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Best Practices for Dual Partition of MacOS Machines

  • January 24, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 26 views
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We have a number of engineers who need to have multiple instances of MacOS on their Mac Mini computers. Some Devs need to have 10.13, 10.14, and 10.15 to be able to test various aspects of our programs. However, when dealing with multiple OS instances like this, it's very unlcear how best to manage these machines in JAMF.

Is there a "best practices" method of managing these? Do I install JAMF on all the partitions? Only on one? Does it matter if it's on multiple OS instances or on one?

Seems like each time the computer would check-in it would report the last OS used, but would that be the only change (since JAMF identifies computers via UDID)?

What are the downsides in this scenario? I don't want to start setting them up this way only to find that there are problems with it later on down the line.

Any suggestions would be great! Thanks!

2 replies

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  • blackholemac
  • Valued Contributor
  • January 24, 2020

That's a hard one....I would be interested in seeing simply what happens in doing that with macOS. I can think of one ramification immediately though....you would have to think very carefully using a "once per computer" workflow with policies in Jamf Pro.

for a while, I had a handful of machines I had to dual boot Windows and macOS using Boot Camp. When we did that, I used Boot Runner from Twocanoes to make sure both OS's had a maintenance window scheduled. Ultimately the dual boot setup here didn't work because users had distinct preferences and really didn't switch between the two operating systems frequently and it was a bit of an administrative nightmare keeping track of one computer in two different systems (Jamf and SCCM).

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  • cpominville
  • Contributor
  • January 27, 2020

Think of it as three separate computers. Jamf on each partition, because its three separate computers, perhaps name each partition, Mac1013, Mac1014, Mac1015

Do you have a tool like Apple Remote Desktop? This will also help you manage it, immediately, if you need to remote in.

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