Soon, means when?

Thanks for the update, Alex!

What does "soon" mean?

We are a medium sized university with several computer labs with 25 to 40 computers in each lab. We have a fast network so bandwidth is not a big issue. It is a requirement that we be able to mulitcast to 25 to 150 computers at one time and have them image in a reasonable length of time. We have Ghost for single images and have used Novell zenworks imaging in the past but it no longer works reliably for us. For that reason we are looking at other alternatives. Our network is 100% Novell zenworks so we do not have active directory. When we first looked at Kace active directory was a requirement. I am told by the sales rep that it is no longer a hard requirement. That is ok but if it will not allow imaging an entire lab or multiple labs and classrooms then Kace would not even be a consideration.

I agree with the whole faster image deployment. I also agree with being able to team the NICs together which at this point is planned if I remember correctly. However, even without being able to do multicast imaging and limited to one 1GB port, my organization for our school district, I create anywhere between 18-25GB images and I deploy 23 at a time just because of using 1 switch. It deploys within 3-3.5hours to all of them.

We are a school district of 6,000 imaged devices and we feel KACE was the biggest disappointment. We are now seeking other solutions so we can image more than 5-7 machines at a time. We need 30+ multicast support. I think KACE in general for one off images works great, but we just can't spend days imaging 30 computer labs.

well, even without multicasting, if you could deploy a cluster of RSA's on one network (say 3-4 for 200 computers) and have one of them act as a "traffic director", that'd work nicely. One device acting as a load-leveling traffic manager.

My votes are all for multicast, I have heard of a feature called simulcasting which allows clients to inject themselves in the middle of an ongoing multicast stream and pickup the remainder when it recylcles the multicast stream. And one...

Agree to this 110% except that it needs to say 100+ machines at a time. We're having the same problems as everyone else and are considering other alternatives at this point. Hopefully the 3.4 update will improve things for us but this is definitely not competitive compared to other options.

Allowing an admin to group RSA's would be nice, and then allow them to push an image through the group (divide all pc's up equally amongst the group) instead of the admin having to manually do this.

In our college we had to upgrade to multiple virtual K2000 units running on a Dell blade server (previously we have one physical K2000 box). This upgrade along with using the KACE native imaging kit (WIMs) has brought our formatted imaging capacity to approximately 30 machines at full speed of 2.5 hours on a 60GB image (75 units at once have been done reliably although at half speed) on one virtual unit. With sufficient network capacity on the server our logs have shown that the blade can probably handle 7-10 virtual units running at this same full speed.

Not to mention that using non-formatted Kimaging or after managed installations with a K1000 would help relieve the K2000 network usage and imaging time even further.

I'm doubting multicast is ever coming, but working with what you can it is possible to get acceptable mass deployment results.

After nearly 200k investment between K1200 and K2000, training, etc. Multicast should have been included on DAY 1 of release. The K2000 has been the biggest waste of time and investment so far.

It is useless in a enterprise environment where imaging dozens or more of machines at a time is needed. Who the heck has the time and man power to image 1-5 machines at a time and then spend all day waiting hours to complete.

Having to do deal with the lack of multicast is like stepping backwards over a decade for imaging.
With the need to image entire sites or sometimes hundreds of machines, this should be working.

The fact that this Idea is dated October 26 2010 shows how poor the development is.

Either multicast, bonded interfaces, or support for something faster than gigabit. I've got a 10gig backend and the KACE is hosted on an HP blade server, everything is 10gig, but I don't get much benefit for imaging. Bonding interfaces and/or 10gig support would alleviate some of the issues.

KACE isn't even an option for our college without mutlicast support

I also work for a large community college where we have 4 major imaging times a year during our breaks. We setup 1000's of computers during these periods and most classrooms have around 30 computers. I use Ghost for fast bit-by-bit multicast cloning. Our administration wants us to use our new K2000 to do this but it is not possible in the short amount of time we have to do our configuration. I have podium computer setups that run 20-30GB and need to be sent out to 80-100 computers. I currently have this ability with Ghost. We have around 4000 classroom computers and 100's of special Ghost images. We also have multiple multicast sessions running simultaneously to accomplish this feat of getting things ready for the next term. Please make multicast bit cloning a high priority.

Multicasting an image is a must for institutions like schools with large number of PCs setup in a classroom environment.

Not every customer is going to have a high speed network in every location. It would make economic sense for KACE to be able to sell into those locations as well! If KACE *is* sold into a location with multiple computers and less than optimum netowking (and these are legion!), then there *will* be disillusioned and disatisfied customers.

Our school images anywhere from 10-15 classrooms during semester breaks which is usually 10 working days. These classrooms each have about 25 computers in them. We need multicasting for classroom imaging between semesters.

I know the kbox wasn't desinged for the massive amout of machines that we image at our College, but I am sure there are going to be other college's in the near future that are going to need a multicast working for there class rooms. Would you please consider this as an option, for those of use that have over 25 PC's in our class rooms.

We left Ghost and Zenworks behind to use the Kbox for our imaging purposes, yet we are spending more time in a single classroom than ever before.. Please add multicasting to the kbox.