JSS and Distribution point on macOS or VMs comparison?

[slatert]

I would like to ask if anybody might have performance and overall reliability comparisons of running the JSS and Distribution points on macOS vs VMs?
My existing hardware is:
JSS and primary distribution point
MacPro Late 2013, 6 core 3.5 GHz Intel Xeon E5, 32 GB RAM
MacPro Late 2013, 6 core 3.5 GHz Intel Xeon E5, 32 GB RAM

Additional Distribution points
MacPro Late 2013, quad core 3.7 Ghz Intel Xeon E5, 32 GB RAM

[StoneMagnet]

@tslater How many devices are you managing?

[slatert]

800

[gskibum · Accepted solution]

I run several JSSs in both VMs and on real hardware on 2012 Mac minis. Minis are equipped with 16-GB RAM and 1-TB SSDs. I can't tell the difference in performance between real hardware and VMs..

Distribution points are not in VMs.

AutoPkg is hosted in VMs and that works great.

[bburdeaux]

The only issue I've had with running on MacOS has been the performance issues MySQL faces on newer versions of the OS. We've since moved the database onto a Windows VM and everything is running smoothly.

[Taylor_Armstron]

No measurable difference here moving JSS between Mac and Windows, or between moving distribution point between AFP (Mac), Windows (HTTP and SMB) or a NetApp cifs share. Your network is usually going to be the limiting factor.

[blackholemac]

Jamf truly is agnostic on this. I run mine on Windows VMs but you can just as easily on Linux or Mac hardware...the downside of hosting on Mac hardware is that you waste a perfectly good Mac when a generic Windows VM or Linux VM runs just fine. Plenty Of other considerations, but that was what immediately popped into my head when thinking on it.

[slatert]

managing 1000 Macs, 500 iPads, 50 tvOS

[Dinnerticketboy]

We are currently running 4 x Virtual RedHat Enterprise servers to act as JSS Master; JSS Headless; JDS & MySQL.
Each have 4Gb ram with 2 Cpu cores.
Network traffic to/from the JDS is the biggest possible bottle-neck, so ensure 1Gb ethernet connections are used and you'll be fine.

[nigelg]

Running 3 Linux Debian VMs for the jss (2 load balanced for client communication and 1 for management and MDM), MySQL is running on a load balanced Debian VM setup and FileShare DPs running on Windows 2012 servers to make use of deduplication to save file space using multiple instances.

I would prefer not to use bare metal because its very easy to restore a VM to a previous state or create a snapshot before doing an update. Its not so easy to do that with bare metal (although APFS might change that).

[blackholemac]

Now that I have some extra time this morning, I'll drill down on this beyond "don't waste a Mac".

In short we went with VMs mainly for the snapshot/revert capabilities, but we still maintain traditional backups for nightly. In my case we are clustered with 4 Tomcat VMs and 1 MySQL VM. Three of our Tomcat VMs are behind a balancer, one acts as the admin console with separate URL. My choices came down to Linux or Windows on VMWare. Given our staff's technical background, I went with Windows, but am wondering honestly that perhaps we should have gone Linux anyway. With Windows, I have to allocate more resources for "breathing room" for the operating system than I would had we installed Ubuntu Server in total command line mode.

I like @nigelg s thoughts on not using bare metal but in my case the reason we don't is more administrative/budgetary than technical. We have all the VMs we seem to want around here, but getting bare metal thats modern is much more difficult. As for my DP, I actually am using an old Mac with AFP (sounds lame but I've had no load issues and we've been using the box for years) as my primary DP and a server on Microsoft Azure for my secondary.

Basically as your seeing, choosing what to host on is almost and art form mixed with some experimentation with test environments.
Some choose bare metal, others choose VMs and any combo of operating systems can be used. Some may have DPs using any combo of stuff. Make sure that whatever you choose is beefy but not overkill, able to backup and restore to your liking and works well for your IT staff to maintain even if you aren't there.

hope this helps,
blackholemac