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We have a large virtual infrastructure and would love to move away from Mac hardware (we're considering buying many minis).

The last time we went down this route of testing non Mac OS distribution points, we ran into strange issues compiling images. Most times they wouldn't compile at all, sometimes they would but not restore properly. We tried using straight windows shares and also EZIP shares with similar results (this was 2ish years ago). JAMF was stumped, so was almost forced to go back to using OSX servers.

Our XServe's are set to be retired this year, so we're distribution point 'shopping' again.

Is anyone out there using non OSX distribution points and relying heavily on large compiled images (I have 250 GB of compiled images ranging from 15-26 gigs each)? We image well over 5k machines every summer, I can't risk going with a solution that I can't rely on compiling to work to speed up the process.

Any other considerations when moving from the OSX platform? Replication I know has come up here, but I'm used to replicating in Casper Admin whenever I make a change anyway. Share points being mounted on the clients I felt like was an issue with SMB in the past, but I push what I can http any more so maybe not such an issue.

Thanks for any thoughts, as always.

We successfully tested the NetSUS appliance as a DP using it's built in AFP shares. That's a nice stop gap until the next version of Casper comes out.

I've exclusively got Windows 2008 R2 servers. My dedicated JSSes are virtual servers and my DPs piggy back on physical hardware that are SCCM distribution points. I've never had an issue with compiling images. We run straight Windows, no helpers like EZIP.

With the upcoming new NetSUS (rechristened the JAMF Distribution Server (JDS)) hopefully not too far off, I wonder if its possible to hold off until that's available, or if you need something sooner? From the quick overview we saw at JNUC, this appliance looks to be a promising solution to a long standing niggling issue with any Casper Suite deployment.

I have no idea of course how well it will work with compiling images, but my hope is vers 9.0 of Casper will introduce some needed changes with the whole image compilation process anyway.

Thanks for all of the responses. I had seen some tweets about the JDS but kind of forgot about it. It may fit the bill. Besides a slide deck I saw saying they're coming, is there any other media available from JNUC going into any depth about JDS?

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is there any other media available from JNUC going into any depth about JDS?

No, not yet. Its still being worked on internally at JAMF. We've been asking our reps a lot of questions about it, but they can't tell us much right now. The only thing we got from one of the presentations is that they are considering moving it onto Ubuntu 12.04 or 12.0.10, can't recall which exactly. The current NetSUS appliance runs on Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS. I have no idea what differences there are with the newer version though.

Other than that, they are saying you will be able to "enroll" the JDS into your Casper Suite environment (presumably along with version 9) and manage them all from the same console, also syncing between them and cascading (master to child, child to child, etc) will be supported.
All of this is of course just "on paper" right now, so we'll have to wait for some more info from JAMF once they get closer to a release.

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