Imaging Macs

[InterwebsGuy]

Hi All

How do you go about imaging any Macs you have?

 

I have read lots about NetInstall/Restore, but that's very old now and doesn't seem to work. I have heard of Deploy Studio but last time I tried to use that it just wouldn't work, though I think that may be worth another go.

 

I'm curious as to what you use, and any recommended reading you may know of, as imaging Macs seems to be poorly documented online, and anything there is, seems to be aimed at the home user.

 

Thanks

[DalekSec]

We use an MDM (Mosyle), Setup the Mac as normal, connect it to AD, connect it to Mosyle. Mosyle deploys software, sets up restrictions and settings.

[Stevecee]

I guess it depends on what you are imaging and what OS you are using. The latest Mac will not let you image and this is going to be the way forward as far as Macs are concerned from Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra.

 

Before that we have had great success using Deploy Studio, our Mac are all on 10.12 Sierra and I and now having to work out the process of updating to High Sierra and beyond - I was advised by tech manager at one of the leading Apple Education resellers to double the time per machine compared to our normal imaging process :-(

 

Steve

[ReadTheNetwork]

@Stevecee you might have seen this already?

https://github.com/grahamgilbert/imagr/wiki/High-Sierra-Notes

[InterwebsGuy]

Thanks all for your input.

 

I had briefly considering using Carbon Copy Cloner to take a backup of a setup Mac and try restoring it to the other units.

A lot of the software we have may not be easy to deploy and configure via MDM, in particular I am thinking of Sibelius which is about 30GB!

 

Has anyone used Jamf's Mac tools? We currently use Meraki for iPads and Mac monitoring, and are considering changing that to Jamf.

[kidpressingbuttons]

Looking to move our set up over to mosyle- where do you store the applications you capture with mosyle? I believe you need to host them on a SSL encrypted website.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

We are still deploying High Sierra with deploy studio and works flawlessly. Definitely worth a second look.

[DalekSec]

Looking to move our set up over to mosyle- where do you store the applications you capture with mosyle? I believe you need to host them on a SSL encrypted website.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

We are still deploying High Sierra with deploy studio and works flawlessly. Definitely worth a second look.

I'm yet to get to that! But you're right needs to be a SSL encrypted website. Cloud services like OneDrive don't work either. I'm only about 40-50% of the way through setting it up Mosyle as it's due to be rolled out in September.

 

As for the Jamf i looked at that but it was hella expensive compared to others like Mosyle and Zuludesk, seeing as we only have around 7 Macs it wasn't worth the price!

[BKGarry]

We use deploystudio.

 

You have to make a boot image and put it in the netboot part of the OSX server. Also make sure if you have a VLAN'd network that you have put in the DHCP helper address for the NetBoot/Mac Server so that the clients can pick it up