Thoughts/suggestions on upgrading a large fleet to Yosemite

[msnowdon]

I built some Yosemite images for the different Macs we have. We have a few hundred clients either running Mavericks or even still, Mountain Lion. I was thinking of backing up their profile, the same way you do when deleting a mobile account), re-imaging their computer and reloading their profile.

My manager was thinking I should cache the Yosemite install down to their computers and have the users do an upgrade using self-service.

I thought my method would be cleaner and any apps that are not Yosemite compatible wouldn't get carried over. Another concern I had were the iLife apps. I spent so much time last year building installs for these apps which was very time consuming. I had to include the package receipts or Garage Band would want to re-download all the additional sounds. I figured if I preloaded these apps on the image, it would make my life much easier.

I was wondering how others were handling these upgrades. It would be nice if Apple didn't come out with a new OS every single year.

[davidacland]

Agreed, two year OS cycles were much easier to handle!

We have used both methods for different sites. Last year we did the "backup / re-image / restore" method for 200 users. It took months and we had to setup a server to hold the data. Some users were only 20-30GB, but we had people turning up with 3-400GB+ of data which took days to backup and restore. As it meant they were without their Macs for the duration, loan devices had to be organised.

On the next few projects we tested createosxinstallpkg with self service to do in-place upgrades. There were one or two small issues to handle, but generally everything was smooth and the users were much happier.

Some time needs to be put in to test the upgrade process, making sure the user experience is as you want it.

We still do a "nuke 'n' pave" for labs of shared Macs, but for 1:1, I'm completely converted to the in-place upgrade approach.

[freddie_cox]

If you're oldest client is on 10.8.5, and you don't have any major known software compatibility issues, I would absolutely go the in-place upgrade route. This is what we have been doing with our Staff laptops since Yosemite came out. We leveraged it some for 10.8/10.9 but now this is the method of updating.

The only exceptions are those that we nuke-and-pave on a regular basis.

[bheitzig]

I've got a puzzle too. Looking to update a large lab fleet of older iMacs from 10.6.8 to Mavericks/Yosemite so they are compatible with testing etc. I've tried both a Mavericks and Yosemite image without out a lot of consistent success. I've been thinking about updating in place and now that I've read this I'm more inclined to give that method a try. Any thoughts or hazards I'm not seeing?

[davidacland]

@bheitzig the important thing is to test the process and make sure all the apps you have work ok after the upgrade. Particularly if you are going from something older like 10.6.8, you might find some of the apps are no longer compatible.

[msnowdon]

What is the easiest way to deal with iMovie, iPhoto and Garage Band? Those always need to be upgraded to the latest version. It seems easier to have a script to remove the old version, and install the brand new version. I never tried creating a package as an update but it seems like that would be difficult, especially if you don't know what version they may be updating from. Thoughts?

[davidacland]

I would delete the old ones and install the latest packages from the app store.

[GabeShack]

I'm honestly waiting for 10.10.4 to come out so the issues with discoveryd get resolved and they put mdnsresponder back in place.

With the few 10.10.3 machines we have out in the district, we have seen issues with connectivity related to this so I hope 10.10.4 hits soon.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

[Chris_Hafner]

Alright. I figured that I should give our procedures on this sort of thing. However, a lot is going to depend on whether or not the versions of iLife/iWork applications are bound to an institutional AppleID or varied personal ones. Our users all have those items associated with their own AppleIDs so, in our case, existing users are usually upgrade in place, via self-service (No caching). We're performing Yosemite updates to units with HDDs in about 25min and users with SSDs in less than 20. The upgrade form 10.9 to 10.10 will automatically offer the relevant iLife/iWork updates. Users on 10.8 or earlier may not have the Mac App Store versions of the iLife/iWoke suite so you need to keep that in mind.

Machines with significant issues, or that are on an OS earlier than 10.8 will be backed up and imaged anew. We don't have very many of these so they're pretty simple to sort out.

[dpertschi]

@davidacland

On the next few projects we tested createosxinstallpkg with self service to do in-place upgrades.

David, or anyone else of course, could you please comment on benefit/difference between using the createosxinstallpkg package vs using the OS installer app direct from the App Store.

[davidacland]

@dpertschi createosxinstallpkg gave me an unattended install, once the user initiated the self service policy. Although its entirely possible I was doing something wrong, when I used the install.app from the app store, it prompted the user to select the correct target drive which I didn't want them to have to do.

If I remember correctly admin rights came into it as well.