Application installs hanging but everything looks fine

[lehmanp00]

We are seeing this all over our school district so far.

We switched to the Self-Service Mobile app. Apps are showing ok, but when a user tries to install multiple apps at once, apps appear to install but actually get 'stuck' in some kinda in-between state. In order for us to get things working again, here are the steps we have to take on each ipad.

1. In JSS clear any and all pending commands for that ipad
2. If the app has faded icon on the ipad, delete the app. (sometimes they have the icon, sometimes not)
3. Go into Settings>General and do a Reset All Settings on the iPad (not a full wipe)
4. The iPad reboots
5. When the ipad is back up, in the JSS, do a Inventory update. Wait for that to complete. (This part seems crucial, most times, the JSS sees the app as installed, but it really isn't on the ipad. The inventory update AFTER the Reset gets the JSS, Self-Service and iOS all on the same page)
6. Open SS and install the app.

We are seeing this all over the place and with many different apps. We use Manged Apple IDs with ASM.

JSS verision is at 9.93 (hoping to update to 9.96 tomorrow).

I would love to test going back to the webclip but its an all-or-nothing setting in the JSS. Unless someone else knows how we can have both working??

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[bentoms]

@lehmanp00 after every install, you'll see a "Installed App List" command.

This can take time & might be the process that's either hanging the other installs.. or it can even re-install apps (we've seen that with like 30+ apps being installed at once).

[lehmanp00]

We do see an 'Installed App List' command in the JSS. However we have waited overnight for these to finish. What we have seen is that the SS App doesn't do a good job of displaying the progress of the app install, however, if you goto the App Store, find that app and you will see a much clearer indication of the app install progress.

But we have waited overnight for apps to come down and nothing.

[lehmanp00]

JAMF has escalated this. Something about a App 'shortname' that is not being communicated to the iPads.

[lehmanp00]

Here was the fix: Caching servers.

Last school year we had 10 caching servers for about 4000 ipads. We were not 1:1 completely but only certain grade levels, most of them at the High School and one Middle School. Therefore the caching servers were distributed like this:

4 at HS
2 at Middle school
1 for the other Middle School and an Elementary school
3 for the other 3 Elementary schools, these caching servers were at a centralized location.

All were 1Gig Ethernet. All schools were on their own VLAN.

This year, we went 1:1 throughout the whole District with just over 5700 ipads. The HS, 2 Middle schools and 1 Elementary were not seeing this issue. The other 3 Elementary schools were. I put together a temporary caching server with an old iMac I had at one of the Elementaries and their whole experience improved significantly.

Our Apple Premier support guy basically said having caching servers at every site was a 'pillar' of 1:1 deployments. He also stated there should be 1 caching server for approx. 500 ipads. If you are caching iCloud data that goes down to 1 server per 250 ipads. I promptly turned off iCloud caching. Seems if the devices are in contact with a caching server, they will not fail-over to App Store if the caching server are not working correctly or are overloaded. So the whole app deploy process just stops in various stages. The iPads, JSS and caching servers would all think the app deploy was at a different stage and therefore we had such huge issues.

So, more Mac-Minis are on their way here. We will be 1 server per Elementary when those come in.