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Possible to run 2 K1000 appliances?

We are currently running one K1000 appliance. We utilize the k1000 for help desk, hardware/software inventory, and pushing software/scripts. We have been experiencing an issue lately where the K1000 simply stops being able to push any software or scripts. Scheduled tasks stopped running during nightly maintenance windows and when attempting to use the "Run Now" option, known-working tasks simply get stuck as either "running" or "pending". This happened towards the beginning of September and a reboot made it actually start working again, and we called in a support ticket to have a Dell support person remote in and take a look to see if there was something wrong with our appliance. They ended up modifying the scripting update and agent inventory times a bit but this had no apparent effect as just a few short weeks later, we ended up dead in the water again. No tasks would run. We have another ticket in and just ended another support call, the only recommendations were to increase the RAM and vCPU for the appliance. I don't believe this is the cause of the issue. We are currently managing ~2700 clients and have 4vCPU and 8GB assigned to the appliance. Though this does fall short of the recommended 8 vCPU and 16GB that is for supporting 2,000-4,000 clients, we had been operating just fine. We also aren't utilizing a lot of the features that would necessitate the higher resource usage, such as patch management, etc.

We were also told that we should avoid managing more than 255 PCs at a time. That includes pushing software/scripts through smart labels/scheduled tasks and the "Run Now" option.

The MySQL service is currently at ~350% utilization but the support tech did nothing more than point it out to us.

A reboot did nothing for us this time as we tried that twice before calling in yet another support ticket. It is also a major pain to coordinate the reboot for the appliance as our Help Desk department is completely separate from my area which performs the actual system deployment/maintenance.

Does anyone know if it is possible to setup two K1000 appliances (without paying extra) and having the Help Desk portion running on one while the other is used for pushing software/scripts, etc.? We are getting desperate and thought that perhaps this would allow us greater troubleshooting capabilities without having to hinder the Help Desk operations.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

1 Comment   [ + ] Show comment
  • It sounds like a performance issue, I would start by trying to meet minimum hardware specs for 2700 devices.
    https://support.software.dell.com/kb/196000

    Since the table in based in amount of devices (not amount of tasks being performed etc.)

    In regards two appliances with one license, better contact sales rep. to confirm... it does not sound logical but might be possible. - Channeler 7 years ago

Answers (3)

Posted by: SMal.tmcc 7 years ago
Red Belt
3
I recommend using replication shares to distribute to take the load off the k1

https://www.google.com/search?q=kace+k1000+replication&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Posted by: RichB 7 years ago
Second Degree Brown Belt
0
I agree with replication shares to distribute the load. We have four for our 11,000 PC's. 

As far as splitting help desk and inventory it is possible and we did that many years ago when the help desk performance was suffering with heavy inventory tasking. I'm not sure it is recommended any more but it helped us and we never went back. We had two servers at the time so the spare was a no cost hardware solution for us at the time. We are still only purchasing one license for split-system since only one has any "Nodes." Our heavy performer (inventory) is a refreshed hardware server and the help desk is now virtual. Our policy is to designate one day a month to push new software and patch updates so that day is extremely busy with the web interface responding slowly. That isn't acceptable for our help desks. There is a possibility for linking the two boxes so they are a pull-down menu away from each other but they are not sharing data so tickets can't be tied to inventory items. Other than that limitation it has been better isolating the two purposes with our 30+ help desk queues humming along fine every day. Your sales rep would need to be involved.
Posted by: dugullett 7 years ago
Red Belt
0
We use multiple. We are at about 23,000 PCs, and 1,500 servers though. Your one license can license up to 3 appliances. We use a combination of DNS, and some HOSTS file changes to get users to the right Kbox for their machine. They cannot check in to both Kboxs though. I agree with checking out the hardware.

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