Quick background:
I'm a contractor hired by a MSP company to help out with, among other things, an evaluation of Solarwinds as a replacement for their existing ScreenConnect & LabTech solutions. As such I have a less-than-perfect handle on precisely what they need, what they merely think they need, and what they want. At the moment one of the main projects I'm working on in this regard is a point by point comparison between the features of what they're currently using and N-Central. Most of it has been either obvious, or the product of a reasonably simple Google search, but at the point where I really have to start digging in to things to do research the cost/benefit of not asking questions and finding the answers myself starts to taper off.
To be clear - I don't sit around waiting for answers. I'm simply saying that at a certain point the time invested looking exceeds the value of not simply asking one or more people likely to know the answer off the top of their head. You still keep working on the answers yourself, but put the questions out there so someone can potentially save you the time.
To that end, I have a list of questions:
- Is there an included capacity for one-time support sessions? By this we mean something like a link we can email or a website we can direct a customer to in order to establish an RDP-like session where they don’t have or don’t want to have the agent installed. (Like Windows Remote Assistance, but using something more powerful.)
- Is there a way to override the client-side screen timeout settings so that when we’re remotely connected to their device it will not go into screensaver, sleep, or lock for as long as we’re connected?
- Is there an include wake command or is that only possible through a separate tool?
- Can we provide customers with remote access to their machines only, so that they only see the devices in their customer section?
- It looks like we should be able to set up Microsoft patching policies where workstations and servers are patched under different conditions/schedules, but is there a way to manually tell a device to go and get a particular patch right away?
- Can we remotely and silently install software?
- I believe I found instructions for it, but want to verify that it’s possible to set a GPO policy on a domain where every computer will download and install the agent.
- Is there a way to configure it so that if it detects a specific VM is off it will attempt to restart that VM?
- What mechanism (if any) is recommended to remotely run scripts/commands?
- It appears that under Configuration > Security Manager > Profiles we can create a new rule to control what Applications can be installed. Is it possible to specifically blacklist/whitelist programs or only blacklist? Is there a means to notify when a user attempts to install a blocked program?
- Just want to confirm that we can set up notifications for failed backups and/or problems involving the AV (ie. not installed, found a virus, etc).
- In ScreenConnect you can see a screenshot that's updated every 15 minutes or so of the client machine (and update it manually if needed). Can this be done in N-Central without actually connecting to the device? (Useful for determining whether the machine is being actively used or not when you need to connect but can't reach the user.)
The ultimate goal is to use the entire list (these questions and the ones I've already found answers to) to build a reasonably-quick demo for the whole team to show them what it can and (potentially) can't do. So a simple "yes it does that" answer is fine, but even better is "yes, and here's how". I'm happy to get a link to a how-to I couldn't find myself, or if you want to write the explanation yourself that's great. The point is that if the answer is "yes" I'm going to need to be able to demonstrate it. "I've been told it's possible" isn't a popular answer in meetings.
Thanks in advance.
