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Large-Scale Mac Deployment?
UncleRage writes "I've been asked to research and ultimately recommend a deployment procedure for Macs across a rather large network. I'm not a stranger to OS X; however, the last time I worked on deployment NetRestore was still king of the mountain. Considering the current options, what methodologies do admins adhere to? Given the current selection of tools available, what would you recommend when planning, prototyping, and rolling out a robust, modular deployment scenario? For the record, I'm not asking for a spoon-fed solution; I'm more interested in a discussion concerning the current tools and what may (or may not) have worked for you. There are a lot of options available for modular system deployment... what are your opinions?"
Is there even such a thing in this world? Folks like to disparage Windows, but it really is the only OS built for very large enterprises. Linux solutions don't really compare to Windows solutions - there, I said it...
Guess what? It would be you, not the Macs. I'd have fired you for wasting the time needed to tear a display apart instead of sending it to the manufacturer to be repaired.
We have an OS X server.
It really does suck.
It's kind of like a crippled BSD server with weird management utilities and a lot of buggy modified utilities.
You might as well just use a normal Linux server, since all the same daemons are available, and much easier to manage.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The only problem with Mac OS X Server (and this is speaking from 10.3-10.4 experience; maybe 10.6 server is better) is that if Apple's grand vision for your network doesn't fit your own vision, then Mac OS X Server is next to useless. The problem is that Apple has preconfigured a number of built-in services, and changing them causes major headaches.
/etc/smb.conf. What's worse is that Apple often runs old versions of this software. If, say, you want to go out and run the latest Samba, nothing is stopping you, but expect parts of Apple's system to break. Sure, I admit, lots of people go this route and have many workarounds for Apple's stuff, but for us, we figured: if we're going to do all this work to circumvent Apple's packaged stuff, why not just run Linux? So that's what we run on our backend now. We even run Netatalk, which has to be the simplest daemon I've ever configured-- it basically worked with PAM+winbind right out of the box, and so we're able to authenticate our AFP clients against AD, too.
For instance, in 10.4, any change to the GUI would overwrite your
If you're a very small shop, and you want a simple drop-in fileserver, Mac OS X will probably work for you. If you want a simple Open Directory, and don't have an existing directory system, Mac OS X will probably work for you. But get any more complex than that and you might as well use something else.
Sorry but no.
Based on your anecdotal example...bla bla bla. Buy you readily say you're buying sub-par equipment. So i'm not sure how you can compare "good" equipment. If i bought a $300 clearance PC and compared it to a $800 enterprise-class PC i'm sure i'd see more failures in the cheapy one.
Moving on...to the smaller end of 'large' business - 2500 users and ~4000 computers in my enterprise. Similarly configured Macs cost us about twice what a PC does. Apple doesn't give on hardware unless you're buying them by the truck load and even then it's not nearly as much as other large suppliers.
Go negotiate pricing with 7-figure yearly spending and Dell, HP, etc. will give a LOT more than Apple. Yes, Macs are pretty but we're talking about enterprise. Pretty takes a back seat.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.