Best way to deploy without Apple DEP?

[EmDee]

We have a large number of products that we may not be able to provide reseller information for.

What is the best hands-off way to deploy and capture all our machines given we won't be able to use Apple DEP?

Build an image and then some sort of Netinstall, and then Self Service to get the desired apps for whoever needs them?

Any help appreciated

[Asnyder]

I use netboot with casper imaging. I had enter all the autorun data for each computer and then use casper remote to tell all the computers to reboot to the netboot. as soon as they boot they start imaging. As far as getting extra software I have my policies scoped to certain departments that way computers in those departments can either get them from self service or I have them set to install on enrollment.

[chriscollins]

@EmDee not to oversimplify things but getting actual software on the machines, etc, is not going to really be much different at all so if you have a firm grasp on that then all you really need to worry about is how you get the machine initially into Casper.

In our setup we have many of our macOS devices in DEP but for the ones that aren't we wipe them with deploy studio and run through the initial setup assistant to get them to a point they can be enrolled. Once enrolled we kick off the exact same workflow as we would if it were DEP so everything stays consistent other than the very beginning.

So all DEP is saving us from is having to manually enroll the machine. It works well.

[pbenware1]

We aren't yet using DEP due to how our organization is structured. We're resolving this issue, but until we do, we've had to work around getting deployed without DEP.

When we deploy (or redeploy) we assume a freshly formatted Mac, with an OS. We start the computer, add a standard Admin account, then use a home grown script to name the computer, install Casper, and run the necessary policies to complete the configuration.
This does require the tech to spend a few minutes with every computer to start the setup, but allows them to walk away while the setup is completed.

A typical build will take 12-17 minutes to complete, with standard applications (Office 2016 volume license, Firefox, Chrome, etc), and a basic os configuration setup (Energy saver, security, login, etc).
The entire Casper configuration process is a single policy (one policy for laptops, one for desktops), called by a Custom trigger from within the script.
The policy has a very specific scope that it runs on in order to ensure it only runs on these computers.

On average, it' used 8-10 times per week.