JAMF Question

[drenigoln]

Can anyone tell me the benefit of going with Jamf's Cloud solution over On-Premise? I keep seeing plenty of issues with cloud based setups but haven't seen anyone running into these issues with on-premise.

[sdagley]

@drenigoln If you're talking about building out an on-prem Jamf Pro installation you're going to be building a cluster configuration, typically a primary JSS instance that handles devices on your internal network, and a public facing JSS instance in your DMZ that handles devices when they're not on your internal network. Unless you're planning on setting up your own Cloud hosted distribution point (e.g. AWS S3) you'll also need at least two file share distribution point servers running SMB to support files being added by Jamf Admin and HTTPS to support your endpoints downloading files (no security organization is going to allow you to have a public facing SMB server). You'll also need to have a daily backup plan in place for the MySQL server needed to host the JSS database, and for every JSS update you'll have the excitement of making sure everything is backed up before installing the update so you can then revert back to a working environment if anything goes wrong. And depending on how the JSS/DP/MySQL hosts are managed you also get the excitement of patching them, or if you're not responsible for your own patching you get to hope whoever in your org is doesn't break your Jamf Pro system when they do their periodic updates.

Personally, after having set up a couple of different on-prem Jamf Pro environment where I got to do all of the things mentioned above (as well as many other things I left out because this post is already longer than I'd planned), I'd much rather leave all of the maintenance and operation duties for managing a Jamf Pro environment to Jamf, so I can concentrate on actually using it to manage my org's Macs.

Edit: As @cdev and @MehdiYawari point out there are also features already not included with on-prem Jamf Pro (e.g. Jamf App Catalog) and features that are known to be going away for on-prem (e.g. Conditional Access integration with Intune). That latter group is likely to expand as Jamf looks to push more customers to Jamf Cloud.

[obi-k]

Since going Cloud, I don't miss learning MySQL ninja skills.

[gachowski]

I have been, a Jamf cloud customer since Jamf started offering it. The issues I have seen over that time have not effected day to day operations. Sure, nothing is perfect however, I am sure that having Jamf professionals manage the Jamf Infrastructure is safer and more reliable they doing it yourself. If you have a team and tons of money then on prem might be a possibility. 

[cdev]

It's a combination of removing the support/maintenance aspect of running a Jamf cluster, but also Jamf has started launching a few features that are purely in the cloud, e.g. some MS/Azure tie-ins and app installers (think a limited version of AutoPkg).

[MehdiYawari]

Although we are happy with our Jamf On-prem, we have to migrate to Jamf to Cloud as Jamf will discontinue Conditional Access support in a future release of Jamf Pro (estimated removal date: late 2023).
If you need conditional access in your org, Jamf Cloud is the solution that you would want to go with.

[cdev]

It's not so much a Jamf removal as it is a Microsoft mandated change for all MDMs to offer conditional access. It's been announced as a required change for about a year; Jamf will be complying with the requirement and restricting Conditional Access support to the cloud. On the plus side, this change does enable other vendors to support compliance reporting to Intune...