On Aug 16, 2013, at 8:07 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (lopser) <[email protected]> wrote: > >> From: Phil Pennock [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 8:39 PM >> >> SuperDuper is just backup/recovery, right? > > Yup. The usage I've used it for is to pre-build a "golden" system, then make > a system image of it. Use superduper to clone onto new systems for > deployment. It's very useful for the deployment of standard software and > standard configuration, but nothing that's machine-specific or active. After > restoring the golden image onto a new machine, we would have to set that > machine name, join to domain, enable filevault (and record recovery keys) and > sometimes additional tasks.
In the Mac IT world, this is known as the "golden master" system. While it still works, you'll get funny looks for mentioning it. Most everyone has moved on to "modular imaging", where you prepare a base OS, then lay down packages that customize it. While tools like Casper can do this, imaging systems is easy enough to do without the per seat cost with the DeployStudio/Munki/InstaDMG triad. InstaDMG is a script that automates the generation of images that haven't been booted and are pristine, but with updates and arbitrary other packages. This is great because they restore extremely quickly, and as it's scriptable, when Apple releases machine-specific versions of the OS for new hardware, you can prep those versions as well. DeployStudio can lay down that image over the network, install packages, create users, etc. In an automated fashion, with different workflows depending on machine HW id. This is a nice GUI application, so you can easily have non-technical people image systems. Munki is a managed software updater that can install both Apple's updates, and updates for the rest of the users. The user-facing component is a GUI, and easy to use. Recent versions can track software license quantities. The management backend is CLI based, although there are a few web interfaces out there, as well as tools for tracking installation use, etc. With a ~6GB compressed OS image, the time to install a machine from out of box to fully configured system, with updated software is around 10 minutes, with no manual involvement beyond booting the machine over the network. - Zack -- Zack Williams - Artisan Computer Services - 520.867.8701 [email protected] http://www.artisancomputer.com ACSA, MCP SBS, SCSA, LPIC-1 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
