Mac cloud management suggestions

[Benjaminbl12]

Hi all,

 

We're in the mists of a crisis where our Music department are adamant that they use Macs for one piece of software called Logic Pro. The network is primarily Windows. We're currently using the Apple Server (now macOS Server) on a Mac Mini inside a 1U rack but we've got to the stage where they no longer support 'Golden Images' and updates beyond Sierra.

 

I need a new solution to get the Macs up to date but needs to tie in with our onsite Active Directory. The team that orginally designed the Mac network has now left and I've now been left to pick up the pieces! Are there any good solutions out there which are cloud based that are easy to setup for an enterprise network? We just Jamf school currently but I don't think that'll quite cut the mustard. I've trialled Jamf Pro, but that's overally complicated!

 

I'm hoping you'll all say no!

 

Thanks

[tmoon-mint]

Mosyle Manager with Mosyle Auth might be the way to go as an alternative to Jamf. Jamf is one of the best MDMs on the market though.

 

Mosyle Manager - macOS Identity Management

 

Unified Apple MDM & Security - Mosyle Manager

Edited June 7, 2022 by tmoon-mint

[Sibrows]

Was in a very similar situation a few years back. I use a Mac as my daily driver and wouldn't change and we had iMacs in our Media, Music and Art subject areas. Trying to get them playing ball with annual software updates etc was turning into a real time suck.

 

We ended up getting our reseller to host the Jamf instance for us which meant we didn't have to bare the upfront costs and their per-device charge allowed us to use them for 99% of the issues we had. Frustratingly I wouldn't recommend them at the moment as they allowed a lot of the talent behind the scenes to move on and the support level dipped as a result.

[DalekSec]

Jamf is the best, but also most expensive

 

We use Mosyle, does what we need it to do Easy to use and our Macs are domain joined also.

[Stevecee]

Have you looked at JAMF School (formerly Zuludesk) its good for managing Macs and without all of the complexity of JAMF Pro - I used both in former school JAMF Pro was too expensive in the end and JAMF School did everything we needed.

 

Steve

[mrnoisy]

Not sure if it helps but I’ve managed Mac estates 200+ for a decade, when we replaced out creative arts & music suites with M1 iMacs last year we just intune enrolled and managed them from there, pretty much set and forget in our school, there are a couple of apps that we couldn’t deploy via intune but can always fall back on Mac Remote Desktop, it took longer to unbox and cable up the new devices than to get them setup. We are now in a 3 year lease so just rinse and repeat next time around.

A lot of people use jamf etc but I don’t see the point when we can do what we need with the tools we have. It doesn’t work for everyone I know but that’s how we do it.

[mrnoisy]

Not sure if it helps but I’ve managed Mac estates 200+ for a decade, when we replaced out creative arts & music suites with M1 iMacs last year we just intune enrolled and managed them from there, pretty much set and forget in our school, there are a couple of apps that we couldn’t deploy via intune but can always fall back on Mac Remote Desktop, it took longer to unbox and cable up the new devices than to get them setup. We are now in a 3 year lease so just rinse and repeat next time around.

A lot of people use jamf etc but I don’t see the point when we can do what we need with the tools we have. It doesn’t work for everyone I know but that’s how we do it.

 

Forgot to say we did away with a Mac mini running Mac server as well, the devices are just ad joined and work a hell of a lot better than Mac server / ad joined devices.

[Benjaminbl12]

Not sure if it helps but I’ve managed Mac estates 200+ for a decade, when we replaced out creative arts & music suites with M1 iMacs last year we just intune enrolled and managed them from there, pretty much set and forget in our school, there are a couple of apps that we couldn’t deploy via intune but can always fall back on Mac Remote Desktop, it took longer to unbox and cable up the new devices than to get them setup. We are now in a 3 year lease so just rinse and repeat next time around.

A lot of people use jamf etc but I don’t see the point when we can do what we need with the tools we have. It doesn’t work for everyone I know but that’s how we do it.

 

 

Good idea - Probably work for us as well however, how do you manage backups with this? And where do their files go? Is it local to the Mac or does it read from your fileserver?

[mrnoisy]

Good idea - Probably work for us as well however, how do you manage backups with this? And where do their files go? Is it local to the Mac or does it read from your fileserver?

 

Office 365 onedrive, they can all work locally but we only support backing up to onedrive

[slugshead]

Music department are adamant that they use Macs for one piece of software called Logic Pro

 

I'm in the exact same boat as you /facepalm

 

Got some of the macs, just waiting on the rest to turn up

Went down the Jamf Pro route - The training videos make it super simple

As for domain binding bit, I've got a demo of Jamf connect booked in soon. My difference here is that I don't want to bind to domain and I want a cloud managed zero touch setup to work.

[mark100]

+1 for Mosyle

 

We had similar pains on our mac network, tried JAMF for a year but have been happy Mosyle customers for the past couple of years.