Re-imaging Macs

[woody81]

Hi, I wonder if someone can point me in the right direction.

 

We currently have 22 late-2013 iMacs running El Capitan and I need to get a more modern version of Mac OS on them. We have an image deployed through DeployStudio from an El Capitan server and previous experiments of simply installing an OS update has made these old machines even slower. Installing Mojave from scratch (to preserve 32bit app compatibility for Adobe CS5) seems to yield better results and the machines remain useable.

 

I thought I could just install the last DeployStudio on a Mojave machine, create a Mojave Netboot set to use in DeployStudio on the server and capture the image, however I've had no luck even creating the Netboot set (it fails with the following error: DeployStudio NetBoot set creation failed! and directs me to system.log which doesn't give any clues). It just doesn't seem to like to create a Netboot set for anything after Sierra.

 

I've seen MDS which might do the trick without net booting but a few of our software packages have been bought directly through the Appstore so I don't think they can be managed or deployed via MDM software or a profile and we'd have to install the apps manually.

 

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, Mac OS isn't my first language and I'm still learning since inheriting the machines.

 

Thank you.

[Roberto]

Re-imaging isn’t really a thing for Macs any more (I’d argue it shouldn’t be for Windows either, but you can at least make it work if you have to). Macs are designed to be restored to a fresh image if necessary, and then have software installed using MDM tools such as JAMF.

 

You can absolutely deploy App Store apps with MDM tools, this is exactly what they are for. Ideally you’d be using Supervised devices and pushing VPP apps to them.

[woody81]

Thank you for your reply, Roberto. I completely agree, haven't used imaging on Windows for years! I'll start looking at that side of things in that case then, I believe JAMF is chargeable? I've used Mosyle Manager to manage a brand new MacBook but I couldn't find a way to deploy App Store apps, just VPP etc. Any other (cheap, preferably free) software to achieve this?

 

Thank you again.

[Praxis]

I was just coming to the forum to ask the same thing regarding imaging.

 

We really don't want to pay for a MDM so looks like I am wiping every machine individually, installing Big Sur and all of the apps one by one!

[woody81]

Hi Praxis, I've been working on a workflow using MDS by Twocanoes software (https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/mac-deploy-stick/) and Munki (https://github.com/munki/munki) both are free. So far I've got the OS deployed with MDS and all our apps sent out via Munki.

 

Lots of good guides out there and I'll be happy to pass on any info if you need it.