Need for distribution point?

[JeyT]

Apologies if this is a stupid question. Do I actually need a distribution point? I am setting up an on-prem Jamf server and all my client Macs are local on a closed network. Can I just upload and push out pkgs to/from the Jamf Server, without using a distribution point? Thank you.

[Hugonaut]

No Stupid Questions, You 100% need a distribution point.

From what you're describing, I gather your Jamf Server will be your Master DP. By stating singular "Jamf Server" - will you be hosting the Apache Tomcat / MySQL DB / Distribution Point all from 1 server? (totally works, not recommended, just want to get a better understanding of your setup/question)

For more information - https://docs.jamf.com/10.14.0/jamf-pro/administrator-guide/About_Distribution_Points.html

[sdagley]

@tavaresj You do need a Distribution Point. You do not want to use the same server for your DP as the one running your JSS (especially if your JSS server is also your MySQL server). You definitely want to enable https content delivery for your Distribution Point.

[Chris_Hafner]

@sdagley and @Hugonaut are correct.

However, in the distant past I did run the entire Casper Suite (This was a while ago) on a Mac Pro Tower (Mid-2012) with an Areca hardware RAID card installed for the DP with a handful of 15k SAS drives, SSD for the OS AND Database AND ALSO NetBoot. It was great! OK, maybe there were two of them... and the cost was kind of nutz. Still, not a good idea in general. Read the guides and listen to these guys.

[JeyT]

Thanks all. I did read the article which explains distribution points, but didn't find anything on best practices. I'll do more research. Our Infrastructure build a V-Windows server where we installed the Jamf Pro software along with Apache & MySQL. We plan on having another Mac as our one distribution point serving local Macs on the same local LAN. I understand having just the one distribution point is not idea, as this is just a POC we are testing. So this Mac will be my master DP, obviously since its the only one. I will have to create a SMB share on the Mac and add that as my DP on the Jamf Windows server. We will have a backup running on this DP to be able to at least restore if needed. The Jamf server is virtual, so we have daily snapshots to restore instantly if needed as well. Does this all sound like I am on the right track?

[sdagley]

@tavaresj Having run the JSS environment on macOS, Ubuntu, RHEL, and Windows Server (the latter only during Jamf certification training), my personal recommendation would be to use Ubuntu as the host OS for all services. I would not recommend using macOS as the DP in production, but for POC you should be OK. While Jamf Admin requires SMB to manage a DP, you will get much better performance from the DP if it's configured for http/https access (for POC I'd think http would be ok so you don't have to deal with installing certs and configuring https) since the client machines just download packages without having to mount the DP share, and downloads via http/https are resumable unlike SMB transfers. Other than the contents of your DP the only truly critical part of a Jamf Pro installation is the MySQL database, so be sure to back that up daily.

[#7]

Thanks for the info!