MCX and Migrating to Profiles

[CasperSally]

We have about 90 MCX settings, 13 of which are active and manual so at least those need to move to profiles when we go to 9.x in the next few months.

MCX has been 100% solid for us for years, and because its mostly security related settings coming down, I have shied away from using profiles because why mess with what's not broken. Also, we have had enrollment issues at image time which has been an ongoing frustration for us but supposedly will magically work great with 9 without a special fix needed.

Just wondering in the JAMF community if most have migrated to using 100% config profiles (it's just a new way to push plists after all), or are users using a mix of MCX and profiles? Is there any worry any more about lack of reliability of profiles coming down, which is my main concern, in order to guarantee the student workstations are locked down where they need to be.

Thanks as always for any info.

[golbiga]

I haven't moved 100% away yet, though I've also not moved to 9.x yet. One thing to keep in mind is the JSS configuration profiles do not reflect everything you would see in profile manager (especially for creating custom profiles). So you might want to have a 10.9 VM handy for those times that you need additional profiles via Profile manager. You might also want to check out mcxToProfile https://github.com/timsutton/mcxToProfile
to help out with migrating custom mcx to profiles.

Hope this helps.

Allen

[wmateo]

I havent moved away either since CPs dont work on many settings. I suspect once 10.9 is fully matured, we will see more growth of CPs and MCX done. Security concerns with many Information Security departments could force apple to create an internal APNS server or some sort. That would be cool.

[CasperSally]

I wish the upgrade to Casper 9 (which is required for 10.9 and iOS DEP) wasn't forcing my hand to move at least partially to CP when MCX works reliably.

[wmateo]

@CasperSally Casper 9 is not required for 10.9, although it supports lots of CP and MCX settings, you can still deploy 10.9 successfully with 8.7 - I havent fully deployed 10.9 in my organization, so I am speaking from past experiments on 8.7

[CasperSally]

Thanks @wmateo. Unfortunately I need the IOS improvements anyways so have to move to 9 in the next few months.