The setup was pretty straightforward. We had a demonstration, a virtual machine that was set up for us, and we were given, 30 or maybe 45 days to play with it. It ran side by side with our, at the time, current RMM solution. We didn't get a real chance to push too many API integrations that the Kaseya VSA claimed it would make as that would have caused a conflict with what we were doing with our current RMM solution. 

Everything we attempted to do at the time, and we ran into a couple of these issues, were explained by the engineer that we worked with (as well as the sales representative) as just issues we were facing due to it running in a demo. After we voiced our concerns, we were told once it's at a full, paid version, that those issues will be resolved. From a technical standpoint, they seemed to have just taken our demo container and migrated it into a live version and never actually resolved any issues we had with the demo. Definitely one of those classic situations where the sales team was amazing and then, once you signed on the dotted line, they were nowhere to be found.

We used the NinjaRMM platform to push the installation for the VSA. The setup was within a month, within 30 days. In that time, we were able to push it out to all of our endpoints.

Maintenance and updates were all managed by our support contract. They would schedule times. Generally, it was 3:00 AM or 10:00 PM, and notified us a couple of weeks in advance, unless it was a critical topic. We were just made aware of scheduled maintenance in advance.

In terms of the initial setup, it's a bit of a mix. We had some help getting it set up. They assigned a team for us and walked us through our first deployment, getting everything set up. The complicated part was that there were a lot of menus at first, and some of the terminologies they used were a little different, and they're retiring some of them right now. For example, one of their areas is called Patch Management. A normal person would assume that's where I'm going to do all my patches. That is not the case. Patch Management was a legacy piece that they were trying to get rid of, it's all done under Software Management. There was a lot of stuff that this program can do at first, and being a newbie with it was a lot thrown at us right away. 

We have completed the training since then and are now VSA certified. Since the training and certification, a lot more of it makes sense as to why things are the way they are.

They built the backend, which includes our cloud portal, in a very short period of time. In order for us to deploy them, we probably had them up and running within two or three business days.

The initial setup is fairly complex, but they're pretty good at walking you through things.

In terms of the installation part of the product, I use the solution's remote version completely, so it is just a matter of sign-in, and there is nothing to install. All I need to do to onboard a customer is that I need to create the customer account on the portal, after which I download the agent, which is the tiny file, and then I deploy it on the customer's network, and the tool does the rest of the job by itself.

The solution's deployment process doesn't take much time. Depending on the network's size, users install the agent on one of their servers, after which it scans the network, and as the machines come live, it deploys the agent to those machines. In general, the deployment process doesn't take long since it can be done within a short period of time, especially if all the endpoints are present in an environment, because it can manage a network relatively quickly in around an hour, as it can pull up all the information.

Setting up VSA is difficult. I'm still not done configuring it. We deployed early last year, and I felt like we were getting a pretty good handle on it, but they got hacked by the Russians. I lost all momentum, and everything that was working isn't working now. It's been a struggle ever since, so I would say I still don't have it fully deployed 17 months later.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a seven out of ten.

The initial setup was a mix. Some visually poor UI elements complicated the process, while remote control of assets was straightforward. 

The deployment was very quick thanks to the incredible probe functionality. We would install a probe on the domain controller and assets would be checking in within minutes. 

We didn't do the setup; our network team does that. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to speak on how easy or difficult the initial setup was. I cannot speak to the deployment process either. I don't know how long it takes.

The initial setup is straightforward.

It is simple to implement, especially when the end-user knows what policy they want to implement.

We have to understand the customer's requirements then we can map the correct deployment for them, such as retrieving the VSA applications, automation, and database. The full process including the configuration and licensing is one week.

I rate the setup of Kaseya VSA a ten out of ten.

The initial setup is not particularly difficult but requires some assistance which we received from the company. 

VSA is not as complex as Intune, but it is still somewhat complex and not very user-friendly. CrowdStrike is friendlier in deployment than VSA.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the initial setup an eight since it was fairly easy.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises. You need to provide a dedicated server to Kaseya VSA for the on-premises version. I have no visibility over whether the solution was configured or installed using which cloud provider.

The time for the deployment phase of the solution depends on how many agents one wants to install. If there are too many agents to be installed, it takes over a month, but if only 100 agents or lower than that have to be installed, then it will not exceed a month.

The solution's deployment phase involves installing agents for which around five to ten staff members from my organization would be required.

It is in the middle of the road or moderate. Some people who are not familiar with it might find it a little bit more complex.

If you're installing it on-prem, it is going to take at least a couple of days to put together the infrastructure and get the webserver and the SQL server going. Installing it on top of those would probably take another couple of hours. You can have something up and running with various people involved within a day. You just need a couple of people from different teams.

I take care of its maintenance. They usually put out a patch once a month. So, usually once a month, there is a downtime. A couple of years ago, they used to take five to seven hours. They're now down to about 30 minutes of actual downtime. So, the outage is not too terrible these days.

We are now using the SaaS version, and we can configure it in a few hours or half a day. The on-prem version, which I haven't used in a while, takes longer. It is not as easy as the SaaS version, but anyone with the basic knowledge of the configuration apps can set up the system. You don't need high-level engineers. The on-prem setup can take up to two days. For the on-prem version, we need at least three engineers. There were several issues with the on-prem version, but they seem to have fixed those.

It is easy to manage. For on-prem, you need to take care of the agent updates. You need to maintain the server side, the database side, and the application side.

VSA is not difficult to install. One of VSA's good features is that it will build up the different modules or versions that you don't have, and it will apply all the fixes while building a VM. I've always found that feature to be good ever since I've used VSA. I've installed VSA at least 100 times.

It is a cloud-based solution that talks to an agent. I sign on to a portal, and the portal shows me all the endpoints, like the servers and workstations. The deployment takes weeks. However, we do not have to work on it continuously.

In terms of deployment, technically one person is enough. For Macs, you just need to know how to do it and it's a very specific procedure. As far as I remember for each company, there is a separate download. With Windows, it's the same download, however, it needs to put the users in a specific catalog. You need to edit the link, essentially the same way you would for a website and you need to put specific lines in the link. For Macs, you have a different file that you need to know how to download, where to download it from and how to check if something is wrong. While one person is always enough in terms of handling the deployment, that person needs to know how to do it.

Deployment times vary from a few minutes to half an hour. Maybe a few hours. It depends. Most of the time I would say it's only a couple of minutes. However, when you really need to have it configured and you are first building the infrastructure, the whole thing, if you order a product and you want to start using it, I have no idea how long that process takes. That's definitely going to take longer. 

We had five Kaseya Servers for thousands of computers, thousands of servers, et cetera. That would take a while. Right. If it's just a business of maybe 40 users, I would assume it is a way quicker process. 

Kaseya itself would update regularly and then it usually would show up with a message such as "You have a patch to do. You need to install this patch." That's about it, in terms of maintenance. I'm not an engineer. I was more of a user. From a team lead side, I was managing people that used it daily to help customers. While there was definitely some normal updating in terms of handling the security patches, that was the only real maintenance task. 

I was not present for the initial setup, as it was in place before I joined the organization.

There is really no setup. You just log in. There is also no maintenance.

The initial setup is easy and you don't have to worry about a lot of things. You will get a link and just have to log in using your credentials. It is multiply authenticated in a two-stage process and then you are in. You just have to add your nodes to see all of the features.

If you are a technical person and are new to Kaseya then you will find it a little bit difficult to configure because of the GUI. This is unlike SolarWinds. However, if you just give it some time then you will get used to it and things will become quite easy to do.

The initial setup was straightforward and took about a week.

The initial setup is not complex if you use the cloud deployment model. There are some configurations that are not easy to find. You may also not know what the impact on the system will be if you change configurations. In general, the basic items are easy, but if you want anything beyond the standard setup, it's a little bit complex.

The time it takes to deploy the solution depends on the organization. In our case, we did a migration, but if you just start from zero, probably it's easier. For us, with the migration, deployment took about three or four weeks.

You need two people for deployment.

The initial setup was difficult for me. It would help if you had the license and SQL driver for onboarding successfully.  

Kaseya VSA is installed on the cloud.