Daft question of the day.

[harry]

Hello, any help will be greatly received as Apple is not my first language.

 

We had a mac server that we used Apple configurator to manage our ipads with, which sadly passed away. We are now moving to Microsoft Azure for the Apple MDM and when setting up an ipad with Azure, it sticks at awaiting configuration from the school.

I assume that the ipad is looking for the mac server and not Apple School Manager. However, in Apple School Manager I make the ipad unmanaged it will configure only as a normal personal device, add it to Azure it sticks again

 

 

Now that daft question, is it possible to take out the HDD from a mac server and put it into a standard mac just so I can release the iPad from the configurator? Would that work?

 

Cheers,

harry

[Norphy]

Hello, any help will be greatly received as Apple is not my first language.

 

We had a mac server that we used Apple configurator to manage our ipads with, which sadly passed away. We are now moving to Microsoft Azure for the Apple MDM and when setting up an ipad with Azure, it sticks at awaiting configuration from the school.

I assume that the ipad is looking for the mac server and not Apple School Manager. However, in Apple School Manager I make the ipad unmanaged it will configure only as a normal personal device, add it to Azure it sticks again

 

 

Now that daft question, is it possible to take out the HDD from a mac server and put it into a standard mac just so I can release the iPad from the configurator? Would that work?

 

Cheers,

harry

 

As long as the Mac that you're plugging it into is of a vintage that can run the version of Mac OS X Server that you're trying to run, then yes, you can do this. You could even plug the hard drive into a USB to SATA adapter and boot from that. OS X is a lot more tolerant of this kind of thing than Windows is.

[bald_pig]

I would pull the drive from the mac, stick it in an external enclosure, then you can hold alt and boot the temp mac, and boot off of the external drive

[harry]

Thank you Gentlemen. That sort of worked using the caddy, but I get a pop up saying the drive inserted was not readable on this computer and the option to initialize.

We are using the Guest account on the imac as the Boss forgot the password.

 

Was I right in thinking that the ipads are looking for the old mac server for its config?

[Norphy]

Possibly - especially if the iPad was supervised before and was set to look at a particular URL to enrol itself to.

 

Was the server hard drive part of a RAID set by any chance?

[harry]

Thanks Norphy, there was no RAID. I can feel it spinning in the caddy, so it's not mechanical.

[howartp]

Was I right in thinking that the ipads are looking for the old mac server for its config?

I'm not an expert on Configurator, but the iPads that we enrol with Configurator (to get onto DEP) never touch/need Configurator again - they're simply enrolled to DEP via Configurator then after 30 days they behave as normal DEP ASM iPads.

[Tom_P]

I'm not an expert on Configurator, but the iPads that we enrol with Configurator (to get onto DEP) never touch/need Configurator again - they're simply enrolled to DEP via Configurator then after 30 days they behave as normal DEP ASM iPads.

 

Same here from my experiance. I use configurator to just get iPads into Apple School Manager.

 

Do you not need to assign your MDM to the device from ASM before going through the device setup?

[harry]

Thank you. This was the days before ASM.

[Tom_P]

Theoretically, if it was setup as a personal device that should cut all ties with the previous mac server right? Then allowing you to add it to azure without it needing any sort of confirmation from a server.

 

Have you got any other devices enrolled in azure?

[Brimstone]

Thank you. This was the days before ASM.

Without any server and even using Apple Configurator to get them into ASM you still need an MDM to manage them.

 

ASM is NOT an MDM and neither is Azure AD. Connecting Apple School Manager to Azure just gives you accounts that are auto created in ASM.

 

If Configurator was not backed up then you have lost those Supervision profiles.

I would invest in a decent MDM.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Brimstone