RM CC4 & Apple Mac

[talksr]

Good morning everyone.

My school currently uses CC4 for its curriculum network and Server 2008R2 +Windows 7 clients for its Admin network.
I am interested to know if you are able to add Apple systems (whether this be OSX or Boot camp Windows 7) to the CC4 windows based network we use for curriculum.
Is this an easy task to perform, or would I have to get RM $upport for this?
Last time I contacted RM for help on adding a macmini running bootcamp to CC4, I was told it was not possible and that I needed an Apple support plan on my account for them to discuss this.

Any help would be super.

[Roberto]

Yes. A CC4 network is just a standard Microsoft network with a fancy front end. Follow the guides that are stickied on this forum for authenticating a mac to a windows domain and you're done.

[clareq]

You will need to smartclient the windows side, and we have a macmini as a server to manage the mac side of the machines. Use deploystudio to put images of both the MacOS and windows on the machines, and reFIt to allow students to select which OS to use at boot.

[rh91uk]

Or do you have access to extend the schema?

(Extending Active Directory for Mac OS X clients « Michael Kuron's Blog)

[SC92]

You will need to smartclient the windows side, and we have a macmini as a server to manage the mac side of the machines. Use deploystudio to put images of both the MacOS and windows on the machines, and reFIt to allow students to select which OS to use at boot.

Pretty much all you would need to know is above! This is exactly what we do. Although the image i've created for our windows partitions seems to build as client number 8 for every machine... Has this happened to you clareq?

[ste1988]

We are doing just this here, and works well, although because we are running windows xp, we can longer add any more new macs, due to them only support windows 7, but because you are already running win7, you shouldnt have a problem, you will need the smartclient tool to be able to build the windows partition as cc4. Most time consuming part for me, as bootcamping all the macs, but now i have a mac mini server and deploystudio setup, i can build both partitions in under an hour, and multiple machines, the mac mini server is defintely worth the £600 they cost!

Pretty much all you would need to know is above! This is exactly what we do. Although the image i've created for our windows partitions seems to build as client number 8 for every machine... Has this happened to you clareq?

SC92, i seem to have this problem too, mac side will pick up the computer information from deploystudio, but the windows side does not, not a big problem, but annoying to manually rename every machine, when studio has a feature to do it!

[SC92]

I'd be interested in how you manually re-name machines after they're built onto CC4 ste! Only asking because we've had 8 macs stolen over the weekend and the mac side will be stupidly simple to re-build but I don't really want/have the time to sit through and smartclient a windows partition on 8 machines as you can probably imagine! Thinking building then manually changing the names if it saves me more than several hours...

[ste1988]

I'd be interested in how you manually re-name machines after they're built onto CC4 ste! Only asking because we've had 8 macs stolen over the weekend and the mac side will be stupidly simple to re-build but I don't really want/have the time to sit through and smartclient a windows partition on 8 machines as you can probably imagine! Thinking building then manually changing the names if it saves me more than several hours...

As far as i know, its just the same as renaming any other xp machine, or you can do it on the RMMC. Depending what permissions you have etc.

Id be tempted to reimage, and call the machine you image something else, like rebuild machine, just so it doesnt effect the machine you orginally imaged, like having 6 machines on the network called machine 8.

Failing this, which is what ive had to do here, its simply make a clean xp image, with a few bits on and smartclient, and then smartclient everyone, this is only because of what rm suggested, but i was hoping my theory would work.

The key is not to have deploy add them to the domain, so to give you time, to restore image, rename, then add to domain,

As you said, its still pretty user involved, but better then smartclient everyone, then wait 2-3 hours for them to build.

Sorry to hear about them being nicked though mate

[SC92]

I really like the idea of creating a base image of just bare Windows 7 which I can instantly roll out to the new machines at once. Will save a LOT of time installing Windows over and over and then applying the bootcamp updates too. thanks a lot!

[ste1988]

I really like the idea of creating a base image of just bare Windows 7 which I can instantly roll out to the new machines at once. Will save a LOT of time installing Windows over and over and then applying the bootcamp updates too. thanks a lot!

Yeah it does save alot of time, i have win xp here, and installing that, really does get very boring after the first time lol, plus smartclient needs .net framework as well

[clareq]

Pretty much all you would need to know is above! This is exactly what we do. Although the image i've created for our windows partitions seems to build as client number 8 for every machine... Has this happened to you clareq?

No, I created a syspreped image with fully patched Windows and the RM Smart client on it, unnamed and not on the domain. I use deploystudio to put on the image, it runs mini setup and then I use Smart client to add it to the domain and rename it.

[SC92]

No, I created a syspreped image with fully patched Windows and the RM Smart client on it, unnamed and not on the domain. I use deploystudio to put on the image, it runs mini setup and then I use Smart client to add it to the domain and rename it.

Sounds like a great idea, think that's what ste does too! Thanks for the input this will really help me, and hope i've helped out a little too.

[ste1988]

Sounds like a great idea, think that's what ste does too! Thanks for the input this will really help me, and hope i've helped out a little too.

Yeah thats exactly how ive got round it, clareq, what does your mini setup do?

Cheers

[talksr]

Thanks or all of the posts and help.

Just to clarify, would the macmini (or similar) need mac server to do the job, or could it get away with just running osx?
We have a mac mini dual core at the moment, which may be a good one to use.

Thanks again

[clareq]

When you sysprep a windows installation it automatically runs a mini setup once the image is put onto a new machine - resets the SID and so on. Mac server has workstation manager, so you would need that to manage the macs.