Restoring: Best Practices

cashman
New Contributor II

Hey y'all!

So we have been recently restoring 10+ computers every Friday through Internet Recovery/Recovery Mode. This has started to be taxing on our network and is pretty hands-on.

How do you handle erase and installs? What is the best practice for redeploying Macs?

7 REPLIES 7

Danko
New Contributor III

Hi,

maybe you would like to have a look into this article. I think that‘s exactly what you need:

https://www.jamf.com/blog/reinstall-a-clean-macos-with-one-button/

Best..

cashman
New Contributor II

That would be good, but that still requires logging into the device and enables users to erase their computer before turning them in. We could scope it to computers once they have been turned in, but that still adds a significant amount of time.

Would love to hear more ideas!

osnala
New Contributor II

I do something similar to what @Danko suggested, but I have the installer cached via policy so it's already on the machine and I wouldn't have to use internet recovery when I'm ready to erase/install.

jconte
Contributor II

depending on the situation, we have a self service policy for machines already enrolled or we use a USB stick for the others. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

maurits
Contributor

we are looking into automating re-installation with macdeploystick (MDS), using a combination of the blogpost and MDS. Just an idea

Cayde-6
Release Candidate Programs Tester

Maybe consider a content caching server? Least you won’t have to download the same OS from the internet.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchl9388ba1b/mac

Also maybe run this command from terminal to reinstall Mojave AND erase the disk (must be APFS partition)

Install macOS Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall —agreetolicense —nointeraction —erase

tjhall
Contributor III

I've added additonal packages to the re-install (admin, automatic login and Splashbuddy) so the Mac re-installs (using a cached MacOS installer) and then installs the admin account and logs in so it's ready to be setup via SplashBuddy. The re-install script is turned into an app using Platupus and can only be run using an admin account. We still need to visit the Mac (confirm FileVault and choose Splashbuddy profile) but it's pretty automated for non DEP.