Deploy Studio

[tlarkin]

has anyone looked at this? While I don't see anything it does that Casper Doesn't, it does do one really neat thing. I supports PXE booting. So, you can feasibly have PC clients netboot (or PXE boot as they call it) to it and image Windows or Linux to them. This sounds very interesting for mixed client environments. While, I have not played with it yet, I was curious if anyone on the list has used it with Casper or what not.

I mean if I could also use one server technology to image all of our Windows clients, that would be kind of neat. You could then have one Xserve do it all. Casper does have some, unsupported, but working tools to image Windows on a Mac. I have used them and they do work.

I have way too much on my plate to even attempt looking at Deploy Studio, however, if anyone else has tinkered with it, what are your thoughts? I was thinking if possible down the road I may run Deploy studio on my Xserves in each building for netboot and imaging the PCs only, and then keep Casper for the Macs. I really like the auto run data and would not want to give that up.

http://www.deploystudio.com/Home.html

Thoughts? Experiences?

Thanks,

---

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

[milesleacy]

I had a cursory look at it a few months ago.
My first impression is that it's an immature product/project.

I can't download the Architecture document from their site (the link appears
to be broken), but if I recall correctly, DeployStudio is attempting to
deliver features found in Casper, NetRestore and Radmind.

I think it's an admirable effort by the project's creators and contributors,
however, I'll be sticking with Casper for several reasons.

Before Casper, I used Radmind and a collection of my own homebrewed shell
scripts to handle deployment, software distribution, patch management and
general system maintenance. Tasks using these technologies are not very
duplicatable in junior staff due to the learning curve. That means I have
to be around all the time. That's bad.

If one of my scripts or Radmind doesn't work as expected, I have to fix it
with no support, and I can potentially pull my hair out for days trying to
fix it. With Casper, I pay for support and get excellent response times and
resolution rates.

I know a constructive criticism was recently made on this list about the
Casper documentation, but this project's documentation is downright
skeletal.

It appears that DeployStudio may have some interesting ideas regarding PC
deployment, but I don't manage PCs, and if I ever need to manage BootCamp,
Parallels or VMWare, I can do that through Casper.

If there are any specific compelling features you find in DeployStudio, I'd
be interested to hear about them, and perhaps they can be presented to JAMF
as feature requests.

----------
Miles A. Leacy IV

? Certified System Administrator 10.4
? Certified Technical Coordinator 10.5
? Certified Trainer
Certified Casper Administrator
----------
voice: 1-347-277-7321
miles.leacy at themacadmin.com
www.themacadmin.com

[Bukira]

Hi Thomas

I would be interested in researching this maybe in a week or too. I currently don't deploy windows but it's something we have looked into and preplaned. We create a 20% partion when imaging ready for a windows deployment so that in the future we can deploy windows without having to reimage. But I've not tested the Casper stuff yet. So I will be looking into this and deploystudio for research purposes.

Criss

[dustydorey]

Ok so I just got back from that apple event and they demoed Deploy
Studio, and I'd like to point out that he compared it to NetRestore but
made a point to say it does not replace Casper.

In any case for what it is, it is really really nice. A huge
improvement on Netrestore and shares a lot of similarities with casper
in an imaging way only, you know without the management, package
building, remote tools and inventory pieces. Unfortunately they did
not talk about pxe booting non-apple hardware or anything that didn't
involve building stuff off of anything but apple hardware. He did
mention that there is now a Wiki for documentation. So maybe that will
grow.

Hey JAMF if you're reading this, one thing that was cool was the
partitioning was built into the workflow and it supported partitioning
for os x, windows, and Linux pre laying down the image. Any way to get
preflight disk utility functions built into casper w/o having to script
it?

-Dusty-

Dustin Dorey

Technology Support Cluster Specialist

ISD 196 Apple Valley, Eagan, Rosemount

dustin.dorey at district196.org

952|423|7971

[#5]

In version 5 of Casper we could image a computer totally offline by syncing
the JSS with an external local drive (USB or Firewire). Page 59 in manual.
However, it doesn't seem to work with version 6 though.

Nathaniel Lindley

++++++++++
Educational Technology
Saint Paul Public Schools
Saint Paul, Minnesota
nathaniel.lindley at spps.org
phone: 651-248-6861

[dustydorey]

Several of the folks in my office including myself are going to an apple
"dog and pony show" later today and I know that deploy studio is one of
the topics they were going to cover. I will see if anything worth
while comes out of it and let you know. From what I gathered though is
that it was just an imaging solution. Which would be fine in small
Deployments where the need to manage an inventory was not as high. I
could see someone managing less than 50 macs using it in conjunction
with ARD. but certainly not 5000 macs or any mass deployment that you
need to be able to support more than just re-imaging if there is a
problem. I personally think that is the beauty of the casper suite,
it's more than just imaging. Just my .02 cents though, and I'm not
very well versed on Deploy Studio other than whats on their website.

-Dusty-

-- Dustin Dorey
Independent School District 196
Technology Support Cluster Specialist
14445 Diamond Path West
Rosemount, MN 55068
952|423|7971
dustin.dorey at district196.org

[Bukira]

Hi Miles

I think the point Thomas was making was imaging PC clients from a Mac
server, ive downloaded the documentation and installed the DS and for
the mac side it is a very basic imaging and packing deployment product,
but FREE for those that cant afford Casper, not that i can say its a
patch on Casper.

As your the Casper Trainer you might be able ti tell me if you can use
casper from a usb/ external drive without any server/network? As i am
only 6months into using capser.

DS can support external drives, you can use scripts, install packages
and image computers and theres even a database of known approved
computers to image as well as a live activity monitor.

On the PC side, it installs a vmlinux pxebooter and alters the dhcp
settings, atm i dont have a PC to test with, but from the forums allows
the PC to pxe boot however it doesn't support all NIC's nor necessarily
new or future PC's

I would have thought that maybe in the future with EFI that PC's and
windows might start going that way making it easier to preboot them.

The DS does not make a PC image, its just a pxebooter.

You also need DHCP on your mac server as well as cifs or nfs support.

Criss

Criss Myers
Senior Customer Support Analyst (Mac Services)
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator v10.5
LIS Business Support Team
Library 301
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Ex 5054
01772 895054

[milesleacy]

Thanks for the vote of confidence. While I don't claim the title "Casper
Trainer", I'll try to answer your question. I invite anyone from JAMF to
correct me if my understanding is flawed.
Casper is not intended to image without a JSS.

If I had to, I think I could "trick" Casper Imaging into deploying an image
without a JSS by pre-caching the necessary packages and scripts onto my
external device. I'd have to experiment a bit to see if I am correct, but
my gut feeling is that it would be possible though require doing things in
an unsupported way. Casper Imaging having the built-in and supported
ability to cache configurations and the contents of a distribution point
could certainly be useful. I'd recommend that anyone who finds it useful
contact JAMF with a feature request.

Deploy Studio is free, and it does provide a decent imaging solution for the
price. When used from portable drives, it seems a bit better than having a
monolithic image deployment. When used in its server model, it seems to be
of only slightly greater utility than using Apple NetInstall. The
difference being that you would have to build and store
a separate NetInstall image for each "configuration" if you went with the
pure Apple solution.

As far as deploying Windows goes, I'm of the opinion that Casper is the
"best of breed" solution for deploying and maintaining Macs. If I ever
assumed responsibility for deployment and maintenance of Windows PCs, I'd
research the "best of breed" deployment and management utility/suite for
Windows.

----------
Miles A. Leacy IV

? Certified System Administrator 10.4
? Certified Technical Coordinator 10.5
? Certified Trainer
Certified Casper Administrator
----------
voice: 1-347-277-7321
miles.leacy at themacadmin.com
www.themacadmin.com

[#9]

We use Windows Deployment Services (Included in Win Server 2003 SP2 and
Win Server 2008) for PXE booting and imaging our Windows machines.

I have adapted this method to imaging Windows onto our Macs as well and it
is working fairly well. The only downside is having to boot the Macs from
a WDS deployment CD since they won't PXE boot. Once booted from the CD,
I can deploy my windows image using the Window pre-execution environment
just like we do other PC's.

Chad

[milesleacy]

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Miles Leacy <miles.leacy at themacadmin.com> wrote: Casper is not intended to image without a JSS. If I had to, I think I could "trick" Casper Imaging into deploying an image without a JSS

It has been brought to my attention that while it's true that Casper isn't
really intended to do imaging without a JSS, there's no need for any
trickery or feature requests if you want to image from an external drive
using Casper. In fact, I assume it's even supported.

Page 59 of the Casper Suite Documentation describes how to "make all of your
packages, scripts, printers and configurations available offline for Casper
Imaging to utilize" in a section titled "Replicating FireWire or USB
Drives".

----------
Miles A. Leacy IV

? Certified System Administrator 10.4
? Certified Technical Coordinator 10.5
? Certified Trainer
Certified Casper Administrator
----------
voice: 1-347-277-7321
miles.leacy at themacadmin.com
www.themacadmin.com

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Miles Leacy <miles.leacy at themacadmin.com>wrote:

[John_Wetter]

Hi Dustin,

An interesting take. When I was listening to the presentation, to me it just sounded like it would be a great version of Casper Imaging utility. Just for the Netboot environment to be able to graphically do all of the workflows we're doing with scripting right now while imaging. I could definitely see this for the imaging of being able to build the job of formatting, installing, patching, etc.

I think the one thing lost on a good amount of the audience is that everything Deploy Studio does is one little corner of what Casper does. I can see huge value in it making Casper Imaging easier, but still just a little corner. I heard one person behind me say "Why do we need Casper now?" So, it sounds like there's still some education out there as far as really managing Macintosh computers. I guess it's a case of where EDU is just moving a little slower than everyone else and not wanting to admit that we're enterprise environments.

-John

[tlarkin]

Yup, when I was in the CCA training over this last summer one of the
drills we went through was creating a recovery partition using Casper to
image a machine locally. It is doable, and casper even hides the
restore partition for you, so no command line wizardry has to happen.

Unfortunately, at this very moment my brain is escaping on the exact
method of how this works. I need to bust out my Casper bible and look
it up. It is very possible though I have seen it happen in person

---

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

[tlarkin]

The one thing that irks me, is that if the hard drive is renamed from "Macintosh HD" casper can't find it. I too, would like the ability to have a completely zero'd out hard drive and be able to create partitions on the fly, choosing my own file system (HFS+, HFS+J, NTFS, ext3, UFS, ZFS, so on) chopping up the drive in partitions and then laying it down before the imaging process, then even possibly run the bless command as a post image option or lay down a different OS be it Linux or Windows, and lastly possibly even configuring a boot loader or what not.

Right now GParted comes to mind since its free, open source, and supports a very large base of file systems.

---

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

[milesleacy]

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Thomas Larkin <tlarki at kckps.org> wrote: if the hard drive is renamed from "Macintosh HD" casper can't find it.

The name of the target disk isn't important to Casper Imaging, but I believe
it does have to exist before you start your imaging process. For example,
you can have a target volume of "My Obscurely Named Volume". You can use
"before" scripts to repartition your internal disk(s), create RAIDs, etc.,
but there will have to be a volume called "My Obscurely Named Volume" to
begin with in order for Casper Imaging to target it.

If JAMF were to change this behavior, however, you'll lose some
idiot-proofing. As it stands, you can't target a volume that doesn't exist
(unless you flub your "before" scripts and destroy that volume without
recreating it).

I too, would like the ability to have a completely zero'd out hard drive and be able to create partitions on the fly, choosing my own file system (HFS+, HFS+J, NTFS, ext3, UFS, ZFS, so on) chopping up the drive in partitions and then laying it down before the imaging process, then even possibly run the bless command as a post image option or lay down a different OS be it Linux or Windows, and lastly possibly even configuring a boot loader or what not.

I believe you can do all of this via scripting (you may need 3rd party
utilities on your restore partition/utility drive/netboot image if you want
to work with filesystems that Apple doesn't support out of the box). GUIs
are nice though.

----------
Miles A. Leacy IV

? Certified System Administrator 10.4
? Certified Technical Coordinator 10.5
? Certified Trainer
Certified Casper Administrator
----------
voice: 1-347-277-7321
miles.leacy at themacadmin.com
www.themacadmin.com

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Thomas Larkin <tlarki at kckps.org> wrote:

[tlarkin]

That is strange when I netboot a client and if the drive is called
"untitled" it doesn't find the target volume. I will have to tinker
with it more tomorrow.

---

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

[Bukira]

Same for me which is a problem when a mac thats been repaired and had a
new drive put in come back with a different name.

On the deploy studio side, i will be writting an article for MacTech on
deploy studio so will be doing research into its use,

I would say that as a SELF CONTAINED external imaging system it could be
very good,

My example being :

Use Casper as normal but then take the base image and base packages and
scripts and create a self contained external USB PEN Drive Deploy Studio
setup that can be given to a technician or staff member to image a mac
offline.

OR create a some kind of diagnostic or repair installer etc,

Personally i can see that as being useful,

Criss

Criss Myers
Senior Customer Support Analyst (Mac Services)
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator v10.5
LIS Business Support Team
Library 301
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Ex 5054
01772 895054

[milesleacy]

What issues are you having? I'd suggest contacting JAMF support. The same
info is in the version 6 documentation, so I assume it is supposed to work.
To Criss: Have you tried replicating your distribution point to an external
drive as per page 59 of the Casper Documentation? I'm sure Deploy Studio is
great if you don't have Casper, but if you do, my feeling is that it makes
more sense to use your existing tool than to work with an unknown item.

----------
Miles A. Leacy IV

? Certified System Administrator 10.4
? Certified Technical Coordinator 10.5
? Certified Trainer
Certified Casper Administrator
----------
voice: 1-347-277-7321
miles.leacy at themacadmin.com
www.themacadmin.com