MacOS X Image Design - Mojave

[jamfnoob88]

Howdie community,

Pretty new to Jamf and MacOS X imaging. We are about to initiate a greenfield deployment and rollout ~500 Macbook Pros running Mojave . Curious, how you'll have setup your images, what all different components you have included in your images with the view of keeping it thin and easy to deploy (we are of the view to use both network based deployments and offline deployments using USB sticks). How has your experience been and what pro tips would you have for us to consider before we get deep down with this. Many thanks.

[PaulHazelden]

Best pro tips I can think of...
Test it
Test it
And Test it again
Make loads of notes on what you have done, and give them to someone else to follow.

If they are new Macs you may not be able to image them, there are problems with that - Do a search in here for imaging Mojave and you will find the discussions.
I am looking to probably bootstrap our Macs with Mac Deploy Stick, which uses the recovery disk, and scripts on the stick to set up the Macs with Mojave. Work out exactly what you want to set up, and then how to do it with scripts and add them to your work flow. I try to do the minimum I need to get them enrolled and set up, then I let Jamf take over and push out everything else.
If you are doing a lot over the WiFi, consider setting up a temporary setting to stop them from sleeping, they can drop their WiFi connection when asleep.

[hkabik]

I'd really look into Apple Business Manager at this juncture. Imaging really IS dead though there are quite a few shops out their performing some tech necromancy to keep it going. I'd advise against it, it's alot of effort and heartache and the rug will be pulled out from you sooner or later.

ABM/DEP is the way forward.

[Hugonaut]

If you don't have ABM or ASM - get it. If you can't get it, check out TwoCanoes MDS.

Due to integration of other corporate entities & fleets into my environment & the time it takes for other services to authorize and transfer macs around to our main ASM/ABM accounts (which takes a long time) I had to come up with a zero touch method for the deployment team for computers that could not utilize our Prestage Enrollment / DEP.

I utilized MDS, Arduino & JAMF (+ JAMF API) to create a zero touch thin imaging process that approves the UAMDM profile & gets the mac into our environment & finishes off like our DEP Machines with depNotify. Literally plug it in. Walk away. Come Back. Its Ready.

You can do it!

[jamfnoob88]

Thanks for all your valuable inputs, I am looking into these as we speak.