I understand the decision to not put development effort into the JDS to solve the TLS 1.0 and MyISAM dependencies, but I am a bit confused by the mention of an incompatibility with Jamf Pro 9.100+. We have an all-JDS setup with Jamf Pro 9.101.0 and haven't encountered any issues.
Is Jamf going to be providing guidance in migrating to a now-preferred distribution infrastructure?
@bvrooman
The incompatibility statement stems from PI-004248 which caused an issue with the JDS certificate that was built by the built-in CA that would break communication with the JSS by having an incorrect Subject Alternative Name.
Since each environment is likely to have different criteria for what an acceptable alternative to the JDS is, it'll be best to handle those individually with Support so something more tailored to your environment can be worked out.
If you need guidance on JDS alternatives or want to go over possible ideas for alternative setups, the best option will be to get in touch with Support to go over what you're looking for for your environment, and they can help you come up with an alternative solution to the JDS. You can get in touch with Support by either calling, sending an e-mail to support@jamf.com, or using the My Support section of Jamf Nation.
Support will be able to help you work out an alternative as well as working with you to plan out a migration plan to get away from the JDS and onto something else.
Thanks!
Were Wulff
Jamf Customer Experience
As someone who tried to use JDS twice in customer environments, and repeatedly ran into reliability and functionality issues that made me swear "never again", I'm glad to see this decision was officially made and communicated. The ideas behind JDS were good, the actual execution (running large packages/DMGs through the MySQL database) was not.
As someone who has relied on the JDS product since it was introduced, I have seen the benefits and drawbacks and the benefits STILL outweigh the drawbacks. I was really looking forward to 2.0 and I'm sorry to hear it will never make it to light.
The ability to have all of my distribution points remain true without having to manually trigger syncs was awesome!
I hope you will bring us a local version of the JCDS or a way to keep smb shares in sync reliably and in an automated fashion.
Thanks for the update.
Am I the only one who has noticed that there is an actual werewolf posting from Jamf under the flimsy pseudonym "Were Wulff"? Dear sir or madame, it is insulting that you would assume we could not see through your paper-thin alias, and we demand that Jamf audit their employees for werewolfery. This is a serious post and we are serious people who will not tolerate this type of shameful flim-flappery from werewolves masquerading as Jamf employees.
And that goes for fairies, cyclopses, unicorns, basilisks, banshees, poltergeists, wendigos, kobolds, leprechauns, and lawyers, too.
Signed,
Very Serious People
@znilsson
Someone finally noticed that my name changed! :)
I changed my first name legally back in May for reasons that amount to, "I'm an adult, and I could."
I've got a pretty awesome last name and figured why not make the whole thing great?
It's been pretty fun, honestly!
Were Wulff
Jamf Customer Experience
Good thing I've been stocking up on silver bullets for my trip to JNUC next week.
Wow.
We've been using the JDS as our sole distribution platform since we started using Jamf a couple of years back and currently running it along with JAMF Pro 9.101 without any apparent issues.
Guess I need to start looking into JCDS then.
Will there be some JDS -> JCDS migration documentation made available?
@emilh There are some alternatives being developed and/or discussed. Would personally wait until JNUC for more details...
It had a loyal following for those that relied on it, but every Jamf I've ever discussed it with was always quick to point out the "file distribution points are a good option" while answering all my questions diligently on the topic.
I'm interested in the JCDS personally but am wondering what my options are given I host our JSS cluster on prem.
Will the cost of the jamfPro product be going down to reflect the reduction in supported features?
@blackholemac @emilh
Currently, JCDS is for our hosted customers only, however, there is this Feature Request to make it available to on prem JSSes so feel free to upvote and comment.
@damienbarrett
Sadly, I won't be at the JNUC this year. :(
Thanks!
Were Wulff
Jamf Customer Experience
First, thanks for pulling the plug on the JDS. It was a great concept, but the execution and reliability was questionable at the best.
Second, thanks for hiring a Lycanthrope-American. They're truly under represented in the corporate world. ;-)
@cwaldrip wrote:
Second, thanks for hiring a Lycanthrope-American. They're truly under represented in the corporate world. ;-)
Great...coffee on my laptop monitor again! LOL
We're doing fine with a couple dozen RHEL DPs, and rsync using RSA keys. Hasn't missed a beat in a year and a half. Upload to master, the rest is automagical.
Based on the spelling of Wulff, I'd say it's far from clear that this is an American Werewolf... Also, I thought that the last of these died in London in the 1980s
We have been told for a few years now that they were working on a full re-write of the software. Guess that won't ever get done.
We have multiple JDSs scattered around our 10 campuses, we are k-12 with 1:1 in the middle schools, high schools and staff with multiple labs. We liked the JDSs since it allowed for distribution of software from the local site and not have to use the external the bandwidth. If we now need to pull that 15GB Adobe installer from the cloud hosted site instead of a local server that will be annoying landfill up our pipe.
@strider.knh
There are non-cloud options for distribution points.
Please get in touch with Support to go over what your organization's needs are and we can help you come up with a plan for new, non-JDS distribution points and migration to those.
If your JDSes are working, there is likely not large rush to get the actual migration to something different done; the JDSes will not (usually) stop working if they're left alone to do their thing, it's just something you'll want to plan for, ideally, by the end of the year.
Thanks!
Were Wulff
Jamf Customer Experience
Rsync takes jumping a few hoops to set up, but it worked better (imho) than the JDS replication.
Oh and:
Since the JDS installers have been pulled for a while, i think we all saw this coming. My experience with the JDS was all aces, but a few cases of it working really well can't balance the scales since it was unreliable for so many others.
I look forward to seeing what new tool will replace the JDS for on premiere, or options to have a JCDS only option for subscriptions.
And as far as the lycanthropic name change... I like it! It conjures the image of a wolf typing responses to all our questions. But its got to be difficult playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf.
@donmontalvo We use Resilio Sync for all our on prem SMB distribution points. Fast and relatively flawless.
We never really took advantage of JDS'...we are currently setting up with just our JSS and that as our main distribution point. Possible something similar to a caching server set-up will take its place or be an option?
For those of you hosting your DPs on Windows Server boxes, I will heartily recommend DFS for replication! It has been working excellent for us! Up to ~150 distribution points currently.
