Software Deployment

[franton]

Hi Folks,

Quick straw pole: how are you doing your software deployments?

We currently have a complex system of building and department groups that we use to control what software gets deployed to which computer. It's come up in conversation that we could speed up imaging time massively by moving to a more JAMF like "Self Service" free-for-all possibly controlled via AD groups.

I'm just curious how everyone else has approached this.

[rtrouton]

I've got a base build that everyone gets. After that, printer setups and additional software installs are via Self Service.

[franton]

How are you controlling that deployment? AD groups?

[donmontalvo]

@franton asked:

How are you controlling that deployment? AD groups?

Interesting question, I suppose some stuff could/would/should be deployed to users or groups of users...but I'm looking forward to ideas of how to scope to computer groups. Especially since OS X has such a low success rate in requesting/receiving an AD machine cert. :)

[franton]

I've got the beginnings of an idea. We're planning (in the distant future) an AD rebuild and our 8.62 seems to happily talk to it. We have software packages that need to be available to everyone, some that need to be restricted to a particular college that purchased it.

It "might" be possible to restrict software to a particular college OU in the same way we restrict certain self service operations to the IT department. A lot of the issue of "someone in one college is using software bought by another" would go away.

Food for thought, but this is a long way off for us especially as i'm on vacation from next Wednesday!