Virginia Tech Automates User State Management with Kaseya

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 06/19/08

Virginia Tech's Outreach Information Services (OIS) has deployed the Kaseya User State Management (KUSM) module, extending its use of Kaseya IT automation software to include the setting up and deployment of user profiles. Administrators are now able to create, update, migrate and back up user settings and apply the images to workstations remotely through the Kaseya application.

"We have a small, yet dedicated, IT staff responsible for the management of more than 300 distributed systems. Any time we can automate or eliminate repetition is greatly appreciated," said Scott Farmer, director of OIS. "Kaseya enables us to efficiently and reliably monitor, update, maintain, secure, back up and now deploy user settings and regulate power from a single, Web-based management console.

For example, when OIS upgrades a user to a newer workstation, an administrator uses KUSM to capture existing user settings, mapped drives, power consumption policies and drivers and restore the settings on the new machine. The process is handled remotely.

OIS provides IT services and support to the university's Outreach and International Affairs (OIA) office, an organization that matches student and university research resources with business, government and non-profit communities. In previous years the IT team has used Kaseya to ensure the availability and performance the network. By deploying KUSM, the group hoped to streamline administrative work and get users up and running on their PCs more quickly.

"Configuring user settings by hand can be tedious, time consuming, and there is a substantial risk of forgetting something," said Farmer. "KUSM lets us automate the process of defining, updating, deploying and backing up user profiles, saving me from having to do it over and over and over again. It not only saves me time and resources; it helps make equipment upgrades more seamless and a more positive experience for the end user."

KUSM also enables OIS to monitor and regulate power settings of remote workstations. Power settings can be set for groups of machines and regulated against a benchmark, identifying machines or users that are draining power. KUSM can then turn off PCs and monitors that are left on overnight or on the weekend.