KACE as a Service 7.1 - Administrator Guide

Log in to the K1000 System Administration Console, http://K1000_hostname/system, or select System from the drop-down list in the top-right corner of the page.

On the left navigation bar, click Settings.

On the Control Panel, click General Settings.

In the top section, provide the following information:

Option	Description
Company Name	Enter the name of your company.
Default Locale	Select the language to use in the Command Line Console, which uses the konfig user account.
Company Email Suffix	Enter the domain from which your users send email. For example: quest.com.
Appliance Administrator Email	Enter the email address of the appliance administrator. System-related messages, including critical alerts, are sent to this address.
Session Timeout	Set the number of inactive hours to allow before closing user sessions and requiring users to log in again. The default is 1. The User Console and Administrator Console have Timeout Session counters to alert users of this time limit. Only periods of inactivity are counted. The counter restarts when the user performs any action that causes the console to interact with the appliance server, such as refreshing a window, saving changes, and changing windows. When the counter reaches the limit, the user is logged out, unsaved changes are lost, and the login screen appears. The Timeout Session counter appears in the upper right of each console.
Enable mobile device access	Enable or disable Mobile Device Access to the appliance. Mobile device access enables you to interact with the K1000 appliance using the KACE GO app on iOS and Android smart phones and tablets. Administrators can use the app to access Service Desk, inventory, and application deployment features. See Configuring Mobile Device Access.
Require organization selection at login	Display the Organization drop-down list on the Administrator Console login page, http://K1000_hostname/admin, where K1000_hostname is the hostname of your appliance. This enables you to choose an organization when you log in. If this option is disabled, the Organization drop-down list is not displayed on the login page, and you can only log in to the Default organization from http://K1000_hostname/admin. If organization fast switching is enabled, however, you can switch between organizations after you log in to the Default organization.
Show organization menu in admin header	Display the fast-switching drop-down list in the top-right corner of the Administrator Console next to the login information. This drop-down list makes it possible to bypass the login page when you switch from one organization to another. To appear in the drop-down list, organizations must have the same admin account password; only those organizations whose admin account passwords match appear in the list. Changes to the drop-down list are displayed only after you log out and then log in again.
Enable linked reporting	Select to allow the generation of reports from Federated (linked) K1000 appliances.

In the Agent section, view or configure K1000 Agent task throughput:

Option

Description

Last Task Throughput Update

This value indicates the date and time when the appliance task throughput was last updated.

Current Load Average

The value in this field depicts the load on an appliance at any given point of time. For the appliance to run normally, the value in this field must be between 0.0 and 10.0.

Task Throughput

The value that controls how scheduled tasks, such as inventory collection, scripting, and patching updates, are balanced by the appliance.

NOTE: This value can be increased only if the value in the Current Load Average is not more than 10.0, and the Last Task Throughput Update time is more than 15 minutes.

In the User Console section, modify the text as needed:

Option	Description
Title	The heading that appears on the User Console login page.
Welcome Message	A welcome note or description of the User Console. This text appears below the title on the User Console login page.

In the Acceptable Use Policy section, select policy settings:

Option	Description
Enabled	Enable the appliance to display your policy, and require users to accept the terms of your policy, when they access the Administrator Console, User Console, or Command Line Console, or log in using SSH or FTP.
Title	The heading of the policy to be displayed on the login page of the User Console.
Message	Details of the policy, which are displayed below the Title on the login page. Users must agree to the terms of the policy before they can log in to the User Console.

In the Reporting section, specify the password for the reporting system:

Option	Description
Username	(Read-only) The username used to generate reports. The report username provides access to the database (for additional reporting tools), but does not give write access to anyone.
User Password	The report user password. This password is used only by the reporting system and MySQL™.

In the Log Retention section, select the number of days to retain log information. Log entries that are older than the selected number of days are automatically deleted from the log. See View appliance logs.

In the Share with Quest section, select data sharing options:

To validate the K1000 product license, Quest collects minimal license-related information, such as the MAC Address of the K1000 appliance, the version of the K1000 software, the license key, and the number of managed devices, regardless of the data sharing options selected in this section.

Option

Description

Share summary usage data...

Share detailed usage data...

ITNinja.com is a community website where IT professionals can share information and research on a wide variety of systems management and deployment topics. The ITNinja feed is a feature that dynamically displays software deployment tips and other contextual information on relevant pages in the K1000 Administrator Console. To enable the ITNinja feed, you need to select Share detailed Usage data.... This setting shares information anonymously with ITNinja. The ITNinja feed is available only if Share Summary Usage Data... is selected, and it is available only on pages related to software or deployment, such as the software, Managed Installation, and File Synchronization detail pages. The feed is not available on the Software Catalog detail page.

Clear this option to prevent the appliance from sharing inventory data with the ITNinja community. However, clearing this option does not remove any information that has already been shared. For more information, contact Quest Support.

To use a custom logo in the User Console, select images in the Logo Overrides section. Click Browse or Choose File to select the logo file.

NOTE: You can change the logo in the User Console only; you cannot change the logo in the Administrator Console.

Option

Description

User Console

The logo or other graphic displayed at the top of the User Console. The User Console is the web-based interface that makes applications available to users on a self-service basis. It also enables users to file Service Desk support tickets to request help or report issues. To access the User Console, go to http://<K1000_hostname>/user where <K1000_hostname> is the hostname of your appliance. Follow these guidelines for User Console graphics:

•

224 pixels wide by 50 pixels high is the default size.

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104 pixels wide by 50 pixels high stays inside the blue highlight around the Log Out link.

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300 pixels wide by 75 pixels high is the maximum size that does not impact the layout.

Report

This setting controls the logo used when generating System-level reports.

Upload a logo or other graphic to be displayed at the top of reports. The graphic must be 201 pixels wide by 63 pixels high as specified in the auto-generated XML layout. To use a different size, adjust the output of the XML report.

To see the default report logo and a customized version, refer to the following illustrations.

Figure 1. Default User Console logo

Figure 2. Custom User Console logo

Figure 3. Default report logo

Figure 4. Custom report logo

Figure 5. Default Alert logo

Figure 6. Custom Alert logo

10.

Click Save and Restart Services.

Configure Admin-level or organization-specific General Settings

If the Organization component is enabled on your appliance, configure organization-specific General Settings at the Admin level. You configure the General Settings for each organization separately.

See Adding, editing, and deleting organizations.

If the Organization component is not enabled on your appliance, see Configure appliance General Settings without the Organization component.

Go to the Admin-level General Settings page:

Log in to the K1000 Administrator Console, http://K1000_hostname/admin. Or, if the Show organization menu in admin header option is enabled in the appliance General Settings, select an organization in the drop-down list in the top-right corner of the page next to the login information.

On the left navigation bar, click Settings, then click General Settings.

In the General Options section, view or enter the following information.

Option	Description
Last Updated and Organization Name	(Read-only) The date the information was changed and the name of the organization. Organization Name can be edited at the System level. See Add or edit organizations.
Company Name	Enter the name of your company.
Administrator Email	Enter the email address of the appliance administrator. System-related messages, including critical alerts, are sent to this address.
Company Email Suffix	Enter the domain from which your users send email. For example: example.com.

Optional: In the Locale Settings section, specify locale settings. See Configuring locale settings.

Option

Description

Organization Locale

Select the locale to use for the selected organization’s Administrator Console and User Console. If you have multiple organizations, you can select different locales for each one. See:

•

Adding, editing, and deleting organizations

•

Configuring locale settings

Optional: In the Samba Share Settings section, select file sharing options then click Save Samba Settings. If File Shares are disabled, you need to enable them at the System level before you can enable them for the organization. See Configure security settings for the appliance.

Option

Description

Enable File Sharing

Use the appliance's client share to store files, such as files used to install applications on managed devices.

The appliance’s client share is a built-in Windows file server that can be used by the provisioning service to assist in distributing the Samba client on your network. Quest recommends that this file server only be enabled when you perform application installations on managed devices.

File Share User ‘admin’ Password

Enter the password to use for admin account access to the file share directory.

In the Ignore Client IP Address Settings section, enter the IP address or addresses to ignore. Separate each address with a comma. Ignoring IP addresses is useful when multiple devices could report themselves with the same IP address, such as a proxy address.

In the License Usage Warning Configurations section, select the percentage to use for the warning threshold and critical threshold for software license usage. If you have configured software License assets, threshold information is displayed on the license-related widgets on the Dashboard

In the Data Retention section, select the options for retaining data in the K1000 appliance database.

Option

Description

Retain Device Uptime Data

The number of months that device uptime information is retained in the K1000 appliance database.

Device uptime refers to the number of hours of each day that managed devices are running. You can retain this data for a specified number of months, Forever, or never save it (Disabled).

Retain Metering Data

The number of months that metering data is retained in the K1000 appliance database.

Metering data is information about how applications are installed and used on the Windows and Mac devices that you manage. Metering data that is older than the selected number of months is deleted on the first day of every month. See About metering information.

Retain Uncataloged data in the Software Catalog

Whether to retain information about Uncataloged applications in the K1000 appliance database.

Uncataloged applications are executables that are in the K1000 inventory but that do not appear in the Software Catalog, and the K1000 retains information about those applications by default. For organizations with a large number of managed devices, however, retaining this data might greatly increase the size of the database. This size increase could increase the time it takes to load pages in the Administrator Console and the time it takes to perform database backups.

Select this check box to retain data for Uncataloged software in the K1000 database. Clear the check box to disable data retention.

If data retention for Uncataloged software is disabled:

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Agents on managed devices continue to upload full inventory information, and raw data related to applications is fingerprinted. If data sharing is enabled, data is also uploaded to the Quest KACE Software Catalog. See Configure data sharing preferences.

•

The appliance continues to store information related to Cataloged applications and Locally Cataloged applications in the organization database.

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Reports for Cataloged applications continue to work as expected. However, reports related to Uncataloged applications show only those applications that are part of Cataloged software titles.

In the Asset Archive section, type the number of days that you want to keep the assets marked for archiving, before actually archiving them. The default value is 3 days.

In the Device Assignment section, indicate how you want to match users with devices: One-time sync, Continuous sync, or Disabled.

10.

In the Device Actions section, click Add New Action, the select the scripted actions to enable.

Device Actions are scripted actions that can be performed on managed devices. There are several pre-programmed actions available. To add your own action, select Custom Action in the Action menu, then enter the command in the Command Line text box.

The following variables are available for device actions:

KACE_HOST_IP

KACE_HOST_NAME

KACE_CUSTOM_INVENTORY_*

When device actions run, the appliance replaces variables with their appropriate values.

For KACE_CUSTOM_INVENTORY_ * replace the asterisk (*) with the name of a software application associated with a custom inventory rule. When the device action runs, the name is replaced with the custom inventory rule value for the device. Enter the software application name in uppercase characters. The allowed characters are: [A-Z0-9.-]."

If you are using Internet Explorer, you can define any valid statement to perform a task on a remote device, then assign a name to it to use the next time you want to perform that task. For example, you can enter the statement, ping.exe –t KACEHOSTIP and name it Ping. A valid statement is a maximum of 150 characters, and the name that you assign to it must be any printable character of up to 20 characters. For information about running Device Actions, see Run actions on devices.

NOTE: Most actions in the Action drop-down list require you to install additional applications for them to function. For example, using DameWare requires you to install TightVNC on your device as well as on the device you want to access.

NOTE: To run Device Actions, you must have the Administrator Console open in Internet Explorer, because ActiveX is required to launch these programs on the local device. Other browsers do not support ActiveX. See https://support.quest.com/kb/148787.

11.

In the Patch Schedule section, if you want disable administrators to apply patches to all devices, select the Hide All Devices check box.

Use this setting with caution. It is usually better to test patch actions on a limited number of devices, and to limit patch actions to selected devices or device labels. This limitation ensures that patch actions are applied appropriately.

NOTE: You can only apply this setting if you do not have any patch schedules set up to run against all devices. Otherwise, a warning appears.

12.

To use a custom logo in the User Console, select images in the Logo Overrides section.

NOTE: You can change the logo in the User Console only; you cannot change the logo in the Administrator Console.

Option

Description

User Console

The logo or other graphic displayed at the top of the User Console. Follow these guidelines for graphics:

•