Questions on creating a test enviornment

[therealmacjeezy]

I am new to the Casper Suite and JSS and was finally able to start testing it at my work. I've been doing a lot of reading and trying to learn as much as possible on the suite and JSS but I realize it's easy to get lost and was hoping I could get some advice or some tips from you guys. Here's the current setup.

Mac/Windows Environment. Bound to AD and Smartcard Enforced (no user passwords). Managed with Absolute. DS makes the images and OS X Server hosts the NetBoot for our team. Centrify is installed on the Macs but is only good for logging in and getting Kerberos tickets for outlook and Lync. Everything else we have to use a VM.

Testing goal: Setup Casper and the JSS for a handful of machines that are all on the same network, same office and pretty much one cubical over from each other. That way I can make slim images and use the JSS to distribute apps that are needed. (I would love to get away from Centrify and binding with AD for Macs and just use profiles to make it compliant)

new Current progress: A setup that would make MacGiver proud and others possibly cringe. But I have Self Serve, Admin and JSS all setup and working with all the test devices.

Is it possible to have configure the JSS so only our team (3 other people total) can access it without having to reach out to the admins who oversee the DNS server?

update I was able to set it up so the JSS is able to be accessed by any computer we test with. I added the JSS URL (127.0.0.1:8443) to the list of websites on OS X Server and changed the port from 80 to 8443. I also changed the IP address from "any" to the IP of the Mac Pro I have OS X server installed (I can use Absolute for now to make Config Profiles and have our wiki located on another OS X Server). Then changed the URL inside JSS to the IP of the Mac Pro. This will do for now since I'm just testing locally. If anyone has any advice or best practices they wanna share it would be welcomed.

[al_platt · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You'll need to assign the server an IP address and a hostname. The Localhost address means you'll only be able to connect on the JSS host and your test Macs won't know where to connect to.

It's a 2 min job to create a DNS record for it.

[therealmacjeezy]

@al_platt thanks for the reply. The actual server is in the process of being stood up and will prolly be ready around August (the government moves oh so fast..) but I wanted to have something I could play with before then to get ready. It's a MacGiver setup for sure but it seems to be working so far. The only thing I am running into problems with is I can't import the config profile I made for OS X. No add or import buttons are in that menu in JSS..on the mobile side they are there but not on the computer side. Self Service and Admin work just fine. If you have any suggestions I'm all ears. thanks again.