Profile manager and app distribution

[camelot]

Hi,

 

I have set up lion server and enabled profile manager. I am able to deploy payloads to an iPad and it all looks promising. However, we will be shortly purchasing around 28 iPads for Art and Design. I am a little confused about how I will centrally manage apps that the department want. The iPads will not belong to a student and will be shared between several classes and years. How do I purchase 28 copies of an app? Could I use a central Appleid or iTunes account?

 

I have read that the Apple Volume Purchase Program is not available in the UK as I write.

 

We are a windows 2008 server school and so used to running application servers, network apps, etc

 

I would love to hear from anybody that manages iPads/apps in the classroom.

 

Cheers,

[mezmerrick]

I was in the same position some time ago, here's how I do things now.

 

As you rightly state, the Volume Purchase Program is not available in the UK. What we do is have one Apple ID from which we purchase the apps we want once, we then gift ourselves the App the amount of times we need to cover the amount of iPads. Not ideal, but it covers us license wise. So we basically have a load of redemption codes which we have paid for, and install one copy of the App on all iPads.

 

As for deployment, we have one dedicated Mac Mini and a 10 port USB hub - we sync all iPads through this Manually. The easiest way I found was to configure one iPad with all Apps, back it up and then restore it to all the others.

 

Not perfect, but that's how we've started with things - and syncing 10 at a time saves time. Also, remember that you can wireless sync via iTunes - so you can add and remove Apps that way too (though you will need a pretty strong and reliable Wi-Fi network in place).

 

I'm only just delving in to Profile Manager (MDM) and restricting our iPads myself, so this will probably make things a bit easier for us - especially to stop students setting Passcode's etc!!

 

Hope this helps in some way.

[chris_clemo]

Hey,

I'm just in the middle of setting up Apples MDM Profile manager and at home it all works great, I can push apps to certain iPads or groups of them, by obtaining them in iTunes then selecting them prom within profile manager for distribution. I can show you how to do this if you need, The VPP should be in the UK soon so will make things much smoother!

[mezmerrick]

Hey,

I'm just in the middle of setting up Apples MDM Profile manager and at home it all works great, I can push apps to certain iPads or groups of them, by obtaining them in iTunes then selecting them prom within profile manager for distribution. I can show you how to do this if you need, The VPP should be in the UK soon so will make things much smoother!

 

Oh... really? I heard that the VPP wasn't working so great in the US, so they we're thinking of finding another way to license Apps.

 

I've also been told by an Apple rep that they are turning a blind eye to schools installing multiple copies of one App because of the lack of Volume purchasing available in the UK (and elsewhere). Up to you/your school whether you take that risk though - that's why we decide to gift the rest of the licenses.

 

I hope VPP does come to the UK - it would make imaging with Apple Configurator a breeze!

[chris_clemo]

Are you able to discuss you config? I'm having a few issues?

firstly When I take my mac server into school/work I cannot access the enrolment web pages as the DNS is not forwarding, What do I have to create on the DNS Server to fix this (It works fine at home)

 

Also are you running you devices through the apple configuration first?

 

thanks

Chris

[camelot]

Mezmerrick, you sound like you have at least got around this. I will look into implementing your method and let you know how it goes.

 

Chris, when you are at home I guess you have installed the DNS service on the mac server. When you go to school you should stop this service and use your organisation DNS server, I find this works at lot better. If you still want to use your DNS server you will need to set up a forwarder to your school dns server. There are also ports that will need opened in order for you to reach APNS. we had issues herewith our proxy server set-up so created a VLAN for the mac stuff, which bypassed the proxy server.

 

Edited July 20, 2012 by camelot

[mezmerrick]

Are you able to discuss you config? I'm having a few issues?

firstly When I take my mac server into school/work I cannot access the enrolment web pages as the DNS is not forwarding, What do I have to create on the DNS Server to fix this (It works fine at home)

 

Also are you running you devices through the apple configuration first?

 

thanks

Chris

 

No, i'm not using Apple Configurator at all at the moment due to there being no VPP in the UK.

 

My setup is basically a Mac Mini Server running Lion - Only Web services and Profile Manager are enabled. DNS is handle by the Windows FRDC.

 

Make sure you have forward and reverse lookups in DNS to your server. The mistake I first made was trying to configure the Apple server with an internal DNS as well as an external address. From what I can gather, Profile Manager will only run on one or the other. So I setup my server to entirely run on an address accessible from the web.

 

I also had to get a lot of ports opened by the Schools ISP. I can give you the ports if needed, but it sounds like yours works externally, whereas my problems were the other way around.