mass swap out of machines

[tlarkin]

So,

We are doing our first refresh of our 1:1 and getting rid of 6,000 Macbooks and getting new Macs in. I have no clue what the district is buying but they are looking at Macbooks and Macbook Airs. Has anyone done a giant equipment swap with Casper yet? I am thinking I may want to keep these in the JSS database just as a reference, but unmanage all of them? Should I export the current database to a back up and then wipe and create a new one with the new deployment?

I also got some desktops which will not be swapped out that I need to keep in inventory as well. I guess I could quickadd those labs if I did wipe the database. I am looking at all options, what is best practice, best for performance, best for making sure everything goes over smoother to the new machines and so forth.

Anyone done this yet? This summer is gonna be really fun!

-Tom

[jarednichols]

If it were me, I'd do a database backup and then delete just the machines that are getting swapped. You likely want to keep all your policies and smart groups as I assume you've spent some time getting them just right and tuned perfect. If for some reason you need to refer back to the inventory info, you could restore the database to another box and go from there.

How many machines would you be keeping in the labs? If it's not that many, it may just make sense to re-do that image and make it fresh too.

j
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Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436