Branches?

If you had a Mac Mini and enabled the Software Update Server portion of the Server.app you could point all of your Macs to that Mac Mini and download your updates from it instead of all Macs going outside your network and downloading from Apple's server (lots of bandwidth). With "branches" you can create one for testing and one for production (there are several ways/options and you're only limited by your imagination I guess).

I believe this is the way most people have it setup. So if you have a test lab you can create a branch (each branch has a specific URL that is used to point clients to that "set" of updates) and you could then create another branch for production.

For me:

First branch is testing in a lab
Second branch is for moving the testing from lab to IT owned machines
Third branch is for a small test group of people that work in production. Usually those that are the more tech savy ones
Final branch would be your main production branch that ALL OTHER machines will pull updates from.

@itupshot "Branches" are a way for you to create different update catalogs for different groups of machines if you want. For example, you could have a "Production" branch and a "Testing" branch. When updates are made available by Apple, you could go into the Testing branch, enable the new updates, and then point a few testing machines at this branch. They would get the new updates and the rest of your systems that are pointing to the Production branch, would not. Then when you're ready to release to everyone, you go into the Production branch and enable those updates.

Hopefully that makes a little sense. You can read a bit more about branches in the NetSUS from the Reposado documentation, since the NetSUS is based on Reposado:

Reposado Operation

@Snickasaurus We have an internal Software Update Server running on Yosemite on a last gen XServe. So, I know how that works. Server app never gave me any sort of "branching" options, though.

@stevewood Thanks, I'll take a look at that documentation.

I'm testing the JAMF Netboot/SUS server on Ubuntu server as a replacement for the Xserve if it goes kaput. So, this is the first time I see anything about branches.

We've only had one issue with one delta OS update way back in the Mt. Lion days. It was quickly fixed by Apple, and when we installed the replacement update, we haven't seen any issues since.

I guess what you're both saying is you can use branches so that you can make sure updates don't hose your client machines by separating them into groups.

@itupshot Perhaps you read it wrong but more than likely I wrote it badly and I apologize. Very sleepy and haven't felt good all day.

You are correct in saying the Server.app has never given you the branches option and that's what I was attempting to point out in my first paragraph. I was simply saying if you had something similar to a Mac Mini and setup the SUS portion of Server app then you could host all the updates to all clients. BUT, if you had the NetSUS and those "branches" you were asking about it would open up a whole new world of SUS testing for you and make life SOOOO much easier.

Again apologies for my sloppy writing skills.