Kaseya piles feature upon feature into its remote-control repertoire and supports thousands of users with its server-based remote-control, audit, backup, patch management, trouble ticket, inventory and script system.
Kaseya piles feature upon feature into its remote-control repertoire and supports thousands of users with its server-based remote-control, audit, backup, patch management, trouble ticket, inventory and script system.
It requires at least a Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition running SQL Server, and Exchange can’t be running on the same server.
No other system requires so much horsepower, but no other nonhosted system promises to manage so many details of 3,000-plus remotely controlled clients. The trade-off is that installation is a more involved process than it is with most other products.
Clients download the agent software, which authenticates back to the Kaseya server for connection. Remote software clients from pcAnywhere, RAdmin, VNC and Terminal Server all work with the Kaseya server.
By default, Kaseya uses the VNC client, so we did the same. An agent-software push utility worked great in our tests with Windows 2000 systems, but not Windows XP SP2. Documentation can be read from Kaseya’s Web site or a downloadable PDF without any hyperlinks to help navigate the 381-page file.
The management console stays in touch with remote PCs with the agent software running. One click on the PC’s name starts the remote-control process. For remote users, Kaseya bypasses remote-side firewall issues by having the PC start the agent software first, which then reaches out to contact the Kaseya administration server.
Kaseya includes file transfer, IM (including audio) and streaming video. As the name says, this product support PCs only, but supports them well, including basic machine inventory reports and manager-friendly pie charts of patch status and client operating systems. Idle managers will be unhappy with the latency in remote Solitaire, however.
If you have 1,000 or more systems that need occasional remote control, or want a do-everything application on a dedicated server, check out Kaseya. It offers a large number of online courses to help customers manage their software.
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