Server architecture for Jamf

[pandrum]

Hey!

We are awaiting our Jumpstart and are looking over how we will setup our Jamf servers. I wanted to check and see if there is any common setup that works well in practise. I know mileage can vary but I am curious to see how others have their backend set up.

We are going to use on-prem. We use VMware with ESXi, vCenter and so on as our virtualisation platform. Linux servers are preferred in our environment. We have around 350-400 Mac clients we want to manage. Mostly MacBooks.

I was thinking of dividing the 3 server components (JSS, MySQL database, Distribution Point) on 3 different servers running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Is this too much modularity? Is combined JSS and MySQL database preferred over splitting them? Is it overkill to split all the components? Does Jamf Pro works more smooth when the components sits on one server etc?

Any input is appreciated!

[ivanlovisi]

Hi pandrum
we have more or less the same infrastructure.
servers are virtualized on an esxi platform.
we have a Wabapp server (JSS), a MySQL server and a couple of Distibution Points.
But we adminize about 3000 MacOSx and 1000 iOS.
In my opinion, a unique server for Webapp and Mysql is enough. but if you have resources available obviously it is not for sure wrong if the 2 servers are separated

[dpertschi]

A single well provisioned VM for both web app and database is sufficient for up to a few thousand devices. A separate distribution point makes sense, unless you don’t expect much more growth.
Do you anticipate more than 2K Mac’s within the next three years?

On that ‘low’ volume, might be more important to consider cost of ongoing maintenance. For instance, if your organizations infrastructure is provided by a third party managed service provider then they probably bill you monthly for every little thing. No sense putting out three servers now and paying the maintenance on it when one will do.

[Asnyder]

@pandrum Currently we are running everything on one Linux server (Ubuntu 140.04). The web app, database, and DP are all stored there. Once I'm 100% I don't need our old JSS I'll be turning that into a dedicated DP for our building (mac mini). We have 470 devices and this works fine for us. I'll be curious as to how it handles things next school year when our device count will double from merging schools. The server is an HP dl380 g6 1tb raid 1 and 24Gb ram.