Mac how to update form server and deploying applications

[nicholab]

How do you update mac form the mac server as it was setup before I got here some pointer would help. How do you deploy applications from the mac server or is it more like deploy to an ipad deploying apps?

[icemonkey]

I'm in a similar position, no one really knows anything about the server so I'm keen to learn!

 

I've had a brief look into this and this is what I understand (happy to be corrected):

The Mac Server SUS pulls down the updates from Apple, you can then download and make available for the clients to then pull from the server. You can set this to happen automatically but like with WSUS, I guess you want to maintain control of any updates rather than risking a dodgy one going system-wide.

You then run the software update on the mac and it installs any updates marked as available which applies to it (or again, set it to happen automatically).

 

The server can only update the same version of the OS or earlier! Given that our macs are on a newer OS than our server, it took me a while to figure this out.

Take a look at this support article: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202030

 

As for rolling out software, I've seen references to tools such as Munki, DeployStudio & StarDeploy but not really had the time to look into it properly.

DeployStudio was set up to image the devices but other than that, all I have are notes on what was supposed to be done next.

[3s-gtech]

You need to set the update location in your profiles for your Macs to your Mac server address. The location of this is fairly standard - check the documentation for it. Then just switch on the Software Update service on your server and configure it how you wish. This won't roll out software - Munki, ARD etc will be things you need to look at.

[mrnoisy]

There's lots of ways to do things with Mac infrastructures, lots of paid tools and free ones.

We use deploy studio for imaging, you can also use it for rolling out apps and a plethora of other things. But we tend to use Apple Remote Desktop which is a very powerful tool.

Give things a try and see what works best for you. I inherited someone else's Mac infrastructure setup and the best thing I did was start again from scratch it helps you understand the tools. I've just finished upgrading our 200 iMacs from mavericks to El Capitan, upgrading all the software along the way, it took 2 days to image all the suites. I was more than happy.

[Arthur]

Apple have deprecated SUS and will be removing the feature from future versions of the server app and macOS (maybe even in 10.13 later this year). I would plan to switch to Apple's replacement for SUS: the Caching service.

 

It's incredibly easy to setup and if you use a third-party script like PreCache.py or CacheWarmer (now discontinued) it's possible to pre-cache updates before clients request them, although this is by no means essential since the caching service basically runs itself once it is running.

Edited February 22, 2017 by Arthur

[3s-gtech]

Make sure your server has a good amount of storage for the Caching Service, as it can be quite heavy (SUS at least allowed manual selection of updates if you felt so inclined). We also found that when we turned ours on a few years back, it broke iPad updates for all other schools on our WAN - that was a fun one to work out (Bonjour was traversing the routers and advertising itself to the entire county!)