The ecosystem of software you can use to manage Macs is pretty diverse and
can be mixed-and-matched to suit your preferences. As you have identified,
and Ski has gone into some detail on, the 800lbs gorilla is Jamf and it's
Casper Suite. Their primary competitor is Filewave. http://www.filewave.com

Depending on your tastes, some alternative approaches include mixing and
matching...

* Unix toolchains like Ansible, Puppet, and Chef (and the lesser known
Radmin - http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/)
* DeployStudio + Munki + luggage
* Apple's toolchain includes NetInstall Server, Profile Server (MCX locally
and via Open Directory still alive but depreciated), and Apple Remote
Desktop
* And, believe it or not... Microsoft System Center

Special mention should be made of the various ways you can image a Mac.
Every 3rd party package, to my knowledge, uses Apple's native disk tools --
asr(8), diskutil(8), installer(8). While some are certainly better than
others, if you have the time, you can create your own system from scratch,
too. The flexibility is pretty awesome. The documentation on how to go
about doing it without the help of the 3rd party software, not so
awesome....

For many of these topics, especially on system imaging, check out the
MacAdmins conference at Penn State University. They post their sessions
slides and video online. It's a great place to start!

Gil



On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Atom Powers <[email protected]> wrote:

> I have need to manage some Apple Mac systems, mostly laptops, at $work.
> The only software I can find that looks like it has a chance of doing this
> well is the Casper Suite from Jamf Software.
>
> Do you have experience with that software, or other resources for managing
> employee assigned Mac laptops?
>
> --
> Perfection is just a word I use occasionally with mustard.
> --Atom Powers--
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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/
>
>
_______________________________________________
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/

Reply via email to