KACE 2000 vs MDT 2012 U1
Okay everyone. I've been working on implementing MDT here at my work place due to my lack of love torwards the K2000. Everything seems like a hassle with the K2000 when creating deployments and MDT is just so easy to use. I don't blame my management for wanting more information seeing how they had spent thousands on the Kace appliance before I started here. What I want is some help in justifying dropping the K2000 and running MDT which is ready to rock. PRO's and CON's to help my argument. I have MDT running solid right now but I was asked to go back to the K2000 and read all the documentation and put together a deployment. So while I compile my own list of PRO's and CON's I would love to hear what this community has to say....!
Regards,
Answers (1)
As a heavy K2000 user, I can attest that there are some tricky downsides to it (and I've never used MDT before so I can't weigh against it really) but I will say that once you get a comfortable hold on the K2 it can be very simple to use. Especially using WIM system images. What did you dislike about it?
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I came into this position with the K2 already in place and being used for a bulldoze of 400+ computers. The process of deploying to the new systems was fairly painless except that the deployments were being stopped due to applications being held up and needing user action to complete. Learning how to create and manage post install tasks helped in that area and I updated the image by sysprepping and capturing a machine. I then found myself using WAIK to make a more detailed unattend file and found that using MDT was recommended by WAIK due to it also being a Microsoft tool. So I started messing with MDT and the interface was so much easier along with managing the Task Sequences. It was nice to have someone to call with the K2 but I always got inconsistent information when reaching out to them. I showed MDT to the team but due to their lack of knowledge with OSD they wanted solid bullet points as to why MDT is superior and my only words are it's easier and cleaner. So now I'm trying to get some key selling points from users of both worlds to help out. So thanks nheyne.... all input is appreciated. - jsunderman 11 years ago
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Support is supposed to be overhauled and better, so I guess we'll have to see on that. I will also add that if I had to use the K2 out of the box without retooling it to my customized needs, I would be very disappointed. But the KBE Manipulator is really the lifesaver of the K2, and if you're clever you can pretty much make whatever you need.
Also, I would recommend using this solution: http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/do-you-want-to-store-your-wim-s-externally-with-k2000-v3-5-like-we-did-with-3-4
You have to use third-party tools to capture your WIMs (or a custom WinPE) but you can really simplify image storage and make your RSAs (if you would need any) better and completely interchangeable/replaceable on the fly. - nheyne 11 years ago
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That's just it; you have to use 3rd party apps for a lot of things. And you have to manipulate things to work. With MDT it's like having all the source code in a neat organized fashion to edit and manage. Why do I have to hack the system to put my WIM's that I captured from a third party app somewhere else just to save space on my very much limited K2000?! Why not just create a DS and manage everything from an application rather than a web based pain? I may be missing something here. I really hope someone with knowledge of both systems weighs in soon. I really want to hear what they have to say. - jsunderman 11 years ago
