KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is a virtual appliance designed to automate device management, application deployment, patching, asset management, and Service Desk ticket management.

This release of the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) includes the following features and enhancements:

• Infrastructure
• Device Communications
• Service Desk

NOTE: For more information on new features, known/resolved issues, or installation instructions, please see the 12.0 Release Notes and Administrator Guide.

To download version 12.0, please see the 12.0 Downloads.

For any additional questions or assistance, please contact technical support.

What's New in SMA 12.0 Videos

• KACE Kontinuing Education (KKE): What's New - SMA 12.0

Feature Highlights of the 12.0 Release

Infrastructure:

• Azure and AWS S3 storage support: You can now configure the appliance to use cloud-based off-board backup such as the Microsoft Azure Blob and Amazon S3 storage. This required an MD Azure or Amazon S3 storage account, as applicable. See How to configure Offboard Backup with Microsoft Azure Blob Storage or Amazon AWS S3 Bucket.
• Ability to change the name of the admin user: If your environment includes multiple appliances, you can simplify and speed up periodic administrative changes to comply with your security policies. The name of the default admin account can be easily changed, however use caution when changing the login and password of the admin account. The admin account login names and password on all linked appliances and organizations must be the same if you want to switch between them using the drop-down list in the top-right corner. See How to change the name of the SMA 'admin' user.
• Administrative user security enhancements: The local admin account can now be disabled or renamed, as needed. See What's new 12.0 - Infrastructure: Administrative user security enhancements.
• LDAP/SAML for the System Administration Console: LDAP support is now extended to the System Administration Console. It allows a user to access the System Administration Console using an LDAP profile, and to access each organization’s Administrator Console as an administrator with full read/write permissions. See What's new 12.0 - Infrastructure: Administrative user security enhancements and How to setup LDAP Authentication.
• Changing default configuration passwords: Starting in this release, you can easily change the passwords of the default service accounts, such as konfig/konfig and netdiag/netdiag. See How to change default configuration passwords.
• Scalability enhancements:  The appliance now allows you to manage up to 50k devices using the default configuration.
• FreeBSD 12.2: FreeBSD included with the appliance is updated to version 12.2, that addresses a number of security advisories.
  
• Initial Setup wizard enhancements: The Initial Setup wizard now allows you to restore the appliance data from a backup, and to re-set network configuration, as needed.
• Ability to exclude network settings from a restore job: Backup, restore, and migration processes often run in multiple environments, such as testing and development. It is often required for both target and destination devices to remain online. The restore process now have the option to exclude network settings, allowing the appliance administrator to keep selected devices online. See How to exclude network settings from a restore job.
• Nutanix support: The appliance can now be hosted on Nutanix. Note that Nutanix support for Guest Tools on FreeBSD is not supported at this time, so certain Nutanix features such as VSS (snapshot), self-service restore, and VM Mobility are not available. See Nutanix Setup Guide.

Device Communications

• Native M1-Series CPU Agent for macOS: Starting in this release, the KACE Agent can run natively on Apple Silicon (M1) chips.

Service Desk

• Knowledge Base articles suggested at ticket creation: As you create a Service Desk ticket, a list of suggested knowledge base articles appears based on the information provided in the ticket. See What's new 12.0 - Knowledge Base articles suggested at ticket creation.
• Ticket import tool: The appliance now includes a custom mapping capability to import tickets from external systems, to allow you easily migrate your tickets from another system. See How to import tickets and comments into a Service Desk queue.