davidm27
asked on
Enterprise Apple environment
Hi
I have been tasked with starting a project to deliver an apple based infrastructure to a group of around 45-50 users. Hardware including desktops,laptops and ipads. What i am looking for is how to tie them all together get them integrated with Active directory how to deploy updates and software to them etc...
any advice or links would be great
cheers
I have been tasked with starting a project to deliver an apple based infrastructure to a group of around 45-50 users. Hardware including desktops,laptops and ipads. What i am looking for is how to tie them all together get them integrated with Active directory how to deploy updates and software to them etc...
any advice or links would be great
cheers
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OSX server mainly allows you to have Open Directory with some user account profiles. If you use OD, then you'll have to maintain accounts that are separate from AD. With only 45-50 systems, you can also just enable Remote Login in Sharing and use ssh to install software and run softwareupdates and other scripts.
Although I've taken a look, I never got around to using Deploystudio or any other tools manage OSX. I took the unix command line route and had plenty of success. Well, it hasn't hindered me enough to push me into looking at other solutions. I've even used Apple Remote Desktop for a little bit at one place I've been at, but went back to command line tools because I found them quicker to do for the vast majority of things.
To Join a Mac to Active Directory, you only have to open System Preferences, Select Users& Groups, Click on Login, Options. Click on Join for the Network Account Server and enter the AD server. It will prompt you for an account and password that allows you to join the domain.
You should learn some basic bash scripting and the following commands that are unique to OSX to get you most of the way.
softwareupdate
installer
ditto
hdiutil
defaults
softwareupdate is the command line version of Apple Update used to patch OSX. Until recently, the GUI required a reboot of your system after patching, even with patches that didn't really require a reboot. The command line version allowed you to patch without forcing a reboot until you're ready. You could also patch just the updates that didn't need a reboot and not reboot your system.
installer is used to install software packages in the .mpkg or .pkg formats.
ditto command for zipping and unzipping files or copying directories from one location to another. Although it's not necessary now, ditto keeps the resource fork information which was needed on older binaries. I still use it out of habit. You could probably use plain old cp -r or rsync to copy them now that they've deprecated the resource forks. This is equivalent to robocopy.exe with an extra feature to zip files. Unix/linux people still use rsync and tar, but those utilities lost the resource fork information. The newer rsync may support resource forks now, but that's after they deprecated the use of resource forks in new packages.
hdiutil is used to mount and unmount dmg files so that you can run installer on the packages in them.
defaults manages the system and user profile settings. This is equivalent to managing the registry on windows with the reg command in Powershell or the DOS Prompt.
OSX App packages come in 2 forms, either packages where you need to run installer or you just copy them from the dmg file to /Applications/. This will get 95%-99% of the packages. There are a few things like Adobe products that will only install from the GUI unless you sign up for the redistribution license to get their repackaging utility. It's a pain to have to repackage them just to install them.
You can also manually configure user accounts with dscl, if you aren't using Open Directory. There are a lot of unix command line utilities available to do just about everything. You could also use Apple Remote Desktop, if you need to manage it via the GUI, but scripting command line tools is so much easier, and saves time, when you have a lot of systems.
Although I've taken a look, I never got around to using Deploystudio or any other tools manage OSX. I took the unix command line route and had plenty of success. Well, it hasn't hindered me enough to push me into looking at other solutions. I've even used Apple Remote Desktop for a little bit at one place I've been at, but went back to command line tools because I found them quicker to do for the vast majority of things.
To Join a Mac to Active Directory, you only have to open System Preferences, Select Users& Groups, Click on Login, Options. Click on Join for the Network Account Server and enter the AD server. It will prompt you for an account and password that allows you to join the domain.
You should learn some basic bash scripting and the following commands that are unique to OSX to get you most of the way.
softwareupdate
installer
ditto
hdiutil
defaults
softwareupdate is the command line version of Apple Update used to patch OSX. Until recently, the GUI required a reboot of your system after patching, even with patches that didn't really require a reboot. The command line version allowed you to patch without forcing a reboot until you're ready. You could also patch just the updates that didn't need a reboot and not reboot your system.
installer is used to install software packages in the .mpkg or .pkg formats.
ditto command for zipping and unzipping files or copying directories from one location to another. Although it's not necessary now, ditto keeps the resource fork information which was needed on older binaries. I still use it out of habit. You could probably use plain old cp -r or rsync to copy them now that they've deprecated the resource forks. This is equivalent to robocopy.exe with an extra feature to zip files. Unix/linux people still use rsync and tar, but those utilities lost the resource fork information. The newer rsync may support resource forks now, but that's after they deprecated the use of resource forks in new packages.
hdiutil is used to mount and unmount dmg files so that you can run installer on the packages in them.
defaults manages the system and user profile settings. This is equivalent to managing the registry on windows with the reg command in Powershell or the DOS Prompt.
OSX App packages come in 2 forms, either packages where you need to run installer or you just copy them from the dmg file to /Applications/. This will get 95%-99% of the packages. There are a few things like Adobe products that will only install from the GUI unless you sign up for the redistribution license to get their repackaging utility. It's a pain to have to repackage them just to install them.
You can also manually configure user accounts with dscl, if you aren't using Open Directory. There are a lot of unix command line utilities available to do just about everything. You could also use Apple Remote Desktop, if you need to manage it via the GUI, but scripting command line tools is so much easier, and saves time, when you have a lot of systems.
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