Mac in the Largest Organizations

[milesleacy]

Hey all,

I'd like to put together a sub-community of those of us managing the largest Apple environments with Jamf tools and following Apple best practices.

I'd like this sub-community to be people who are now, or are working toward in the next 12 months, managing 10K+ Macs.

The purpose would be to discuss issues and processes involved in managing large deployments that may not be relevant to smaller deployments such as regulation, scaling, security, logistics, etc.

If you'd rather not identify yourself in open forum you can DM me on macadmins Slack @milesleacy

[dgreening]

25k+ here!

[donmontalvo]

Five figures here. Might want to add "legal, business" to the list of issues and processes.

[Phantom5]

We manage here several customers with a whole lot of Macs. Would love to join.

[blackholemac]

I can't say I'm in you guys' league in a K-12 school district, but quite honestly, I learn best practices, techniques and talent from you folks and would love a place where I can pick brains and get the benefit of your expertise. @milesleacy I have used your scripts and modified them to my liking in this environment for years. My thoughts on packaging over time have drifted more toward @donmontalvo 's views. We've all gotten something from @rtrouton on FileVault.

I would love to join, but honestly don't feel I'm in the same league, but am quite happy working in K-12 education.

[stevewood]

6K on the way to 15K and more.... yeah, I'd be interested in a sub-community. Thanks for suggesting it @milesleacy !

[easyedc]

This In interesting idea (though I'm not in the large category group). I think doing sub-categories for certain types of .org's may be a good idea overall. I'm in a HIPAA-bound environment and having a sub-category that discusses topics related to certain industries could be fairly beneficial. I assume this would be a slack group? Or is there some JAMFnation-creation in the works?

[tomt]

Not at that level yet but have always tried to think in those terms. I'd definitely be interested even though I'd most likely just lurk and learn.

[mbezzo]

Always interested, not playing on that scale yet though!

[easyedc]

@tomt

lurk and learn

Story of my life...

[rderewianko]

While I can understand where this coming from I disagree with this. I see this as a way to further segment what is already a few active mac communities. Jamfnation, Macadmins slack + a third community?

A lot of us follow with what bigger enterprises are doing. Putting this behind closed doors doesn't mutually benefit everyone.

Are you aiming for a exclusive invite only community?

[milesleacy]

Hey all,

Thanks for the replies and interest!

I've been in touch with a few folks and will reach out to everyone who's shown interest shortly.

Based on some conversations and comments, I think a few points of clarification of intent are called for.

• Will this be exclusive?
First, the intent is not to exclude, but to focus. I'd like to focus on issues facing large enterprises (in this context, "large enterprise" is defined as any organization that centrally deploys and manages large numbers of Apple devices, not necessarily a for-profit business entity) with those who are facing and solving them. On the one hand, I want this group to be free to discuss their unique issues without getting sidetracked by too many tangents, explanations, or folks without a stake in the topic. Also, sometimes it is easier to discuss certain topics in a more closed setting than a world-readable Internet forum. On the other hand, knowledge sharing is a good thing. The aim is to strike a balance and encourage participants to document and share as much as possible.

• I want to 'lurk and learn'
This has great value. My aim is that while we may keep some conversations private, that the group will share their anonymized results, findings, workflows, etc.

In addition to simple size and scale, I also envision this group discussing topics such as...
• Compliance - HIPAA, PCI, etc.
• 'Turning a battleship on a dime' - many large orgs have been, to put it plainly, doing Apple management incorrectly. We are now on a threshold where, if your org hasn't been making incremental changes to align with Apple's intended processes, you are facing a need for immediate and significant change. The folks in this group may offer to be case studies or guest speakers for each other in order to help everyone right their proverbial ships.
• Purchasing logistics for large deployments
• Using Jamf tools and following Apple best practices - most of the forums and other venues/communities out there include folks and organizations that are, for better or worse, not following Apple best practices or using Jamf tools. There is such a thing as a correct way to do things, and this group will be focused on operating within Apple's guardrails until and unless Apple's process has been tried per spec and failed and then act as a coalition to pursue any resulting bug reports with Apple.

These are all just the initial ideas. Once we have assembled a core group to act as a steering committee, we can come up with an initial state and review how we operate going forward.

[jconte]

@milesleacy We are a very large organization in terms of employees and machines, only approaching 1000 macs but would be interested in this group. Please feel free to reach out to me if you feel I could be of value to the group.

[Aaron]

I'm in the same boat as @easyedc and @jconte - we're a large org but not necessarily a large Mac fleet, and while we don't have HIPAA in Australia, we do have things like the Information Privacy Act, and the Health Records Act... basically the same thing. I don't fit within your constraints, but I'd definitely love to lurk and learn.

[AVmcclint]

It's a shame macenterprise.org is no more. That would have been the perfect forum for things like this.

[blackholemac]

Second @AVmcclint on MacEnterprise...and afp548. I’ve used both in the past but they aren’t the same as they used to be. MacEnterprise is still an active mailing list though and the Penn State groups do a good job with it.

[arandall]

If this is happening/has happened, send me an invite please. Was managing about 40k devices until very recently and am pushing towards large numbers at my new place.

[milesleacy]

Hi all,

I now have the time to further develop this concept. Please reach out to me @milesleacy on MacAdmins Slack if you're interested.