Calling Mac sysadmins ….are things going downhill?

[5tu]

I'm also watching this thread with interest. Have just got Apple School Manager up and running which was a simple enough process and am now looking at MDM solutions. Have signed up for a trial of Mosyle but am finding documentation extremely lacking. Maybe I'm missing something as others on edugeek seem to speak very well of it.....

 

Anyone found any helpful resources for Mosyle beyond the very basic getting started guide on their site?

Edited November 29, 2019 by gybe78

[Brimstone]

I'm also watching this thread with interest. Have just got Apple School Manager up and running which was a simple enough process and am now looking at MDM solutions. Have signed up for a trial of Mosyle but am finding documentation extremely lacking. Maybe I'm missing something as others on edugeek seem to speak very well of it.....

 

Anyone found any helpful resources for Mosyle beyond the very basic getting started guide on their site?

 

https://manager.mosyle.com/mac-deployment-guide/introduction

[PotNoodleTech]

Going downhill?

 

I didn't realise mac management had ever been at top of the hill?

[Toronado]

I've been using MDM which when it works is fine. A few months ago just before I was about to change to Apple School, MDM stopped working in both schools I look after and wouldn't restart with the usual nudge. I've been busy as I'm moving both over to Office365 among other projects and I haven't had the time or inclination to fix them as no one has asked for apps. I've decided to start from scratch once the projects are done at Easter. Only 200 iPads and about 40 Macs in total so not really that much.

[mrnoisy]

Hi Steve,

Here's my thoughts

1. Take a look at NoMAD (Specifically NoMAD Shares)
   
2. If you are education based, you can get Apple School Manager(ASM) for free. If you have ASM you have DEP which you can link Profile Manager to for automatic supervision / enrollment into PM. If you have purchased your iPads from an Education Reseller, you can give them your DEP ID and they can grandfather your devices into your DEP from the past more often than not. If the iPads aren't purchased through Education, of a certain age you can plug them into Apple Configurator and enroll them into DEP yourself. If you aren't able to enroll them into DEP yourself, but they appear in Configurator, you can 'Supervise' them from Apple Configurator.
   
3. Profile manager isn't the problem I am afraid. Most MDMs wont support these features as Apple don't support them anymore. As frustating as it is, it's what we now have to work with. We use Windows / AD accounts here with network homes with no issues, so perhaps there's something else afoot... (Also, check out MySides)
   
4. Tell me about it. I've thought about whether we do something with rsync but again it's hacky. We don't have enough laptop users to properly require the R&D on this yet, but it's something in the back of my mind.
   

 

5 Years of Macs has tought me that they are a pain in the rear... I do feel for your 1996 legacy.

 

Hi do you have any info re Nomad shares, I looked at this a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t work out which version to download or how to add shares once I had.

 

Also having a similar nightmare since the death of deploystudio, we have 160 iMacs and 50 MacBooks, I’ve got by so far with Apple Remote Desktop and a lot of scripting. To be fair we usually set and forget so most things are ok. Shares have been a pain since we binned off work group manager. We are leaning towards Apple school manager and Intune although I’ve not tried macs yet only iOS devices. Adobe cc is simple enough using Remote Desktop.

[Sydders01]

Please how did you guys map your network drive on mac. our keeping coming off and I have to do it every now and again don't know why. not all the map drive but most of them. any advice on how to make it stay their permanently

 

Thanks

 

I'm quite lucky I've only got into mac admin in the last year and a half. Never had to use PM!

 

So i'm unable to say if the management of Macs in general has gone down as i've not been using it that long, but i'd say that i haven't had any glaring issues with management, our MDM (Mosyle) does everything i need it to plus more! We only have 11 macs though also and not overly complicated needs for them, can it run Logic? Yes, Can students login with AD creds and access file shares and One Drive? Yes and is it locked down to a good standard? Also yes.

[Brimstone]

Hi do you have any info re Nomad shares, I looked at this a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t work out which version to download or how to add shares once I had.

 

Also having a similar nightmare since the death of deploystudio, we have 160 iMacs and 50 MacBooks, I’ve got by so far with Apple Remote Desktop and a lot of scripting. To be fair we usually set and forget so most things are ok. Shares have been a pain since we binned off work group manager. We are leaning towards Apple school manager and Intune although I’ve not tried macs yet only iOS devices. Adobe cc is simple enough using Remote Desktop.

 

If you’ve got macOS don’t go near inTune, it’s a very very poor solution without the right tools for macOS

[DalekSec]

Please how did you guys map your network drive on mac. our keeping coming off and I have to do it every now and again don't know why. not all the map drive but most of them. any advice on how to make it stay their permanently

 

Thanks

 

In the macOS Dock profiles i added 'Network Home' onto it and it seemed to work fine, we don't map any other drives as we get them to use OneDrive and Sharepoint. There is an option there for inserting paths to network drives it seems.

If you’ve got macOS don’t go near inTune, it’s a very very poor solution without the right tools for macOS

 

 

100% This, Tried testing it out awhile back and it was close to useless!