MacOS – Software and Monitoring Provision for Mac Clients

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I was wondering if there are any Apple Software and Monitoring tools specifically made for Mac OSX Clients. I am aware of Profile Manager and several OSX Server tools such as Open Directory for Authentication, but I haven't been able to make a solid plan in terms of tools needed for Deploying Mac Images and then monitoring them.

For example is there an Apple Software product like Nagios for system alerts in OSX? is Munki the only way to manage installed packages on OSX Clients?

Thanks!

Best Answer

Check out DeployStudio :-

http://www.deploystudio.com/Home.html

which is the best image deployment tool.

Monitoring is a little more problematic but I'm a big fan of Caspar if for no other reason than it provides enterprise management for Mac and iOS that runs on enterprise hardware.

http://www.jamfsoftware.com/products/casper-suite/

Apple Remote Desktop is an essential tool and it includes some monitoring tools. http://www.apple.com/support/remotedesktop/ and http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

I've known some Mac admins who have used Puppet but Munki is popular for a reason. https://code.google.com/p/munki/

Go and visit AFP548 for some good tips too. http://www.afp548.com/

We used to all be in love with monolithic images but these days tend to have simple images and use DeployStudio or Munki to roll out custom packages on top.

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