Imaging Mac's

[stevenwba]

right so heres the situation,

 

we have just ordered out first class set of mac books, but with myself having very little experience of apple mac, im in at the deep end.

 

We dont have a mac server although this may change depending on how sucessful this is.

 

I need to be able to setup one just how i want and image the rest, but coming from a complete windows background, i have no idea of software to use and how to go about it on mac.

 

Once i got the mac side setup we will be making them dual boot with windows, and ive read on here you need a seperate image for that which is fine, as ill use something like ghost for that.

 

just need to know what the hell im doing with these macs first

 

Thanks for your help

[sted]

ive used carbon copy colner to clone the macs (though in theory i imagine you could do it using time machine) to clone the windows bit ive used winclone ive not dared to use ghost incase it does something odd to the drives boot sector same goes for wds/mdt though im not sure it can pxe boot in any case

[tommccann]

fwbs backup toolkit is another one

[Tricky_Dicky]

The best thing for this is Deploy Studio.

We've got it set up so that it deploys both the windows and mac image as well as binding to the domain and a few other bits and bobs. It works using a workflow type design so you can add tasks quite easily. The down side is that it is run on the mac server. So how many clients do you have and could you stretch to a mac mini for a server?

The beauty of the mac server is that you can lock down the preferences centrally (like GPOs) and it makes managing them so much easier.

You aren't far away so if you want to pop over and have a look at our setup you are more than welcome.

Rich

[tommccann]

The best thing for this is Deploy Studio.

 

Very interesting!! never seen this before, looks free too! download

[arwen]

What I used to do, these were not set up on A/D or anything though, so not sure if it will be beinifcial or not.

 

Set up ones mac the way you want it, then boot up another, connect a firewire cable between them and on the 2nd mac select 'transfer information from another mc' or words to that effect. You do have to revisit each mac and rename it though, unless you want them all named the same!

 

For the windows partision, if you run bootcamp to partision the mac as FAT32 and then boot back into OSX before windows setup you can simply copy all the contents of the 'Windows HD' on your first mac into the new 'Windows HD' on the 2nd mac. This saves a lot of time and button clicking... You should then convert the windows drive to NTFS so people on the mac side dont delete the files!

[Tricky_Dicky]

Lol, go play as it is very funky once it gets working.

My workflow is basically as follows (once you have captured your windows and Mac images):

Partition disk ->Restore Mac image -> Configure and rename computer ->AD Bind for mac side ->OD Bind -> Restore Windows image.

These are pretty big images but I can do the whole suite in about 30 minutes.

[Robbocop]

We also use Deploystudio and find it's pretty powerful with good feedback about what it's doing. You can operate your Macs off the network, or using a single log in with a mounted share for network storage. You can also bind them to AD, but you won't have any control over group policy or managed prefs, unless you buy a Mac server (Mac Mini server is pretty cheap to buy and works well. Don't forget you never need any CALs on a Mac server). Alternatively you can rewrite your schema if you're feeling brave, or buy a Windows management tool for Macs like Centrify, which is great. Mac Mini server is cheapest though once you get above about a dozen clients. Hope that's useful

[maark]

have done it with time machine if you have one - saved and then restored to a different mac

[HodgeHi]

Not sure if the time machine is the best method to use as the GUIDs/UUIDs and LKDC need to be re-created and also the byhost preferences need to be fixed as well. I'm not saying that it doesn't work though. Luckily DeployStudio does all of this for you after the deployment. I have also recently used SysPrep to complete majority of the Windows partition as well. So all I have to do now is name each client (until I can find the best way to do this automatically) and thats it.

 

The Mac side however can be fully automated but I have run into a few complications with the binding process being automated. I use reserved IPs for the suite and Macs don't do it like Windows boxes. You have to manually enter the IP address in the network preferences. This causes an issue with DeployStudio as it doesn't yet have an IP address or a DHCP lease so cannot bind using FQDN.

 

This frustrated me quite a bit. In the end I resorted to deploying the images and then sending out the Bind command using ARD, which is another piece of software you will more than likely need.

[Carter]

As mentioned above Deploy Studio is a great product. I use it to image all of our labs here. I actually just put on two DS sessions for other Techs here in the college to give everyone the lowdown on how it works, how to setup etc. It's a very handy and powerful product.

 

The question is.... do you have a server? You will at least need a 10.5 Server for best results.

 

CCC "Carbon Copy Cloner" is also a great product if your doing just a few computers.

 

I've been thinking of doing up a "How-To Guide" on how to setup a server with instructions as well as a Video" .... would any have use of this?

 

Thanks,

 

.

[somabc]

instadmg - Project Hosting on Google Code

InstaUp2Date Guide - OS X Deployment and Management

[Carter]

instadmg - Project Hosting on Google Code

InstaUp2Date Guide - OS X Deployment and Management

 

I'll have to give this a try!

 

Just read up on this & just trying to understand what it does so let me see if I got it right.

 

~

 

You have the InstaUp2Date on your computer, you then put in there 10.6.x disc into the dvd-rom, you now go ahead and adjust the scripts as needed for installing all your required applications & extra files. when you select InstaUp2Date to run it takes the OS disc and all the files, apps, etc. and outputs a *.dmg file that is now a complete disc image/OS that can now be pushed out via DS, CCC, NetRestore etc.?

 

This sounds pretty cool if you don't have a computer to build an image on but wouldn't you lose the ability to do a lot of customizing for applications OS settings etc. that you want to fine tune? without having to sit down and adjust/create a script to do all the needed adjustments?

 

Thanks again for the link .... just trying to make sense of the application to then give a try :-)

 

.

Edited September 28, 2010 by Carter
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[sted]

The best thing for this is Deploy Studio.

We've got it set up so that it deploys both the windows and mac image as well as binding to the domain and a few other bits and bobs. It works using a workflow type design so you can add tasks quite easily. The down side is that it is run on the mac server. So how many clients do you have and could you stretch to a mac mini for a server?

The beauty of the mac server is that you can lock down the preferences centrally (like GPOs) and it makes managing them so much easier.

You aren't far away so if you want to pop over and have a look at our setup you are more than welcome.

Rich

 

you can use workgroup manager without a mac server to lock the macs down you just need to add some odds and ends to your ad schema

[somabc]

For the last several years building an image usually meant one of two things: installing everything on a machine and imaging that (I call it fat Imaging), or installing a base OS and imaging that (layered imaging I call it). When a new machine comes in, you lay on the base image, then lay on the applications (done in packages of course), and away you go, or you lay on the fat image and away you go. The problem with this method has always been the amount of maintenance required to “clean up” the image after configuring preferences, installing apps, setting bookmarks, etc. You always wound up with “cruft” on the image.

 

InstaDMG takes system imaging and deployment to a new level. Using a series of folders with a retail disk image, along with your updates and custom packages, InstaDMG spits out an image that is ready for deployment, having never been run on a computer. This means you don’t get the “cruft” on the system that comes from booting the image, and, best of all in my opinion, the image is Universal.

 

Macintosh Deployment Images – InstaDMG « The Geeky Gordito

 

Yes in terms of controlling settings you are are either going to have to rely on OD or building scripts or .pkg files for use with InstaDMG. PackageMaker is your friend for this.

Edited September 28, 2010 by somabc

[sjatkn]

It really depends on how many machines you are going to end up having. Carbon Copy Cloner is fine if you only expect to have a few machines and will rarely re-image them. If you have lots of machines and expect to have to re-image them regularly then Deploy Studio is the way to go. As said it does need to run on a Mac Server, but then if you have lots of machines you will probably want one to give you the management facilities you will otherwise be lacking. The server does not have to be anything too special, Apple are selling a Mac Mini with preinstalled server and raided 500GB HDD's, which will be fine for some imaging and management.