new machine and it will assume the identity. Make sure you remove the client from the old machine so you do not have duplicate kuids on the new and old machine.
how quickly do you put them into service after you receive them? There is a dell Ship Date
also look at a folder like C:\Windows\panther and see if the date of the folder matches the original or when it was put on the new machine.
does Acronis put any sort of log on the machine when you clone it?
I take you do not sysprep since you are using Acronis. If you are not and are in a domain and want to use wsus or bitlocker you will run into problems. Other then that duplicate sid's pose no real problem to your systems - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago -
do you reformat the new systems? may be able to get volume creation date - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
Posted by:
SMal.tmcc
8 years ago
Top Answer
BTW I am doing this all on windows 10 x64
with your Acronis, do you make a master file you use to setup these machines and just restore from it?
If so you can setup a runonce command just prior to making that backup so when it restores it creates the file on first boot
put a vbs file in c:\windows\system32 with this code:
Then you can create cir's to read the file contents and date and see what filters better for you in reports.
you want both cirs for report filtering purposes
with your Acronis, do you make a master file you use to setup these machines and just restore from it?
If so you can setup a runonce command just prior to making that backup so when it restores it creates the file on first boot
put a vbs file in c:\windows\system32 with this code:
Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")Poke a registry entry like this
objShell.ShellExecute "c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe" , "/c if exist c:\programdata\imaged.txt del c:\programdata\imaged.txt /q", "", "runas", 1
objShell.ShellExecute "c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe" , "/c echo %date% > c:\programdata\imaged.txt", "", "runas", 1
reg.exe add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce" /v createimagedfile /d "c:\windows\system32\cscript /b c:\windows\system32\imagedstamp.vbs"
Then you can create cir's to read the file contents and date and see what filters better for you in reports.
you want both cirs for report filtering purposes
Posted by:
eskoredem
8 years ago
Thank you for the info on the Kid. That will help for the future. I am actually new to the organization and from what I see, Acronis Backup and Restore was their imaging option before they got K1000 and K2000. Still Acronis imaging is way faster than Kace (less than 20mins vs close to 2hours) which is why I'm guessing they still prefer Acronis. No, we don't sysprep and we are on domain. I am aware we use both WSUS and bitlocker and I am not aware of any problems. If I had to guess, after cloning the acronis image to another PC, we still have to Activate Microsoft Windows and Office on the new PC with our volume licensing. Do you think that helps in generating a new sid for the PC? And no, we don't format the new PCs. The Ship date will probably help with the Dell systems but I forgot that we also bought a couple of newer lenovo thinkcentres so that will probably not help :(. I guess with all these problems we might have to consider our options moving forward. What do you recommend?
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Set up a rule that all follow when imaging. Add a small text file to each system with the info you want. You can then read that with a CIR or read date of file. - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
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you can check to make sure that files exists so if they forgot to do it. A kace report will let you know and you can correct that. - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
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That sounds like an interesting solution. I am curious though on how I can use the CIR to generate a report. You have been rather helpful to this total KACE newbie :). - eskoredem 8 years ago
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what we have experienced with dup sids win 7 would only patch one machine thru wsus and not others depending on which machine with the same sid hit wsus first. The bitlocker bug we saw was it did not always have the correct key in AD to unlock the drive. - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
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I will have to check with our system Admin on this one cos I know we also use WSUS and we have not run into similar problems. At least I can vouch for the new laptops I have been imaging. Is there a way to check the SIDs. I currently have four newly imaged systems with me and I can confirm if their sids are the same. - eskoredem 8 years ago
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Alright. I just checked and confirmed that although the current Local Administrator accounts on different PCs have the same Sids, the domain user accounts have different sids. Usually, before the master image is created, the OS of the PC that the master image is going to be created from is removed from the domain. So the PCs are joined back to the domain and the user profiles are created post image which is probably why I am guessing we don't have issues with WSUS and bitlocker. - eskoredem 8 years ago
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that makes sense - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
Posted by:
eskoredem
8 years ago
Hi SMal.tmcc,
For some strange reasons, I don't see an option to reply you directly. Thank you so much for all your help and helpful suggestions. I have been playing around with available options for running a report that will give me a more accurate datestamp and your last suggestion looks like the best way to go moving forward.
Re:Acronis, Yes we make master files (running Windows 7 Ent X64 and all applications we use) for each common machines we buy and restore from these master files. I have a couple of machines I can play around with so I will try your suggestion and if it works, then I will recommend this to be our mode of deployment operation moving forward.
Quick question. You noted that you used a Windows 10 X64 machine for your example. Will anything change for the execution path of the vbs file for Windows 7 ENT X64 machine? I am assuming no but just wanted to clarify with the guru :). I will also play around with deploying with K2000 (never done it myself) and although I heard it takes way longer to image and deploy than Acronis (we were actually thinking of buying Acronis Snap Deploy for our deployment solutions), if it will give us less trouble with generating reports and getting information, then I may recommend we stick with K2000. What do you think?
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you may just be bale to use a simple runonce to do the job, win 7 does not require the elevated rights to things like 10 does. I am at smal.tmcc@gmail.com (look under my profile)
this may work with win 7
reg.exe add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce" /v createimagedfile /d "cmd.exe /c echo %date% > c:\programdata\imaged.txt" - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago