Dell KACE
AppDeploy

The Platform Layer

Enabling Rapid Deployment and Reliability

The physical KACE Appliance is easily deployed, being comprised of a 1U rack-mountable server with multi-core processors, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, optional redundant power supplies, and hard disks in a RAID configuration. This hardware configuration provides excellent reliability and performance through hardware redundancy and resource configuration mapped to the needs of the appliance management services and application services layers. KACE Virtual Appliances are also an option and can be deployed directly on VMware Virtual Infrastructure.

The software platform is composed of mature, open source-based infrastructure components that provide a secure, stable and cost effective computing environment. Leveraging open source components allows the operating environment to be precisely tuned to optimize the management and application layer functionality of the KACE Appliance. These components can also be tightly controlled to provide a secure, hardened environment that only runs services that are necessary for the appliance management and application layers. This eliminates security vulnerabilities that can exist if unnecessary platform services are running.

With the pre-configured standard form factor the deployment of the KACE Appliance platform is simple, requiring only minimal initial network addressing as part of the boot up process. The appliance uses standard protocols making it easy to deploy behind the firewall or in the DMZ depending on the security and connectivity requirements of the managed systems.

This function-specific design is a key advantage of appliance architectures in general, and for the KACE Appliance specifically, as it enables delivery of superior performance, reliability and ease of deployment.

KACE K1000 Management Appliance

Single, Integrated Agent

The K1000 agent architecture is designed to keep deployment and maintenance costs to a minimum. A single, integrated agent supports all of the K1000 functionality, which speeds deployment. Agentless scanning is used to speed the initial deployment of the K1000 agent by identifying all available systems for agent installation, and then installing agents on these systems.The K1000 offers organizations a wide variety of mechanisms for initial agent deployment including directly pushing the agent from the K1000, download from the K1000 User Portal and login scripts. This flexibility ensures that organizations can quickly and efficiently deploy the K1000 agent regardless of their network and security infrastructure.

After initial deployment, the K1000’s agent auto-upgrade feature allows automatic upgrade of agents to new versions, eliminating the need to provision new agents when upgrading the K1000. K1000 agentless scanning also eases maintenance by quickly identifying any new systems attaching to the network that require management, and automatically pushing the agents to them.

KACE K2000 Deployment Appliance

Agentless Deployment

Agentless deployment makes deploying and administering the K2000 extremely simple. Unlike traditional provisioning solutions, no agents need to be deployed and maintained. Instead all deployments from the K2000 can be executed over the network from the centralized K2000 deployment library. Agentless deployment reduces provisioning complexity, and also improves deployment efficiency and reliability, by ensuring that all deployments can be conducted remotely from a centralized, trusted library.

The K2000 agentless, network-based architecture utilizes PXE standards to provision any LAN connected x86-based system. When PXE enabled systems boot, their local DHCP server directs them to network boot from the appliance instead of from their local hard drive. These systems appear as available for deployment tasks in the K2000 deployment console, and administrators can immediately schedule provisioning tasks such a capturing or deploying an image. Administrators can also manually add systems to the K2000 via their MAC addresses before systems have booted from the appliance, so that provisioning tasks can be scheduled for initial boot to the K2000. These agentless capabilities not only reduce initial deployment costs, but also reoccurring maintenance costs since no agent maintenance or updates are required.