… and thats the point everyone here is making. We aren't on a consumer site like macrumors or engadget where people talk about iPods and iTunes (which was the point I was making below), we work in a specialized industry with specialized needs. We serve Enterprises, Education, and Large Organizations and require specialized Enterprise SLA's and Support. Apple doesn't give us anything including something important like Roadmaps. You may hate Microsoft but they have excellent Enterprise Products and Support. Apple does nothing for us and when I say nothing I mean nothing. You call me a Microsoft whatever but I have been a Mac users since System 7 and worked at Apple for 4 years. I know that company inside and out. You can personally attack me all you want but I think the majority of the people here will agree when it comes to Apple we are nothing to them.

| Apple doesn't give us anything including something important like Roadmaps

Very True

| . Apple does nothing for us and when I say nothing I mean nothing.

Still speaking the truth

| You can personally attack me all you want but I think the majority of the people here will agree when it comes to Apple we are nothing to them.
Agreed, same attitude persists with all the other Mac Sys Admins I know. If it doesn't suit the consumer, then it's not happening.

Also as Craig E said, let's not argue on this list - The "Mac Enterprise" list is full of arguments and political crud - Lets not become them please, This is quite possibly the best Mac in the Enterprise list on the net even though its Casper specific :)

John

And don't forget, you'll likely be forced to move to Lion Server if it
still supports NetBoot and you need Lion images, and you want Lion
endpoint updates from your own ASUS, if that's still an option. Like it
would be terribly painful to update the software and make this
functionality work on Snow Leopard server, your current stable systems?
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but that's how it worked. If you wanted to
support the new workstation OS the tools you needed only existed on the
new server OS, forcing you to upgrade to a new unproven server platform.

I haven't even touched Lion yet. I'm glad I won't have any new hardware
that NEEDS to run it when it's released this week.

Craig E

I wouldn't exactly assume you need a Lion Server to offer updates to Lion client systems, and I'm not talking about Reposado.
On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:11 AM, Ernst, Craig S. wrote:

(This message brought to you by those three letters: N, D, and A).

I can't get my GM copy to bind to AD correctly :(

--
Matt Lee, CCA/ACMT/ACPT/ACDT
Senior IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group

This is the dilemma I'm in.

New job. Just purchased Casper. I've 5 mac mini servers (mac nw of 200 but global).

What OS?

Beta test 10.7 or install 10.6 & have to rebuild in 6 months?

I'm beta testing 10.7 with jss as soon as both are released.

Not ideal, but this environment has never had Casper so can slowing introduce.

Regards,

Ben.

Mine blew up my existing AD bind and set my admin accounts to standard. Repeatable process btw. Filed bugs, etc. but not expecting much.

Tom

I only go to the Apple Engineering meetings for one reason, free lunch. Otherwise it is a sales pitch, and they are always pushing their iOS devices, and they even screwed that up too.

The bottom line is, we are all enterprise users, and we want more enterprise support for Macs, but Apple makes way more money selling iPhones and iPads and laptops than they would catering to the enterprise people, for many reasons. They own that market share, they are going to invest in that market share. It is smart business for them to do so. It would be dumb for them to invest tons of R&D money into enterprise solutions when it may expand their enterprise market share less than 1%, where as the mobile device market share and smart phone market share they are leading.

To be honest, I am looking at Linux solutions, NIS, NFS for home folders with Kerberos, and possibly AD to ditch my OS X servers. Come end of life they won't be replaced with Mac servers and there is no guarantee OS X Server will run natively on server hardware. I want RAID 5, dual power supplies, lights out management and so forth. They no longer offer such things, oh and I want it rack mounted.

That doesn't take away from the fact Macs offer great end user experiences and when managed properly are more efficient than Windows. I been in IT for over 10 years now supporting both platforms, Apple does some stuff great, other stuff they are horrible at, just like Microsoft, SuSe/Novell, RedHat Enterprise, and so forth.

-Tom

I think OS X server doesn't really get you anything you can't get with a Linux server since most of what is packaged with it is Open Source tools anyway (Apache, MySQL, Jabber Server). If you use Apple native apps like PodCast stuff, then OS X server makes sense.
--
Walter Rowe, System Hosting
Enterprise Systems / OISM
walter.rowe at nist.gov<mailto:walter.rowe at nist.gov>
301-975-2885

On Jul 19, 2011, at 11:12 AM, Thomas Larkin wrote:

I only go to the Apple Engineering meetings for one reason, free lunch. Otherwise it is a sales pitch, and they are always pushing their iOS devices, and they even screwed that up too.

The bottom line is, we are all enterprise users, and we want more enterprise support for Macs, but Apple makes way more money selling iPhones and iPads and laptops than they would catering to the enterprise people, for many reasons. They own that market share, they are going to invest in that market share. It is smart business for them to do so. It would be dumb for them to invest tons of R&D money into enterprise solutions when it may expand their enterprise market share less than 1%, where as the mobile device market share and smart phone market share they are leading.

To be honest, I am looking at Linux solutions, NIS, NFS for home folders with Kerberos, and possibly AD to ditch my OS X servers. Come end of life they won't be replaced with Mac servers and there is no guarantee OS X Server will run natively on server hardware. I want RAID 5, dual power supplies, lights out management and so forth. They no longer offer such things, oh and I want it rack mounted.

That doesn't take away from the fact Macs offer great end user experiences and when managed properly are more efficient than Windows. I been in IT for over 10 years now supporting both platforms, Apple does some stuff great, other stuff they are horrible at, just like Microsoft, SuSe/Novell, RedHat Enterprise, and so forth.

-Tom

OS X Server gets you the following natively:

- Open Directory support, MCX, built in replication
- SUS (though now third party options are availalbe_
- xgrid
- Podcast Producer

You can convert OD mcx to local MCX and you can use other LDAP replication methods, but OS X Server does it all native for the Mac platform. Though I agree, Linux is the future for managing Macs. Apple themselves don't even run OS X Server they run Linux. I had a job interview not too long ago with them for their data center out in CA. They run all Linux on their back end.

-Tom

+ NetBoot.

if someone created a cross platform netboot i'd not have purchased mini's

It's been done.

http://afp548.com/article.php?story061220102102611
<http://afp548.com/article.php?story061220102102611>http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story110201151411464&query=netboot

<http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story110201151411464&query=netboot>Allen
<http://afp548.com/article.php?story061220102102611>
On Jul 19, 2011, at 12:23 PM, Ben Toms wrote:

+ NetBoot.

if someone created a cross platform netboot i'd not have purchased mini's

I was never able to get that to work correctly. Does anyone else have a better write up?

--
Matt Lee, CCA/ACMT/ACPT/ACDT
Senior IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group

The issue that most folks run into is that you need a box to chuck out Netboot but not DHCP. Your DCHP services are located on a box outside of Netboot. Because Netboot is an extension of DHCP (as is Microsoft's PXI boot) you basically need to hack ISC DHCP at the code level. Most folks think "ISC" when they think DHCP. However dnsmasq can apparently pass out DHCP extensions (such as Netboot and PXI) without passing out an actual IP.

This is the route I was going to take.
---
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

But I've seen plenty of people struggle with it & not just because if the dhcp.

Ideally I'd want an installer for win2k8 that has a green light to show working & locations for the files.

Dead simple looking, but enough GUI to keep me calm. :)

I'm holding out for someone to knock it up like the respado solution.

Regards,

Ben.