Advice on taking over management of school MACs

[mcolbourn]

Dear All

 

I am after some advice, I am not a MAC person and only had fleeting dealing with them.

 

Currently our Music Department has 15Macs which are managed by an outsourced MSP. They are 2015 imac (so getting old) we are looking at taking over management of them in house. From what I understand they are only used for 3 programs Garageband, Logic Pro and Sibelius. The MSP has a Mac mini acting as some type of server to hold all the file shares they they use on an external Raid device. The MSP uses their own MDM to manage the macs and I think this ties in with our onprem AD so pupils log in with their AD Creds. We have access to the apple ID where Logic pro was purchased.

 

I would like some advice on how bet to take over management of the PCs and give the pupils a similar experience to what they have now but without spending too much and advice?

[tmoon-mint]

Without knowing all of the details it sounds like

 

* The MSP is using ProfileManager which is now unsupported and really isnt very good.

* Correct me if im mistaken here but it sounds like Logic Pro was purchased using a personal Apple ID? Is this correct?

* Could the Macs be bound to AD?

 

So if you havent already sign up for Apple School Manager. You will then need a decent MDM. I would recommend either JAMF or Mosyle. For authentication its worth looking at either JAMF connect or Mosyle Auth and ditch binding them to AD completely.

[mcolbourn]

OK A bit more information

 

We currently manage 20 odd ipads using Lightspeed MDM but only in shared mode, but therefore we have ASM setup for them. So we can use this. We have access to the apple ID that purchased Logic Pro (years ago) but its not the one that is linked to ASM so I gues this may have to be purchased again.

 

They are currently using Addigy to manage them. And yes they are bonded to AD at this time.

 

As its only 15 we just need something simple setup as its not worth putting a lot of work into them as when they get to ELO we are not sure what will happen.

[tmoon-mint]

If you're wanting simple Mosyle is the way to go in my opinion. It does sound like Logic Pro will need to be purchased again or it could be a legacy program facilitator account in which case you can send an invite to join ASM.

 

Invite Volume Purchase Programme Purchasers to Apple School Manager, Apple Business Essentials or Apple Business Manager – Apple Support (UK)

Edited June 27, 2022 by tmoon-mint

[mcolbourn]

Many thanks for pointing me in the Mosyle direction. We just took out one of the HDD and put in an SSD so we can test it on one of the iMACs and getting the hang of it. The only issue I have run into is how to Package Garageband with All Loops? as it keeps asking for the admin creds when opening it. I have deployed it out via ASSM and VPP licence but it still wants to download them each time.

[mcolbourn]

So I have not got Moyle setup and working now and happy with it. I am looking into deploying the software we need now and run into one hurdle. When they were first setup back in 2016 the Logic Licence was purchased as a Apple Volume Licence Agreement with 20 seats (even though we only needed 15 not sure way). As the license seats were purchased using serial number/redemption codes, the process before Apple introduced VPP Credit all computers in the classroom had the same monolithic image disk deployed (which I am told was the way it was done back then). If we now want to manage this all through ASM, do we have to purchase Logic pro again via ASM or is there a way to move them access to ASM?

[tmoon-mint]

You need this link

 

Migrate from redemption codes to managed distribution - Apple Support

 

There are quite large discounts when buying 20 or more copies of an app so it was probably much cheaper to buy 20 than 15.