The nice thing about imaging is that you can easily "reset" machines back to baseline. Speaking as someone who using imaging to manage about 800 machines, it's not very hard to make an image that runs on a wide variety of hardware.
If you ever print to an OS X network printer, you are using CUPS... you just didn't know you were using CUPS.:)
In fact, I believe that Apple uses uses CUPS for all printing as of 10.2... at least, my laptop appears to do so.
My buddy and I spent a long time trying to figure out how to "use" CUPS from a MacOS X client to a Linux server... until finally, we just tried to print something, and it Just Worked... the CUPS printer appeared in the MacOS X print selection drop down (due to IPP broadcasts, I suspect), and that's it. Worked great.
UC Berkeley's dorm networks have been run primarily by student staff for years (I worked there as a sysadmin when I was at Cal). There are two professional staff who act as managers, but all sysadmins, wiring, network monitoring, resident tech support, and training is handled by student staff. Most of them work ~20 hours per week, and maintain full class loads. In our experience, student run IT organizations on campus (of which there were very very few, other than us) reacted more quickly, were more pro-active about security, and generally got the job done in an efficient and professional manner.
We have a strong privacy policy on whom has access to student data, and the student staff who do have that access take their responsibilities as seriously as any professional staff (and often more seriously when things like network security of private data were concerned)
Some of the things that helped us was good management (the Rescomp managers were flexible about our hours, and accepted our technical descisions, provided they were justified), and an internal student heirechy (most new hires were hired in their sophmore or freshman year as front-line techs, and then get promoted internally over time, which allowed the Rescomp "corporate culture" to be instilled. Also, some of the student positions were combination tech and managerial, which was also good).
It's probably not something that you want to just jump into immediately (it took Rescomp 6 years to build from a staff of 1 professional staff + 6 students to 2 professional staff members + 44 students), but the payoffs are tremendous. You get a dedicated staff of good people who work for cheap, and are constantly learning new technology and methodology to improve your IT infrastructure. Besides: working with students is a lot of fun.:)
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The nice thing about imaging is that you can easily "reset" machines back to baseline. Speaking as someone who using imaging to manage about 800 machines, it's not very hard to make an image that runs on a wide variety of hardware.
If you ever print to an OS X network printer, you are using CUPS... you just didn't know you were using CUPS. :)
In fact, I believe that Apple uses uses CUPS for all printing as of 10.2... at least, my laptop appears to do so.
My buddy and I spent a long time trying to figure out how to "use" CUPS from a MacOS X client to a Linux server... until finally, we just tried to print something, and it Just Worked... the CUPS printer appeared in the MacOS X print selection drop down (due to IPP broadcasts, I suspect), and that's it. Worked great.
We have a strong privacy policy on whom has access to student data, and the student staff who do have that access take their responsibilities as seriously as any professional staff (and often more seriously when things like network security of private data were concerned)
Some of the things that helped us was good management (the Rescomp managers were flexible about our hours, and accepted our technical descisions, provided they were justified), and an internal student heirechy (most new hires were hired in their sophmore or freshman year as front-line techs, and then get promoted internally over time, which allowed the Rescomp "corporate culture" to be instilled. Also, some of the student positions were combination tech and managerial, which was also good).
It's probably not something that you want to just jump into immediately (it took Rescomp 6 years to build from a staff of 1 professional staff + 6 students to 2 professional staff members + 44 students), but the payoffs are tremendous. You get a dedicated staff of good people who work for cheap, and are constantly learning new technology and methodology to improve your IT infrastructure. Besides: working with students is a lot of fun.