Deploying Yosemite via cloud distribution point, anyone?

[dba_nc]

Anyone deployed this way, or working on it now? We're working to set up Yosemite upgrades via Casper. Our cloud distribution point is hosted on Rackspace. So far, no success in caching/install cached or straight install. No errors in policy. Policies are set exactly as described in "Deploying-OS-X-v10.7-or-Later-with-the-Casper-Suite.pdf".

Caching policy log is as follows, but after policy runs, nothing is cached:
Executing Policy Cache OS X Yosemite...
Caching package Install OS X Yosemite.InstallESD.dmg...
Downloading https://9bbaa494b4fe0c9e8570-5b2b231437995cc73773c37901d2ed4d.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/Install%20OS%20X%20Yosemite.InstallESD.dmg...
Verifying DMG...
Running Recon...
Retrieving inventory preferences from https://jss.jamfcloud.com/winnow/...
Locating accounts...
Locating software updates...
Searching path: /Applications
Gathering application usage information...

Straight install policy runs but does not install anything:
Executing Policy Install OS X Yosemite...
Downloading https://9bbaa494b4fe0c9e8570-5b2b231437995cc73773c37901d2ed4d.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/Install%20OS%20X%20Yosemite.InstallESD.dmg...
Verifying DMG...
Verifying package integrity...
Installing Install OS X Yosemite.InstallESD.dmg...
Preparing for in-place OS upgrade...
Closing package...

[dba_nc]

I thought maybe the file name "Install OS X Yosemite.InstallESD.dmg" is too long and/or spaces are a problem for Rackspace. Changed installer name to Install_Yosemite.InstallESD.dmg and uploading now. Will test and report back.

[chriscollins]

@dba_sparktivity Make sure in your straight install policy has the restart options set to explicit restarts, not just "if package requires it". Otherwise nothing will happen. Was having this same problem with current versions of JSS for both Mavericks and Yosemite until I made that change.

[dba_nc]

Thanks @chriscollins, much appreciated! I adjusted the install policy accordingly. Switched back to cache/install cached policies.

Still not working - Cache policy runs but I think there may be a caching problem or package problem as I see in the "install cached" policy logs: "Error: The package (Install_Yosemite.InstallESD.dmg) cannot be found"

[dba_nc]

Looks like caching works fine. Checked Library/Application Support/JAMF/Waiting Room, the 5.17GB Yosemite dmg there.

Install cached policy runs:
Executing Policy Install OS X Yosemite...
Verifying package integrity...
Installing Install_Yosemite.InstallESD.dmg...
Closing package...
Blessing in-place OS upgrade directory...
/OS X Install Data is not a directory

Reboot does not occur even though Restart Options in the policy are set to Restart Immediately

[chriscollins]

Did you change it for both options? (I know, sounds dumb but it would only work after I set it for both). Here is what mine looks like https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/519077/screenshot_50.png

[dba_nc]

Thanks again @chriscollins, yes Restart Options are configured like yours - appreciate the screen shot!

JAMF support guided me to this likely solution:
There's a checkbox in the PKG properties in Casper Admin "item is a DMG with OS X Installer or Adobe updater/installer for CS3 or CS4". I didn't have the box checked because that step wasn't mentioned in "Deploying-OS-X-v10.7-or-Later-with-the-Casper-Suite.pdf". It seems the upgrades ran successfully, but both test machines went offline after the policy ran, so I won't know for sure until I get to the office this afternoon.

[chriscollins]

@dba_sparktivity Ahhhhhh yeah. I don't even get that checkbox. What I have seen which is weird is it uploads and recognizes that it is an OS package automatically so I can't even make a choice there, but then it sets its priority to 10, and I can't change the priority to 1, but if I then assign it to any category and save in Casper Admin, it then changes its priority to 1 automatically. Weird. Glad its at least somewhat working for yah!

[dba_nc]

Just a followup here...this issue is related to Rackspace...

What's interesting (and frustrating) is this OS X Yosemite package will index and calculate checksum without a problem. But when I ran it on test machines, it broke them!

We have another cloud-based JSS also with a Rackspace JDS, and in that one the OS X Yosemite installer will not Index - we get a 404 error...BUT it worked...we were able to deploy and upgrade clients!

[robby_barnes · Accepted solution]

I had a similar problem with Rackspace. We decided to switch to Amazon S3 and it completely solved the issue. We only run in to problems in S3 when we get in to packages that are larger than about 10 GB.

[dba_nc]

thanks @robby.barnes !

[yan1212]

@robby.barnes

Ou of curiosity, did you identify a similar size file limit in Rackspace that may be related to your problem?

I am looking to set up a Cloud DP and currently edging towards Rackspace instead of S3 but reading this is changing my mind...

Thanks

[robby_barnes]

@yan1212

The problem we were running in to with Rackspace was that any file over roughly 5 GB was throwing up really strange errors, similar to what @dba_sparktivity was talking about in his original post. I couldn't find anything on rackspace's support or documentation that said why, but in working with jamf support on the issue they seemed to think that it may be a file size issue. It's strange because they said that other customers use rackspace with no problem, but it just seemed that at exactly 5 GB it would fail every single time.

I had done a few things with S3 and other AWS services personally just to kind of play around with all of them and had been very impressed with them. I decided to copy everything over to S3 and give that a try and it has been smooth sailing ever since. It's possible I just got some weird funky VM with rackspace, but in my personal experience S3 has been a far better experience.

Over the weekend I actually tried copying a 25 GB Parallels Virtual Machine up to our S3 and tried deploying it on a computer across the country, and it worked. I was a little surprised that it successfully completed, but it did. Probably not something I would recommend for most situations, but as an experiment it was pretty cool.