Mac Management

[junz]

Hi All,

 

We are looking at refreshing our Mac deployment setup as we currently image machines using Deploystudio and are now looking to use an MDM/tool that integrates with Apple School manager,allows deployment of Garageband with soundfiles, allows deployment of Logic Pro X with sound files for each user that logs in. I wanted to see what other peolpe are using before going for a solution and would be very grateful if you could answer the below:

 

What tool are you using to manage your Macs/if you have a third party that manages your Macs who do you use?

How many Macs are in your environment?

[Roberto]

When I worked for Luton SFC one of my final projects was to get a project rolling with Toucan Computers which was almost exactly what you are doing.

 

We ended up with a solution based around DEP and JAMF that seems to have worked really well.

[junz]

When I worked for Luton SFC one of my final projects was to get a project rolling with Toucan Computers which was almost exactly what you are doing.

 

We ended up with a solution based around DEP and JAMF that seems to have worked really well.

 

Hi Roberto,

 

Thank you for replying. We looked at JAMF and was very expensive to manage 23 Macs(that is how many Macs we have). may I ask how many Macs you have and how much it cost you to deply JAMF ? Also do you use logic Pro X and Garage Band with the additional sound files

[Steve21]

When we were looking at JAMF previously the difference between business and education pricing was huge, when you said it’s expensive was that based on business?

 

Pretty sure they did a lifetime license for something like $20 too if you didn’t want monthly

 

Steve

[Roberto]

Hi Roberto,

 

Thank you for replying. We looked at JAMF and was very expensive to manage 23 Macs(that is how many Macs we have). may I ask how many Macs you have and how much it cost you to deply JAMF ? Also do you use logic Pro X and Garage Band with the additional sound files

 

We did (I’m not there now!). This was approx 75 macs running Logic Pro X + GarageBand in music rooms, and Final Cut Pro and Adobe premiere in film rooms. Can’t remember the cost but it while it wasn’t cheap, didn’t seem unreasonable to me.

[junz]

Looking at the pricing on their website, it seems like business is cheaper then education

[Steve21]

Looking at the pricing on their website, it seems like business is cheaper then education

 

What prices are you seeing? Doesn’t show that way here on phone

 

Education is yearly, business monthly remember

 

Steve

[junz]

sorry you are right - it is yearly and for that price it is not bad.

[MicrodigitUK]

What prices are you seeing? Doesn’t show that way here on phone

 

Education is yearly, business monthly remember

 

Steve

 

Think they also charge a setup training handover fee. So the initial cost year one can be pricey. I know VMware did that to me with AirWatch. Had to negotiate the price down. Microsoft Intune is really cheap though, However their Mac integration isn’t brilliant and they have actually partnered up with Jamf using co management (think Microsoft gave up with Intune features supporting Apple devices)

[Sibrows]

We’re managing our 100 iMacs with Jamf Pro hosted and support through our reseller.

 

Doing it this way allows us to avoid the setup and initial training (Jump Start) which is excessive.

 

We’ve got two instances one for our iPads that we went through the jump start for and manage ourselves and then a separate instance for our iMacs. They did some initial consultancy built the packages and got the iMacs restoring using DEP. The integration with AD is far better than when we were using Deploy Studio and in-house scripts.

[Roberto]

Think they also charge a setup training handover fee. So the initial cost year one can be pricey. I know VMware did that to me with AirWatch. Had to negotiate the price down. Microsoft Intune is really cheap though, However their Mac integration isn’t brilliant and they have actually partnered up with Jamf using co management (think Microsoft gave up with Intune features supporting Apple devices)

 

Depends what you mean by Apple Devices. MacOS support in Intune is very spartan; you can set a compliance policy and push Office and that’s about your lot.

 

iOS support however is extremely comprehensive. Designing the Intune deployment for my employer’s fleet of corporate iOS devices is a large part of my current set of jobs and, especially if you use DEP, you have very precise control over any iPhone or iPad that connects to your service, and can do some very interesting stuff by protecting data with DLP, conditional access, and so-on.

Edited September 1, 2019 by Roberto

[mrcrazy04]

I think Apple Profile Manager (free with MacOS Server) will integrate with Apple School Manager, and can deploy software to devices.

 

When I last played around with it though, it seemed pretty buggy, and getting policies to push to deviices seemed a bit hit and miss. Has anybody else had better experiences with it?

[junz]

We have profile manager setup and its`s absolutely rubbish - never works. You would think a company with a trillion pounds could put a decent management solution together rather than asking you to use a third party one.

[3s-gtech]

My experience with PM is good, and it works fine - but that’s on a very small scale (50 or so iPads, 40 or so Macs). It has been a lot better since the server broke and I restored it from an old backup, then rebuilt PM and its profiles.

 

PM relies on bombproof DNS, lots of testing, and patience.

[Brimstone]

If you want an MDM that is..

 

Easy to use

Gives you zero day support for new deployment methods and features and supports every Apple feature

Stable functionality

Great support with lots of options

 

Then Jamf Pro is the way to go....

[Stevecee]

Hi We use Zuludesk (which is now branded as JAMF education?) it does pretty much what JAMf will do, not quite as much as far as Mac OS compared to iOS but still does everything I need it to. Used JAMF Pro before but set up fees astronomical had it set up for iOS and wanted to move to Mac OS too I had already tried and managed to get several Mac OS machines onboard but still needed to pay for a days onsite engineer to set everything up again.

 

Hth

 

Steve

[DalekSec]

Jamf is the best hands down, but is it the best for price/performance?

 

When we got a quote it was in the thousands, we only have 10 Macs and 40 iPads.

 

So we're using Mosyle, does everything we need it to do and at a good price!

[junz]

Jamf is the best hands down, but is it the best for price/performance?

 

When we got a quote it was in the thousands, we only have 10 Macs and 40 iPads.

 

So we're using Mosyle, does everything we need it to do and at a good price!

 

We looked at Mosley but not sure whether we are able to deploy Logic Pro X with additional sound files, Garage band or Siblus

[DalekSec]

We looked at Mosley but not sure whether we are able to deploy Logic Pro X with additional sound files, Garage band or Siblus

 

Logic X & Garage you can deploy easily, as it's on the App Store. The additional sound files i'm not sure how to do remotely i did 1 manually so it got caught in the Caching server and did the rest in one go.

 

Sibelius we installed manually, but like i said before we only have 10 machines of which only 5 need Sibelius.

 

You can always setup Deploy Studio to do the deploying, Mosyle can deploy custom apps/ Non-App Store apps but you have to have some where of hosting them where it can access.

[TheGoodDocNate]

I'll throw my hat in the ring for Mosyle, the pricing is very attractive, and depending on what all you need to do the free version is rather powerful, as far as hosting the packages any web server can handle it. If you want to do something a bit more DIY then Munki is pretty solid.

[Chaffin_Assassin]

JAMF Pro is definitely the best product out there.

[DalekSec]

JAMF Pro is definitely the best product out there.

 

Agreed, but the price is off putting for the majority of schools, even more so with those who only have a handful of macs. We have 10 and the price was in the £1000s, where as Mosyle is around 150 a year (Including our iPads)

[CHiLL]

We only manage about 60 iPads and a couple of Macs, and previously used Apple Configurator/Profile Manager and had a bunch of issues with it (this is going back a few years now). We trialed both Jamf and ZuluDesk (before it was purchased by Jamf). We found that Jamf was overly complicated to manage and expensive. ZuluDesk was good and cost effective, but was limited on the configuration for iPads at the time. At this point, Microsoft had just relaunched inTune and we trialed that. Sure, it's limited in what it can do, but it covers most of what we need and the pricing was also very good, probably comprable to ZuluDesk. We plumped for inTune because the licensing covers more than just iOS/MacOS, so we have the option to manage Windows devices, should we go down that route in the future.

[n12sysadmin]

Vote for Mosyle here. From start to finish there isn’t a single thing I haven’t been able to script easily using their custom commands feature for a zero touch deployment (save connecting to WiFi). Ended up hosting everything on S3 (although I would have paid extra for their CDN was it an option at the time) and most of its just pulling down installers and fielders to deploy to specific directories using curl requests. Works like a charm. And I’ve never seen an MDM push changes so fast to 100+ devices.

[junz]

Can you deploy Logic Pro X with all the relevant soundfiles?