Casper v the others

[#1]

Hello Casper Community,

I have been asked to put a report together on the Pros and Cons of Casper v Filewave, LANrev, RADmind and LANDesk. Has anyone done such a thing? Rather than spend months doing this when we will almost certainly go with Casper, I was wondering if I could get some ideas from people who has already done this exercise in the Casper community. Are there any resources on the Web that I can access on this? Are there any tick box comparisons of what each product does against the others?

Any help with this would save me a massive amount of legwork and I would be truly grateful!

Thanks

Sean

[tlarkin]

The only thing I know about File Wave is that it also works on the
Windows sides of things. However, I have never used it.

Thomas Larkin
TIS Department
KCKPS USD500
tlarki at kckps.org
cell: 913-449-7589
office: 913-627-0351

[#3]

I have rather extensively, there are two really big draw backs to FileWave
and to understand that you need to understand how FileWave is designed.
FileWave wants to take utter and complete control of every file on your
workstation. This can be nice in the case where you wish to repair a singe
file, but this adds to over head of FileWave. To track all of the files FW
creates a database and compares the files on the computer with the files in
the database. If these do not match it downloads a new copy and replaces it
on the fly.

Security is the other issue, since FileWave takes complete control there is
no way to easily circumvent this in fact you need to start in a type of Safe
mode to disable the FileWave client.

When we looked at it for OS X it made no sense whatsoever,why add another
layer of security and that much overhead when a product that uses open
source, proven technology it available.

[Jeff-JAMF]

We used FileWave for 2-3 years in my previous school district. We were
managing more than 500 G3s, G4s, G5s and Intel Macs in 5 buildings. FW was
OK for its management features but we did have some issues with getting it
to work the way we wanted it to work. I don't think we ever did have a
truly accurate inventory.

Last summer I switched to a smaller district (~350 Macs) and am the lone
person in the IT department. I started using Casper out of necessity for
having robust, easy-to-use management and information gathering tools. So
far, it's been great and I feel like I am only using a fraction of
Casper's features well. The user group and JAMF support have been very
helpful.

With the Casper Suite including Casper, CasperAdmin, Composer, Recon and
the JSS, this is a far superior product to FW IMO.

I have not used any of the other Mac management products mentioned.

Jeff
Glendale, WI

[ernstcs]

Sean,

There are many things I am sure, but one of the most important things that I can attest to are the people behind the product. I know many of them both personally and professionally, and you can't get a more dedicated and personable group of people. So you have to sometimes look beyond the software product and know what's behind it as well. Not to mention this fine group of people on this list are awesome, too. =)

I told JAMF that they should respond to this question because, out of anyone on this list, they probably have the most perception about their competitors, and I don't believe you'll get the sales pitchy answers about why they are better. I tried LANrev a few years back, but didn't really get very far with it. Many of the people on this might have used some of those products, but for several that may have been years ago, like me, and they may not have an accurate account of the products today. So be careful.

Some of these products can do cross-platform (not sure if that's important to you), but sometimes that means sacrificing something somewhere. That might be quality, functionality/features, or support. JAMF has committed to the Mac platform and focused on doing it better than anyone else (my opinion). With the pending release of Version 6 I think there will be even more reason that JAMF comes out on top.

Craig

[winkelhe]

Actually I used to be a Filewave admin. I wrote very detailed notes on the pros and cons of FileWave and Casper with a coworker of mine who now works for JAMF. I'll give him a call and see if I can get my hands on those. And regarding the understated Filewave has a "feature" called self healing which will envoke a replacement of anything that has changed. You may notice that this is also a "feature" of Casper however in Filewave it is active by default.

--
Eric Winkelhake | Technology Services ? Mundocom | Re:Sources IT
35 West Wacker Drive, Suite 3000 | Chicago, IL 60601
Office: 312-220-1669 | Mobile: 312-519-5632
Email: Eric.Winkelhake at us-resources.com
Open a Service Desk Ticket | Navigating IT | Training Now

[#7]

Hi Sean

On 18 Jun 2008, at 11:47, Sean.Calderbank at bauer.co.uk wrote:

There are several things I could say about this. The first is that after evaluating and testing several management suites we came down strongly in favour of Casper – so much so that we ended up giving JAMF a testimonial, as did our friends over in Cambridge (see <http://www.jamfsoftware.com/case_studies/ > for these and more).

Our assessment was initially done from the point of view that we already had an established Altiris infrastructure in place for Windows management, and Altiris claimed to offer Mac management as well, so why should we get a separate solution. We also assessed other management software (e.g. LANDesk) that claimed cross-platform support. Very briefly, I ended up feeling strongly that the cross- platform management solutions were really Windows management products into which Mac management had been uncomfortably squeezed. Altiris was a case in point: although they claimed to support Macs, what I found was that the client they provided boiled down to a rather clumsy way to put Macs under Altiris "control", but without actually providing much useful functionality. Moreover, I had trouble finding anyone from Altiris who actually knew much about Macs, which wasn't a good sign. This, and other things like it, led me to the conclusion that it was more of a case of ticking the boxes ("yes, we support Macs / Linux") than actual management.

The contrast with Casper couldn't be greater. The Casper team are Mac sysadmins and Mac users. The product is designed from the ground up to tackle Mac-specific management issues – the kind of things that as Mac sysadmins we encounter all the time but that Windows sysadmins have no idea about. That was one of the things we liked from the outset: features that had clearly been added on the basis of experience, *not* because a product development team in a room decided they'd look good on a tick sheet on the company website. All you have to do is take a look at the Casper documentation and you'll see what I mean. It's page after page of "here's how you use Casper to deal with [insert problem] that you've been wracking your brains over for ever". I love it!

As Craig said, the JAMF team themselves are friendly, dedicated and professional. It's a real pleasure after dealing with so many faceless software companies to come across a group who are so interested in how you use their software, and so quick to help when you run into trouble.

Finally, my experience is that JAMF have a lot of goodwill within Apple, and the Casper Suite integrates well and plays nicely with Apple software. That's very important for us as we need to mix and match a bit depending on the specific environment we manage.

HTH.

Cheers

James

~~~~~~~~~
James Partridge
Systems Development & Support (Apple)
Oxford University Computing Service
13 Banbury Road
Oxford OX2 6NN

Tel.: (01865) 273207
iChat: james.partridge at mac.com

[lschafroth]

I would be interest in that document. Casper has become so unreliable I am looking at other alternatives. Casper 9.xx has changed my view of Jamf completely. I always recommend them to everyone I could. now I cannot say that. I'm looking for a feature comparison of Filewave to Casper. It is considerably cheaper as well.

[RobertHammen]

@clifhirtle had a Google Docs spreadsheet comparing the management tools:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ane3dV9FGdGLdEU5Skc4QTl4dU1kcTY3Vm8wTm84ZWc#gid=0

[calum_rmit]

also look at munki, deploystudio, autopkg, autodmg.
i dont believe there is one tool to rule them all. i think a mix of commercial software ie casper and some open source software ie deploystudio, autopkg, autodmg, munki etc etc is the best way to go. I like to use casper for most things but there are holes and luckily there is some free software that is very good at filling those holes

[RobertHammen]

As a consultant, I need to know/use all of the tools. Better for my career if I am more diverse/less specialized. And @calum_rmit is right, there are things that you can do with third-party tools (AutoDMG absolutely rocks for building never-booted up-to-date base OS images w/a recovery partition) that are superior to/less painful than the Casper alternatives/workflows...

[Matt]

@lschafroth - I'd be interested to hear what issues you are having because Ive been in 2 large environments with Casper 9 and its great. All the other alternatives are shoe horns into OS X whereas Casper was built with OS X in mind 100%.

[Matt]

@lschafroth - I'd be interested to hear what issues you are having because Ive been in 2 large environments with Casper 9 and its great. All the other alternatives are shoe horns into OS X whereas Casper was built with OS X in mind 100%.

[frozenarse]

I wouldn't mind hearing the major issues too before I plan on upgrading from 8.x to 9.x.

[Matt]

At my old place of work I upgraded 8 to 9 with 750 clients and zero issues. I migrated all my MCX's to Configuration Profiles, updated the image, and verified that my admin accounts stuck and I was in business.

[Matt]

One thing to remember too... have a test environment I have seen it too many times here that people update their production environments and break things and freak out. Always test things first!!!!

[lschafroth]

It broke our Configuration profiles which disabled them. That resulted in many machines that were hacked because they could get to the parts they were not supposed to. I have 875 computers and only about 300 or so consistantly work since Casper 9. 9 has had so many bugs that affected us and each one is slowly getting fixed. Now 9.24 has a bug that creates ghost entries in the JSS database. The old entry no longer works so all the manual data entry for each machine has to be done again. (like asset tags and etc) This is scheduled to be fixed in 9.3. The product was nowhere near ready for production when released. The list goes on and on with the issues we are having with it. It works one day and not the next. No consistency like version 8 had.

The best move which helped a LOT was moving away from the Mac servers and putting it on a Windows 2008 R2 server via ESXi. The CasperShare is on two QNAP NAS boxes so I can have a local share in each building. The performance went through the roof once I went that setup. Very fast so that is a good positive about 9 so far. The downside is if you use redundant shares like this there is a defect in that JSS throws a failure when the policy fails on the primary and works on the secondary. So now you have a policy log fill of failures but you dont know if it truley failed or not because it does not accurately keep track of the secondary results.

Lots of little issues like this has made it very frustrating to use the product. I used to push out a policy and all 800+ machines would be updated in a few days. With so many machines not updating properly only about 1/3rd actually every get the updates/packages. The hard part is the machines show a checkin status as current, but they will not run any policy. The only fix is to grab each machine and reinstall the jamf software again from scratch. Then they work. So in a sense, I spend my days watching computers via ARD and when they are online I SSH into them and fix them by hand. I have to keep track of the ones I have fixed and the ones that still are not getting updates.

Not a reliable setup at all anymore. If I stay with Casper next year I will wipe my system and start all over from scratch.

[Matt]

We had around 25 configuration profiles and maybe 4 broke but we fixed them in our Lab environment before sending it out into the wild. Did you test this before you sent it out to the 875 machines? The issue just sounds very generic and a lot of issues I have helped members out with here have turned out to be environmental. One issue we had were 4 out of our machines got certificate issues and JAMF had it fixed in a few days, just had to call them and a WebEX session fixed it. I think you may be a little to hard on JAMF. They have the best product and the best services; but nothing is perfect thats why we get paid big bucks, to test and ensure things work, and if they don't to figure it out. The Windows guys don't just install SCCM and sit at their desks all day. Imagine the things they put up with Microsoft. I have worked with Landesk, SCCM, and Altiris and let me tell you JAMF is a country club compared to those places.

[bentoms]

I have to agree with Matt.

The v9 upgrade has been relatively painless to for us, & we have many Config Profiles, MCX etc.. That were in place before the v9 update & still work.

Having seen some of the issues on 9.24, we've stayed on 9.22. Will test 9.3 when released.

Have you spoke to your JAMF rep? I'm sure over a few webex sessions that can get this better for you again.

Oh, & I'm still on 10.9 server too & things are working well.

Yep the failover errors emails are an annoyance, but it's not impacting the users so it's my annoyance.

[ahopkins]

From the Google doc that was shared, I didn't see IOS, or I missed it. Casper has been great managing our IOS devices for our school. We are moving to a 1 to 1 environment, and without Casper, it wouldn't be so easy.

[bentoms]

@ahopkins, for iOS I recommend: http://www.enterpriseios.com/wiki/Comparison_MDM_Providers

[John_Wetter]

@lschafroth - That sounds like an upgrade gone bad... Did you have the opportunity to roll-back? We haven't experienced those issues you're speaking of with about 9000 different devices/computers in the database. Of course, we did the upgrade about 3 or 4 times in the sandbox with our data and found a few things that support fixed before we even rolled to v9 which involved some cruft in the Db from 8.x or earlier.

The over-all MDM landscape is a mess right now IMHO. There are just too many. If someone were even looking to move, I'd definitely just wait for the bubble to finish bursting as it is right now and see what we end up with for providers.

[Chris_Hafner]

I'll agree that there have been a large number of issues with 9.x. Yet, we've run the gamut of each and every version of 9.x in production and still had an easier time than dealing with some of the alternatives. Now, I'm not going to say that everything was pretty. We were also kind of forced into using version 9 (Because we HAD to get away from HW address being the primary identifier of a given unit). Testing testing testing. I can't say it enough. Testing testing testing.

[gpalau]

Ischafroth wrote:

"I would be interest in that document. Casper has become so unreliable I am looking at other alternatives. Casper 9.xx has changed my view of JAMF completely. I always recommend them to everyone I could. now I cannot say that. I'm looking for a feature comparison of Filewave to Casper. It is considerably cheaper as well."

The company I work for uses Dell KACE, which is great with Windows... But don't touch it with a 10 foot pole when it comes to Mac's in the environment. It makes Casper look like Disneyland (in comparison to your issue). So at the beginning of 2014 I had approached Casper with the intention of setting up a Proof of Concept test, to see if we could use it for the Mac Architecture in our company. We have a very small number of Macs (about 300) but the number is growing at around 5-10 macs per month.

How it Began

The initial experience with Casper was abysmal. To say the least. They pretended us to pony up $6000 for a PoC... I don't know in what Enterprise Universe they lived in, where anyone looking to test their product would be wanting to do that, with no reimbursement if the PoC didn't work out. So we went on a tête-à-tête, that laster about 3-4 months, us begging them to let us test their product and them putting unrealistic payment goals for a PoC.

At the same time, I had contacted Filewave who actually set me up with a PoC on the same day I called them. They set us up for a 20 Computer test 6 Administrators, for 90 days and an unlimited reset every month afterwards and all for the cost of $0.00.

Eventually after 4 months, of emails going back and forth, JAMF allowed us to test their product under the same conditions as Filewave, 20 Computers 5 or 6 admins... we tested for the equal time we tested Filewave which was for about 3-5 months. We tested Filewave first, then we tested Casper, then we did our own comparison against KACE to see how both matched up.

Casper PoC

The Casper installation, took us about a week to set up believe it or not. The instructions for setting it up were pretty old and outdated, and the tech that we eventually had assisting us, was a sales engineer and had never done this setup before... But eventually we got it up and running. It took us a little bit more learning curve to get Casper configured and running to the point we could sit down and go through our testing checklist. One of the things we disliked was that there are like 4 or 5 different applications within the Casper environment to do the very different set of things we needed to do. Another thing is that even though the main environment in Casper is web-based, there is no binary client to remote administer the server from Windows computers. Granted Casper is a Mac administration tool only, and we are aware of that, but in our company where we have a hybrid set of IT Administrators, duality was important.

We thought that the process of profile building settings was pretty straight forward and anyone who has experience in Profile Management and scripting will not have any problems pushing this global settings out. Casper is very powerful in that sense and we thought it was pretty good at handling such configurations, but it required a lot of scripting and retooling... It almost felt as complicated as KACE is when doing Mac Scripting, but a bit easier considering they (casper) understands OSX whereas KACE doesn't.

Then came using Composer, and all the other apps they have to carry out the different configurations for pushing application installs or their Kiosk (which we never could get running). Working with the Kiosk in Casper reminded me a lot how is it with Munki, since the tools are very similar. It wasn't bad, it was just clunky. We were looking for a process that was more streamlined.

We didn't test anything in MDM, because we are not going to use MDM at the moment, but everything we saw with Casper makes it ok I guess.

Note: Rich Trouton from DerFlounder has a really good write up on how their upgrade went from 8.xx to 9.xx in Casper that for you it seems like it would be a good must read: http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2014/06/28/upgrading-from-casper-8-73-to-9-32/

Filewave
There is a HUGE difference between Filewave 7 and 8, and Filewave 6 and earlier. There are a lot of settings that have changed between these two generations of software. The way things were before were not the same as they are now.

Filewave doesn't require a server architecture to run. Which was kind of unexpected, but it didn't affect performance. The server installation is a sinch, making it very easy and un-complicated. We were greeted by a unified interface where all the tools are built into it and we don't have to run different external tools to get things done. The UI in Filewave looks the same if you run the Windows Client or the Mac Client, so if you have IT people in Windows, they can deploy packages from a Windows client that looks and feels the same as for Mac Clients. For our hybrid staff this was excellent.

Working with Profile Management changes was pretty much the same as Casper. If you have done Profile Management with Casper or OSX Server its pretty much the same with FW.

The big change for me at least was doing Filesets, and how easy it was to build an application package with all the settings I needed. For example, in KACE building the JAVA Installer for Mac with all our extra configurations, it took us about 1-2days (this is including testing deployments) with Casper it took us 1-2hrs and with Filewave 35-45 minutes.
The deployment times would vary depending on the complexity of the deployment but most of the times it would go from hours to minutes.

The Kiosk setup for Filewave was less convoluted than Caspers, but I have to tip my hat to Casper, their Kiosk looks really good. I was always a fan of how good it looked and how familiarly it would feel for the new generation of Mac users since it looks and feels more like the modern Mac App Store. Filewave's Software Kiosk is simpler, it's not as flashy as Caspers, and it reminds me a lot of the old Software Update window in OSX 10.6. Again, they both do the job. But Caspers Kiosk does it prettier. If that matters...

Adding modifications to a Fileset or an installation of an application via Filewave was something I loved, since you can drill into the application install from a virtual point, and move or add files as you need to see fit and that is the way it will look on the pushed product. For example, Box Sync, which is a pain in the ... Patella to install. because we needed to push some settings unique to our architecture, was a BREEZE to do in Filewave, than it was on KACE or Casper.

Conclusion

After much testing and based on our architecture and needs we went with Filewave. We have a hybrid environment and we need a tool that can swim on both realms with ease. In the same amount of time that we tested we were able to do so much more with Filewave than we did with Casper. Our PoC grew as much as almost being a parallel system of everything we had on KACE running pretty much flawlessly.

Also, to be fair, there is a lot of people who ran Filewave 10yrs ago, and probably then Filewave was not as strong of a candidate compared to Casper. I know people who use to administer Filewave and their experience were not the best, yet for us it was pretty unique and was pretty much the type of product we were looking for. I also think that the product Filewave has at hand in the present is way better than the one they had 10yrs ago.

Even If Casper hadn't given us such a hard time at the beginning and we would have looked at Casper first, doing the PoC on Filewave would have given us the same results. We had people who were very much vested in Dell KACE and they came loving Filewave and we had people that went Filewave? What the hell is that? and they were much in favor of Casper until we did our testing and discussed our findings.

In terms of pricing they are +/- the same. Filewave may be 5-10K cheaper, but they don't shove down on you, their engineer... Whereas Casper (unless they have changed their policy), will make you hire their engineer for 1st deployments, unless you are certified with them.

My suggestion is as sound as anyone else's here in this forum or anywhere. Which ever product you go after Test, Test and Test. It's what we did.

Gilbert

[donmontalvo]

Hi @gpalau

The Casper installation, took us about a week to set up believe it or not.

Building your first JSS is no walk in the park, given the complexity and number of moving parts. I wouldn't suggest a "Trial" (wasn't aware they ever offered a POC) without having someone available who has done it before.

http://www.jamfsoftware.com/request-trial/

When a company buys Casper, they get JumpStart. An Engineer comes on site to get JSS up and running and provide initial training.

If you decide to go it alone (Trial), you're taking on a huge burden, unlike on site JAMF Engineers who build JSS environments for a living.

If you do decide to take on building your own JSS, after enough practice you'll find that it shouldn't take more than an hour or two if all the pieces are in place (hardware, certs, DNS, etc.).

On the other hand, building a load balanced, virtualized, clustered JSS with MySQL replication, for a global environment, takes longer. Once all the pieces are ready, a week at most.

One of the things we disliked was that there are like 4 or 5 different applications within the Casper environment to do the very different set of things we needed to do. Another thing is that even though the main environment in Casper is web-based, there is no binary client to remote administer the server from Windows computers. Granted Casper is a Mac administration tool only, and we are aware of that, but in our company where we have a hybrid set of IT Administrators, duality was important.

JSS itself can be managed through a web browser (IE is supported). But yea, the tools run on Macs, I can see how trying to port over all those tools to Wintel might be a huge waste of time/effort for very little ROI.

We usually give our Wintel/Unix/HelpDesk folks a spare managed (locked down) Mac that has the tools installed, and we restrict access (loosen up over time once they get up to speed).

We thought that the process of profile building settings was pretty straight forward and anyone who has experience in Profile Management and scripting will not have any problems pushing this global settings out.

This is probably not as much a tool issue, as it is an out-of-box-profile or not. If it's not in JSS, it's likely not in Apple Configurator, or iPCU or OS X Server.

So for not-out-of-the-box profiles, you'd probably have to write some "computer code" (as Greg Neagle puts it <g>).

Then came using Composer, and all the other apps they have to carry out the different configurations for pushing application installs or their Kiosk (which we never could get running).

I'll withhold my comments about Composer. :) If you want a solid tool that's easy to use and follows all the rules, take a look at Packages: http://s.sudre.free.fr/Software/Packages/about.html

Not sure what you mean by "kiosk", guessing you mean the JSS via a web browser?

Note: Rich Trouton from DerFlounder has a really good write up on how their upgrade went from 8.xx to 9.xx in Casper that for you it seems like it would be a good must read: http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2014/06/28/upgrading-from-casper-8-73-to-9-32/

Doesn't Rick also use KACE? :)

We recently upgraded from 8.73 > 9.31 and we posted some of the issues we ran into. Some were resolved, some still open, none were deal breakers:

Look for my threads that begin with "JSS 9.31:":
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/search.html?q=%22JSS+9.31%3A%22

After much testing and based on our architecture and needs we went with Filewave. We have a hybrid environment and we need a tool that can swim on both realms with ease.

We spent years wrestling with cross-platform solutions. In most cases we just didn't have any choice (Altiris, LANrev) and the tool gave us 50% or less of what we needed. For years I thought that was good enough for us.

It wasn't until I really learned Casper that I got to appreciate it. If I told myself that during those first six months, I would have hit me with a keyboard.

HTH,
Don

[MarkMelaccio]

@gpalau

To follow in the footsteps of what @donmontalvo said, there is a huge difference between a Trial/Eval and a POC. A POC means you are ready to go to the next level and use Casper in a real environment, and if things progress to that point, its treated in the same manner as a full paid licensed customer, and its usually at least a 3 month period.

I have never once known JAMF to not set up a 10 seat or so free trial so you can get the idea of what Casper is all about, but if you are advancing to a POC stage, you are kind of well beyond just "checking it out". You are deploying Casper into your environment in the same manner as if you had bought the licenses, with the only cost at that time is the cost for the Jumpstart itself, which is really a Training/Pro Services call.

If you look at it from the right way though, a POC can give you an extra 3 months of the use of Casper that JAMF does not apply to your annual service agreement either, so played right, that in and of itself is a huge savings when getting started and practically pays for the cost of the JumpStart when you think about it.

If you are complaining about the cost of a JumpStart, The reality is the JAMF Jumpstart is a heck of a lot more than just "it took a week to set up Casper", the idea is for during that Jumpstart period, they are teaching you how to fish as opposed to having you go thru a pretty hefty manual, which in a good amount of Enterprises, isn't always made up of "Mac Guys ( and Gals)", it may be the poor guy that suddenly was told to support Macs since the CEO just got one.

Its really for a customer's own good to get the JumpStart, so i think that the characterization of JAMF forcing you to hire their tech is not really an accurate depiction of what the Jumpstart is all about. I'm sorry you feel that trying to get your shop off to the right start for what is in reality a very small fee ( and as i said, if played right would have been mostly recouped in the extra time you would have had in a POC)

As for other things you mention- A cross platform solution that does everything to the level of what Casper does for Macs? It's a myth... its like Bigfoot, or a unicorn, or better yet, Bigfoot riding a Unicorn.

I know that in my experience in choosing a solution for my company, we did look into some solutions that were that "one management solution to rule them all", and as I have said at JAMF User Groups, the definition of "rule them all" kind of morphs a bit when you find out how long it takes that solution to patch for a new Mac OS or iOS release, what the management actually consists of (minimal support) or when the Windows guys refuse to give up the tools they are using for a unified solution.

Taking that into account, Casper is a best of breed solution. Let the Windows guys use the tools they want for Windows, and let the Mac be managed by Casper. That heavily influenced my decision to go with Casper, and frankly my shop is better for it.

You see the Multiple tools in the suite as a negative, i look at that as good design. To me, nothing should ever be so singly powerful that handing it off to an inexperienced person could be a disaster (i'm looking at you ARD), and between the permissions i can give people on what they can use via the JSS and not supplying access to some of the tools to people that dont need them allows an admin to keep better controls on the environment.

I never ever allow anyone other than the folks that are trained for it ( usually thru a Jumpstart) access to Casper Admin. That is for Admins only.

Casper Remote, i give that to my techs, but only if they need it to do their job, and since its all has an audit trail, i know who did what where.

Recon? I don't use it that much myself, but its a great tool for folks that are not transitioning from older tools like ARD to get devices into their JSS. Imaging? again, i give this only to folks that need it.

Composer? A great tool not only for packaging, but for teaching folks who know nothing about packaging what it means to package things up .

That being said, i include all these tools on my builds because in the hands of an experienced tech, they all come in handy. I've said it before at the JAMF User Group meetings, use whatever tools that are at your disposal, and there is no one way to do things. Casper gives us a great platform to make all of that easy, and look at the overall support picture you are trying to paint. if there is a single component you dont like, make a feature request, or use another tool if thats what you choose, Casper plays very well with others.

Are there some features that some folks would like to see that are not currently in Casper? Sure, but frankly, between the folks that are on this very forum ( who typically go out of their way to help) and some enterprising Admins that have created new and better ways to use the tools, those small holes don't seem to matter as much, and JAMF tends to listen to feature requests.

Whatever the case, in your world, going with another product is what you did, and i understand that fit your needs, but i do have to question the commitment to supporting the Mac platform if some of the big holdups for Casper were things like Remote doesn't run on Windows boxes. If you are going to support the Mac, get your techs some Mini's at least, and throw windows on it in whichever manner you choose and they should be able to support anything from that one box... just some food for thought,

--M

[donmontalvo]

@mmdowjones wrote:

Are there some features that some folks would like to see that are not currently in Casper?

Worthwhile reading, feel free to contribute thoughts, as JAMF has eyes on this thread:

Will JSS 10 finally bring us easy patch management?
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=10961

[MarkMelaccio]

@donmontalvo

Thats some of what i was talking about.

my point is though that the whole ecosystem we have with us as admins, the community at large both here on JAMFNation and in the larger Mac Admin community, and JAMF listening to our needs, most features that are lacking get addressed one way or another, either officially, or by one of the enterprising folks that have come up with the cool things we have seen the last few months.

To me, thats kind of the "hidden value" that comes with JAMF and Casper. This forum is a treasure of knowledge, and there is always someone willing to wrap their head around a problem any of us have, and JAMF has provided a great platform for us to do that here.