Kace K2000 vs MDT 2012 U1
Hi guys,
Our company is currently assessing the K1000 to add some application deployment functionality to our network. This also bought up the question of the K2000.
At the moment we use an MDT / WDS system that is pretty bullet proof but I have installed the K2000 trial appliance and I'm trying to see what the benefit is but I'm struggling to justify it:
- The capture process seems so clunky and a much more manual process than MDT, am I missing something? Seems to be a lot of manual steps and jumping in and out of Kace etc.
- The WIM support is also incredibly clunky, seems that the process takes so many steps to add or deploy a WIM image and very touchy as to how its captured and what it contains.
- The process for the driver harvest and adding to / managing the boot media seems to take so many steps compared to MDT
Answers (2)
I'm not a MDT/WDS guy by any means, but I am very versed in using the K2.
I'm not sure why you would call the WIM capture process "clunky" when it's really just click and go. Setting up your System Images with certain pre and postinstall tasks might be what you're referring to, but that's only once to setup and then you're good to go.
Since you're not a Dell shop you might have some setup to do with drivers, but even then it's just all backend work and you could have the whole thing done in a day. But then again, I'm not an MDT user so that's just one perspective.
Comments:
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Thanks for the feedback!
Maybe the word clunky was a bit harsh, it is just a lot more hands on from what I can see.
For instance when we have a new App or we need to refresh the Windows updates in our image the techs can just:
Add the app to MDT
Boot a VM to the network
Select capture
MDT takes care of the rest, 30 minutes later we have a new image with the new app and all new updates added to our deployment.
This is accomplished by 1) MDT deploying to the VM, installing the apps, doing WSUS updates - 2) I then have a simple powershell that imports the capture and creates the task sequence (equivalent to the Kace pre and post installation tasks) from a template.
This automation did take a bit of setup initially so I'm trying to keep that in mind when comparing apples to apples but the process of capturing images doesn't seem to have that kind of automation in Kace?
Or is Kace aimed more at thin provisioning when updates and apps are done post-installation? - mhouston100 11 years ago-
Sounds like you have your setup very streamlined, which you could duplicate with postinstall tasks to some degree. In my case, since I maintain our master image, I have a VM that I capture from, so if I need to update it I just revert to the last snapshot and do the Windows Updates myself manually, and anything else that is needed, resnap it and then recapture. To me this is a much more reliable way to maintain the image rather than relying on automated tasks, but in reality it accomplishes the same thing.
If you don't want to recapture the image, you could just append a postinstall task to it instead. I don't know enough about MDT to say whether this is comparable to how you add apps or updates, sorry. - nheyne 11 years ago
Do have any mac's you need to maintain also? Kace will do both mac and windows imaging.
I think the time it takes is due to the learning process, I can update and add software to one of my masters and have a new image ready very quickly with the k2000. We went with the K2000 it had a lower TCO when factoring hardware and manpower in to support our desktop platforms.
http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/windows-7-image-process-for-the-college-s-classrooms
http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/creating-a-windows-7-sysprep-image-without-having-to-install-any-drivers-at-post-install-tasks
Comments:
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No Mac's at all. I've been mulling it over and it really seems like for our particular situation it doesn't provide much of a benefit. If we were a Dell and Mac shop I could see some time saving in the driver and model management but in the general scheme of automation I'm not sure it can fulfill what we need.
As described above, the techs can do a full capture with two clicks, and do a full deployment with one. The management of drivers is on par with MDT and Kace and will be a sticky point with any system.
In many ways it's a step backwards from what we have, MDT is a bit more technical i.e requires more knowledge of scripting etc it also provides the tools to really streamline and automate, the Kace system seems to be a bit more user friendly.
Of course I'm talking out of my arse as I've only been testing for a couple of days and I'll be persevering with it just to get a comprehensive idea.
It looks like we are still heading towards the K1000 for the asset management and application deployment but maybe not the K2000. - mhouston100 11 years ago -
Thanks for the comments guys, one other question, how is the integration with the K1000, if at all? - mhouston100 11 years ago
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OP, I am wanting to get away from the K2000 and am wanting to implement MDT 2012 U1. Managing MDT seems to be way more user friendly, GUI is easier to navigate, and it's stripped for exceptional performance. I hope to sell this to the team once I finish my development and process documentation. I would like to know your final thesis. We will likely stay with the K1000 for the same reasons you did. I would love to talk to you about MDT and see how far I have yet to go. - jsunderman 11 years ago
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I've since moved companies and forgot to update my email address on this site. Probably too late now but in the end we scrapped Kace, after knocking around with it for a few weeks I could get it to do what I wanted, but it is no where near as straight forward or thorough as MDT for OS deployment. I've update my details on here so feel free to PM if you need, probably a bit late ha ha - mhouston100 10 years ago
