Putting Apps on devices without tanking network?

[brownbe]

My school district is in the process of rolling out iPads to our elementary schools. We have one school done and we had a myriad of problems getting apps on the iPads. We didn't fully understand how to configure VPP (this has been resolved finally) and our network seriously limited how many we could do at a time. On the second school we have had a few problems so far but have worked some of them out. We aren't sure how to proceed with our initial app deployment though.

Each classroom has 20 or so iPads, and we've asked teachers to supply a list of 10 apps they would like on the device initially. At our first school we went through and manually downloaded each app on each device... 350+ devices and it TANKED our network (even with a caching server). AP bandwidth was the issue and unfortunately the next school is even worse. Having two of us working on a class full of iPads downloading apps really took a toll on the 135mbit wireless and the process took a week longer than we expected.

So my question is, has anyone here had any luck using Apple Configurator to ONLY push apps? We don't really know anything about it and don't want to use it to actually configure the devices, just put apps on them. We also have sync carts, can it be done that way? Basically has anyone here had to get creative with their initial distribution of apps before rolling devices out to students?

[freddie_cox]

You may want to take a look at Caching Server Service with OS X Server if you have that kind of density:

https://www.apple.com/support/osxserver/cachingservice/

Fairly straight forward setup if you don't have an overly complex network. It will grab the first copy of the app from the internet, then subsequent downloads will come from the internal cache.

You don't need any fancy hardware to run it either. If it will support 10.10, then you can get the Server App from the App Store and use your EDU VPP discount.

Configurator will choke on almost any setup if the device is enrolled in DEP. If you're not using DEP, then yes you can work with Configurator to pre-load free apps, but IIRC they would be tied to an institutional AppleID which may not be desirable in your case.

[Chris_Hafner]

Sorry, I wish I could give you better advice on the use of Configurator. I know that you can install apps on fully managed iPads with it but others should chime in on what works/doesn't work well. I tend to use Configurator for AppleTV enrollments and that about it.

Having said that I'd be really concerned that that traffic is bringing down your network. That's really not a lot of traffic for a decent LAN at all. I would strongly suggest working on that network infrastructure as you're probably are only going to get worse. What happens when the whole school needs a new app? Or an update?

[davidacland]

I would personally go for a caching server, it sounds like it will sort out the problem quite easily.

Regarding configurator, this can be used to deploy apps to the iPads although they may end up associated with a single Apple ID so might be a non-starter.

[musat]

We ran into this same issue at the beginning of this school year, with 1200 iPads switched over to using VPP as opposed to Apple Configurator. We have a caching server on the network, and it was doing it's job properly. But as you mentioned, the issue was with the fact that we had 30 iPads in a cart per classroom. This completely saturated the wireless network. The whole process took us almost a full month to get all of the iPads completely prepped.

So, we are also looking at what options are available for loading apps via cable in the carts (at least for this start of year process) as opposed to installing all apps over wireless.

So far, this idea doesn't look possible.

[Chris_Hafner]

Again, there seems to be real network issues here. I'm not saying that network upgrades are the simplest thing in the world, and that you might still want to use configurator but we're not talking that much data overall. Yet, syncing apps bogging down the network seems like a network management issue. What are you doing to manage the traffic?

[freddie_cox]

@Chris_Hafner I don't think it's too much to assume that 350 iPads could saturate the egress point.

Take the latest Keynote Update: 439 MB. Multiply that by even 200 devices and you have 110GB worth of data trying to stream at the same time, in addition to any other traffic that might be trying to access the internet.

Since @brownbe hasn't returned, it's hard to really know if it's a bandwidth or network management issue. Maybe the OP will shed some light on the situation?

[brownbe]

Sorry, it's been real hectic with issues regarding this rollout. All of our apps at the one finished school were wiped so I am currently in the process of doing it all over. To answer all questions...

@freddie.cox Yes we have a caching server set up. But the issue is network related. Each access point has a max throughput of 135mbit which isn't even suitable for a home network these days. That is our bottleneck and it is what is killing us.

@Chris_Hafner I am very concerned about this network situation. I've only been on the job for a month and I'm very disappointed at how out of date our network infrastructure is. 135mbit is Draft N, right? It's going to need to be updated but I don't think others realize how much of an issue this is going to be once we roll all of these devices out at all of our schools.

@davidacland It's okay if they're set up with the same Apple ID, each classroom is set up to use only one ID.

@musat If you figure anything out, please let me know. I think we may be working on a very similar project and I am curious as to how yours will work out

@Chris_Hafner I'm not sure what steps are being taken for network management. I was hired a month ago and pretty much thrust into this iPad project immediately so I haven't had a chance to understand how things work around here

@freddie.cox "Take the latest Keynote Update: 439 MB. Multiply that by even 200 devices and you have 110GB worth of data trying to stream at the same time, in addition to any other traffic that might be trying to access the internet." Precisely. And we're talking full app downloads, not updates. This is a cluster**

[musat]

My main goal for posting was to let @brownbe know that he isn't the only one experiencing this issue. Ok, I guess for us "tanking the network" is hyperbole. While this prepping is occurring, the rest of the network is still up and running. This data transfer just takes a long time.

Here's the numbers we came up with when we were trying to figure out why it was taking so long: We've got about 8GB of apps to put on each iPad (with GarageBand and iMovie, this adds up quickly). Averaging 25 iPads per cart, that's 200GB of data per cart to get distributed. Since these iPads are in a cart, they are probably pulling that 200GB across a single wireless access point (WAP). In a perfect world, each of those iPads would have a 54Mbps connection to this WAP, resulting in a download time of 25 minutes (8GB over 54Mbps). However, when we have 25 iPads now pulling this data across this single WAP, that download time will increase to 5 hours (ideal transfer of 200GB over 100Mbps).

Now take that and multiply by 15 (worst case, we have one school with 15 full iPad carts). Now instead of 200GB getting transferred, we have 3000GB getting transferred to the school. And across our 6 schools we have 75 carts, giving us 15,000GB getting transferred across our wireless network. Even with cache servers, we're talking about a lot of data. We do have one cache server that handles the whole district (we have a single 500GB ISP connection into the district office, so a single cache server should be fine), which for 95% of the year works fabulous for us, and it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

So, if we could get the data transferred once per cart, that's still 600GB (75 * 8GB), but a whole lot more manageable than 15TB.

The other issue (again, only an issue during this time of prepping iPads), is that our wireless controllers are centralized here at the district office. So putting a caching server at the schools, isn't really useful, since all wireless traffic originates here at the district office. So yes, there could be a complete network redesign to get this task sped up, but any way you look at it, if we are prepping each iPad individually and wirelessly, that is still 15000GB getting transferred over the wireless network.

Of course, we only have one year of doing this (VPP licenses have only been around that long), so we are evaluating how our iPads are going to be distributed, in an effort to minimize how many iPads need to be built up from scratch. We have also been in contact with our Apple rep and technical contact with all of this information to let them know that this is looking to be an annual pain point for us. We'll see if they can come up with any options. Not likely any time soon, but at least they know about it.

We never posted this here, knowing that it was an Apple design issue, not a Casper issue. But since this thread came up, I figured I would put in the experience of our district.

[Chris_Hafner]

@freddie.cox OK but we're talking about units connecting to a local caching server and not directly to the internet.

@brownbe That sounds like 802.11g. N's Theoretical max is 300Mbps. Again, theoretical max is just that. I'd be super happy to see ~10 ish Mbps per device connection but at 802.11g I believe that you should be seeing download times of somewhere near ~15 min to download Keynote, per device at full utilization. Please, someone feel free to correct me if this is inaccurate. Still, that's assuming that there is some form of prioritization happening and that would cap and manage individual connections so as to allow other network traffic to continue as expected. So, It SHOULD run a bit slower than that. I'd almost figure a day under those circumstances (10+ apps of varying size). You're describing times of over a week. Again, I should point out that I primarily manage OS X laptops. I only handle about 50 iPads and 60-ish AppleTVs. However, I push far larger amounts of data to our OS X devices regularly on an Aruba 802.11n network. About 950 Gb over the last two days for standard updates, upgrades and downloads via Self-Service and the like (including our caching service).

So much depends on how the network is managed and priority assigned. I had to spend a LOT of time with my Network Engineer when I first implemented large scale network imaging here but we push terabytes a day through our DPs on our main imaging days in September.

Regardless, I think you're on the right track. It's never fun to end up being thrown to the wolves right when you've finished up filling out your employment paperwork! I would spend as much time as you can trying to figure out your network and see what yourc an do from there!

[Chris_Hafner]

@musat The good news is that you know where the issues are. Bummer though as it sounds like that total network re-design is about the best and least likely method for sorting that out. Sounds like a laptop with Configurator per school like lot of the Apple Distinguished Schools is you best current bet.