OT: Very small Mac deployment suggestions

[walt]

I wasn't sure if this would be an ideal place to post something like this or if theres another forum JAMF users use specifically. But its been a while since I've had to manage a small Mac set-up by hand, I have an opportunity to help a company they're a fairly large company but their Mac population is about 10-20 some local and some in two other states.
They have zero Mac service techs and plans in place for managing them at their current state but they need help as they continue grow and their users become vocal.
They definitely want to create a standard since its small, so some sort of imagine process in place would be interesting to work with.

I wanted to get some maybe creative ideas on how to manage their services at such a small scale,
ie; how to create a automated deployment or software update set-up (Mac mini server type thing?)
-manage backups via Time Machine (mac mini server?)
-maybe manage certain profiles, -handle set-up of binding, etc?

would a OS X server type set-up be usable as it grows? I'm just weary of its limited capacity and its flakiness in a business environment.
the macs do the same things as windows, bind, network shares, network access, applications, etc.

would love to get creative with it.

Thanks in advanced.

[gachowski]

It's a Jamf product

https://www.bushel.com/set-up-and-protect?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=2016-12

[davidacland]

Hi @walt

We're an MSP so get involved with supporting lots of small sets of Macs in big Windows focuses organisations.

I would personally avoid the Apple Server.app as it will become a real burden. The best solution would depend whether they are looking to expand the Mac user base or keep it fairly static. If it isn't changing much, it would be worth asking the question whether it is worth using anything. Once they're configured, is there any tasks you want to perform?

A JSS would certainly let you deploy and manage them, although it would be a serious investment for the business. If there's no plans to do much to the devices past the initial setup, it would be under-utilised as a tool.

Munki would also do the job as it can deploy packages and config profiles to Macs.

[walt]

Thanks @gachowski i think I was looking into that as well. seems fairly cost effective and useful.

@davidacland the little information i have is there are these users that never had support, so its really making sure everything is in some sort of standard and getting them away from doing things themselves and creating a workflow or service flow to have someone test OS and App updates and manage the updates. mainly adobe and OS X and some parallels deployments.
I think utilizing Remote desktop can accommodate a lot of this

-Adobe updating & patching, fairly easy using adobe cc tools i believe
-Font management -deploying settings, preferences, company settings (vpn, wifi, etc).
-an imaging/deployment process

would could probably just purchase composer and potentially bushel to push some of the applications we may need to package up and use remote desktop to deploy these.

Essentially users are wanting macs more and more and its going to be a slow growth, so once they hit 100 systems they may look into purchasing something like casper...well they may even consider it sooner if they estimate it, but right now its just a project.

If Bushel gets used now, does anyone know if transitioning to Casper would be fairly easy or is it a matter of them being separate but equal?

thanks again in advanced and hopefully i explained it a bit better.