Newbie questions

[appleaday3k]

Hi All,

I am brand new to Casper and taking on the responsibility for maintaining a Casper server.

I see that Casper is extremely powerful and has many ways to do the same thing and many options, but I was wondering if there are 'best practices' for a few of the simple items we envision we will build out. Any help or guidance on the items below are greatly appreciated - we are not looking for a how-to per day (although it would help) more so a the best way or tools to do it

1. We are going to build an image and packages for our Macs. I see many different ways to image and capture and build packages, any tips on what is tried and true?

2. We have a few copy machines that we want to turn into user installable "self service" items.

3. The huge Adobe CC self service installer worries me due to bandwidth as our data center is at an offsite facility - do you guys run a local distribution server for items like this? Any drawbacks?

[thoule]

We are going to build an image and packages for our Macs. I see many different ways to image and capture and build packages, any tips on what is tried and true?

Don't build a monolithic/static image with all your apps in it. Use AutoDMG to build a generic 'OS Only' image. Then using Casper Imaging (or Deploy Studio) or overlay your apps on it. As for building packages, Composer is somewhat automated, but can easily cause problems if you are not aware of what it is doing. I use composer, but never use Snapshot function to build an installer. Snapshot is only used to get an idea what is going on, then build what I need from there. I also have a few app I use command line pkgbuild with. Oh - look into autopkg (https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg). It can go to the interwebs and download/package common apps and updates automatically.

We have a few copy machines that we want to turn into user installable "self service" items.

You mean they are printers that you want user's to add themselves via Self Service? If so, package the drivers, if needed and add to Casper Admin. Then add the printer to a machine and use Casper Admin to add the printer to your JSS. Then create a policy to install the driver package and printer - scope to applicable computers with no trigger. And enable Self Service.

The huge Adobe CC self service installer worries me due to bandwidth as our data center is at an offsite facility - do you guys run a local distribution server for items like this? Any drawbacks?

Yes, I recommend a local Adobe CC update server. http://tmhoule.blogspot.com/2016/05/adobe-cc-local-server-and-rum.html

[appleaday3k]

Thank you!!!

[davidacland]

Hi,

Here's my thoughts:

1. This is one of the biggest and most complex topics to cover. The main reason being the method vendors use to provide the packages isn't standardised (at least it is, but vendors don't follow the guidelines).

A definite +1 for avoiding monolithic images for deployment. Another thing to avoid as much as possible are snapshot packages. They capture so many "extra" bits of the file system you can end up in a worse state than when you started. If you want to deploy a package and customise it, you want to look at supplementing the vendors vanilla installer with additional packaged items, scripts or configuration profiles.

1. This works well either using the standard Casper Admin approach to capture the printer settings or deploying via an lpadmin script. We normally deploy the drivers ahead of any printer installs so they are ready on the machine.

2. Yes this can be an issue. We would definitely use a local distribution point and in some cases we break up the installers into individual packages where either bandwidth is a problem, or the Macs have small SSDs.

Hope this helps.