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KACE Systems Deployment Appliance 8.2 Common Documents - Administrator Guide

About the KACE Systems Deployment Appliance Getting started Using the Dashboard Configuring the appliance Setting up user accounts and user authentication Configuring security settings Preparing for deployment Managing device inventory Using labels Creating a Windows or Linux Boot Environment Managing drivers Capturing images Capturing user states Creating scripted installations Creating a task sequence Automating deployments Performing manual deployments Managing custom deployments Managing offline deployments Imaging Mac devices About the Remote Site Appliance Importing and exporting appliance components Managing disk space Troubleshooting appliance issues Updating appliance software Glossary About us Legal notices

Add a virtual disk for offboard storage

Add a virtual disk for offboard storage

You can add a virtual disk to migrate data stored on a virtual KACE Systems Deployment Appliance or on a Remote Site Appliance (RSA) to an additional virtual disk to free up disk space.

Power off the appliance, add the virtual disk, and then power on the appliance.

Configuring a virtual disk for your KACE Systems Deployment Appliance or RSA requires the following:

•
Ensuring that the virtual disk capacity is at least 250GB. You cannot use a virtual disk with less storage capacity than the KACE Systems Deployment Appliance or RSA onboard storage. For example, if you have 250GB of onboard data, the virtual disk must have more than 250GB of available storage.
•
Planning for your data migration because it can take several hours depending on the amount of data and the network speed. The KACE Systems Deployment Appliance or RSA is unavailable during migration.
1.
On the left navigation pane, click Settings to display the Control Panel, then click Data Storage to display the Data Storage page.
2.
Click Change to offboard storage to display the Data Storage Configuration.
* 
•
If the virtual disk is not added or connected properly, you cannot perform the data migration.
•
If there is more than one virtual disk connected, remove the additional virtual disks so that there is only one virtual disk connected. Restart the procedure to return to the Data Storage Configuration page.
3.
Click Verify device.
The KACE Systems Deployment Appliance starts checking whether it can be reached and configured. Show Details displays the status of the verification.
4.
Click Migrate to copy the data to offboard storage.
The progress bar displays the status.
5.
After the migration completes, click Close.
6.
Verify that the storage type is changed.
If you encounter any errors, click Settings to expand the section, then click Appliance Logs to display the Appliance Logs page, and select Data Storage Configuration logs.

Revert offboard data to onboard storage

Revert offboard data to onboard storage

You can migrate data stored on an offboard storage device back to the appliance or RSA as long as the data does not exceed the onboard storage capacity. The appliance verifies whether it has enough space for the data. If the data on the device exceeds the available space on the appliance, the offboard data is not migrated.

For information on the appliance data storage capacity, go to http://documents.quest.com/kace-systems-deployment-appliance/technical-specifications-for-virtual-appliances/.

1.
On the left navigation pane, click Settings to display the Control Panel, then click Data Storage to display the Data Storage page.
2.
Click Change to offboard storage to display the Data Storage Configuration wizard.
3.
Do one of the following to revert offboard data back to onboard storage:
◦
Added new data to the offboard-storage device:
a.
Click Revert to original data that was on the appliance before migrating to offboard storage. Any new data stored on the offboard-storage device after migrating the onboard data to the offboard storage will be lost.
b.
Click Next and select Yes, revert to onboard storage.
◦
No new data added data to the offboard-storage device:
a.
Click Copy data from offboard storage to the appliance.
b.
Click Verify storage space.
After the appliance verifies whether it has enough space to accept the data from the device, confirm that you want to continue the migration.
c.
Click Migrate.
◦
If you are migrating RSA data to a virtual disk, synchronize the RSA with the appliance before migrating the data to the virtual disk.  
* 
NOTE: The RSA becomes inaccessible when you reboot the RSA during reverse migration from offboard to onboard storage.
a.
On the left navigation pane, click Deployments, and click Remote Sites to display the Remote Site Appliance page.
b.
Select the RSA, then select Choose Action > Sync.

Configure an off-board storage device

Configure an off-board storage device

You can add an external Network Attached Storage (NAS) device to migrate data stored on a physical appliance to free up disk space on the appliance. When you migrate the data to an offboard storage device, the data stored on the appliance is no longer accessible.

Plan your data migration because it can take several hours depending on the amount of data and the network speed. During migration, the appliance is not accessible.

Go to the http://www.itninja.com/community/dell-kace-k2000-deployment-appliance website for device-specific configuration instructions that are not available from the appliance.

1.
On the left navigation pane, click Settings to display the Control Panel, then click Data Storage to display the Data Storage page.
2.
Click Change to offboard storage to display the Data Storage Configuration wizard.
3.
Select the storage device for the appliance.
Ensure that the device storage capacity is at least 250GB. An offboard-storage device cannot have less storage capacity than the appliance onboard storage. For example, if you have 250GB of onboard data, the offboard-storage device must have more than 250GB of available storage.
4.
In Address, type the host name or the IP address of the offboard-storage device.
In Share Path, type the full path of the share configured on the offboard-storage device.
5.
Configure the device settings, then click Verify device settings.
Read the device instructions and verify that you have properly configured the settings listed for the offboard-storage device. Use a private network and if possible, restrict access by IP address to prevent security vulnerabilities.
The appliance checks whether the device is reachable and configurable. Show details displays the status of the verification.
6.
Click Migrate to copy the data to offboard storage.
The progress bar displays the status.
7.
After the migration completes, click Close.
8.
Verify that the storage type is changed.
If you encounter any errors, click Settings to expand the section, then click Appliance Logs to display the Appliance Logs page, and select Data Storage Configuration logs.

Best practices for using external storage

Best practices for using external storage

Moving to external storage makes all your deployments, image captures, media uploads, and downloads dependent on the stability and speed of the external server and its network connection to the appliance. To that end, there are several recommendations to follow.

The external storage server is a dedicated device

It should not provide shares or other functionality to other machines or devices in order to avoid resource conflicts. The data can only be passed to the appliance (and out of the client machine) as quickly as the storage server can provide it. If the storage server is tied up sending data to other devices it will impact deployment/capture times and could even lead to deployment failure.

The external storage server is connected to the physical appliance by its own private network

The appliance has two network ports, the second network port should be used to connect the external storage server on its own private network isolated from the appliance front-end network. Connecting the storage server over the appliance front-end network effectively cuts your network band width in half, making a 1 GB network a 500 MB network. During capture/deployment the data must come to the appliance from the storage server and then from the appliance to the client. Using the front end network means the data must traverse the front end NIC twice. This will have a drastic performance impact and could lead to failed deployments due to network congestion. Additionally, the storage server and the appliance should be connected on the same physical switch (VLAN/subnet). Any latency of packets caused be traversing multiple switches/routers directly translates to longer or failed deployments and should be avoided.

The external storage server should be enterprise class hardware

Since the appliance deployment speed is dependent on the storage server being able to keep up with the load, any delay caused by a slow storage server will translate into long deployments or failed deployments. Therefore, as an example, if using a network-attached storage (NAS) device, a desktop or SOHO (small office/home office) model would not be appropriate. Likewise the use of a virtual machine as a storage server is discouraged, in testing and in the field we have found no matter how robust the infrastructure, the virtual server, specifically NFS (network file system) is not reliable under heavy load.

The drives on the storage server are high speed high performance drives

Any time the storage server must delay sending data to the appliance, because it is waiting to read the drives, will translate into longer deployments or failed deployments. There are many different drive manufacturers so it is not possible to rate them, all but as an example Western Digital® drives come in four types: Green (echo friendly), Blue (consumer), Red (low-grade raid), and Black (high performance). We would recommend using only the Black high performance drives. If your storage server is using SAN (storage area network) drives ensure they can produce performance equal to or better than the high performance physical drives. It is recommended SAN drives are bench marked tested as some operating systems can not utilize the throughput the SAN is rated for.

Anti-virus software is not installed on your storage server

If you must have an anti virus on your storage server, it must be configured to ignore the appliance share completely. Most anti-virus software solutions use a scan on access which means any file accessed is scanned before being sent out across the network. WIM files are going to be several GB in size, causing the scan to take a very long time, which in turn will cause deployment timeout issues. Also many anti-virus software solutions choose to quarantine uploaded files if they seem to be compromised. This is especially true for driver files which could be catastrophic when they get quarantined, causing deployments to fail with blue screens because the driver needed it no longer part of the image. Further anti-virus and security policies can make or force changes to the file permissions or ownership, causing the appliance to no longer have access to them.

For additional information, visit https://support.quest.com/kace-systems-deployment-appliance/kb/111864. This article provides a list of tested NAS devices, however there are others that provide adequate functionality. KACE does not publish any specifications for Windows-based storage servers, so it is important if using a Windows machine to ensure it runs on modern enterprise-class hardware.

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