February 19, 2008

KACE, which provides systems management literally in a [K]box appliance, is now adding another option for soft installation inside a VMware container. With the new option, if you can cram your KACE systems management or software provisioning instance in a fraction of a machine, you won't have to waste an entire 1U form factor rack server to do it.

Over the past year, the company has tripled its base to roughly 450 customers who have looked for a simpler way to manage things like software distribution, system image management, patch management, and system provisioning. The company claims it pick up where Altiris, now a part of Symantec, leaves off – in that it’s packaged everything into an appliance.

The rationale for virtualization is pretty obvious to us. But what was less clear is whether supporting VMware compromises the ease of deployment that an appliance supposedly provides. With an appliance, you don't have to install or configure software because it’s all in a black box, but with VMware, you’ll have to do some installation.

Not to worry, claimed Lou Bush, director of product management. He stated that with VMware, you’re not really installing software in the traditional sense. He claims that all you have to do is copy over the downloaded KACE files to the VMware container, and then VMware takes care of the rest. By contrast, if you had to install on a conventional rack unit, you’d be fiddling with the OS and configuring the various components of your software, such as connections to database and appserver.

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