In our environment, up until this point whenever a user wanted to go to a new version of OS X (ex. 10.9.x to 10.10.x) our department would have to copy the users data to a network share, reimage it, install all the users software again, and then bring the data back down. As you can imagine this has made the entire process slow and painful for both the technician as well as the user. We have recently started talking among ourselves about using the Self Service to allow users to upgrade there machines if they are eligible (our definition is if they are running 10.9 they can go to 10.10, anything older than 10.9 will be blocked).
Here is the issue that we are running into. The process itself works, however many in our group are worried about how the upgrade will effect the machine in our environment. Data is the biggest issue that we have. Does the upgrade touch the Users data? Whats the risk of the data being lost? Questions like these.
Other concerns are how our macs are configured. We use Active Directory accounts and work heavy off network shares. (we a primary Windows environment). Has anyone experienced any large or small issues with doing in place upgrades in an environment such as ours. Who is using this method of in place upgrades or does anyone have other suggests?
On a side note, we only have about 400 Macs and only three technicians that work on them. With Apple moving to a new OS a year, security concerns have started to rise in our department.
Thank you everyone who provides input!
