[wei]

Hi, I got this question from an IT guy who only know about PCs. He need to setup 50 imacs & 50 macbook pro for his lab. Anyone have experience doing the same task pls share

He need to clone a master drive with all the needed stuff & setting to all the macs. Any suggestion on how & what apps to use would be nice. Thanks in advance.

[Dr Reducto]

Ive heard really good things about Apple Remote Desktop:

http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

[Jellytussle]

www.bombich.com/software/netrestore.

If you don't have a mac server, (you should do, with 50 macs to manage), you can NetBoot from a client:

http://www.macgeekery.com/hacks/hard...netboot_server


Or just pay a professional to do it, and get it done right the first time, plus possibly learn something :-).

[Jellytussle]

Originally Posted by Dr Reducto

Ive heard really good things about Apple Remote Desktop:

http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

Which isn't currently supported on either the MBP or the intel iMac. It won't let you image client boxes either. NetBoot/Restore is the tool to use.

[kick52]

could you do netboot via ethernet?

[analogika]

You can just boot from an external hard disk and then use Disk Utility to "Restore" from a drive or a drive image to the internal drive.

[tooki]

Yeah, but that's stupid to do for 100 computers. NetRestore is clearly, clearly the way to go.

tooki

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by tooki

Yeah, but that's stupid to do for 100 computers. NetRestore is clearly, clearly the way to go.

tooki

Maybe... once you get it set up it's definitely faster. The learning curve with NetBoot/NetInstall is typically a few hours... and you have to set up the lab properly with respect to subnets.

With block restore and a 2 GB image, the "boot from external drive and lay down an image" approach can take about 5 minutes per machine -- 1.5 to boot, and 3 to lay down the image. Block copy mode (select "erase target!") is ripping fast.

[tooki]

I know, but for 100 machines it's still less efficient, especially with respect to the manpower needed.

Also, what a lot of labs do is set up a special network, distinct from the general campus network, to do the initial installs. That way, you don't run into any network problems.

tooki

[CharlesS]

Radmind.

http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/

It's a bit of a pain to get set up, but once you do, it's quite nice. Have cron or launchd run a shell script at night so that a Radmind update gets run every night, and then, say a new Software Update comes out - you just make a loadset for that Software Update and put it on the server, and all the Macs automatically get the Software Update the next time they run a Radmind update. And if the update causes a problem of some sort? Just take it back off the server, and all the Macs downgrade back down to what they had. You can install a new app on all 50 Macs simultaneously, or upgrade an app to a newer version. You can manage all sorts of things, and update all the Macs in a building from the comfort of your office. It's really nice...

[dawho9]

Is there a reason you cannot use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC)?

We do this for all of our lab environments. We start with one machine, then copy it to the next. Then we have two masters and we do it again, then 4, etc. Takes about 4 hours to "image" the lab of 30 machines this way. This is of course much longer than the 7 minutes for the PC's - but its much better than doing each one by hand.

[tooki]

Why do that when Tiger Server can do multicast NetRestore that'll do the whole lab in minutes?

I don't understand why so many people here are advocating highly-manual methods when, with a bit of thoughtful setup, highly-automated methods can be set up that'll save a lot of time.

tooki

[wei]

thanks for all the comments. already inform my friend about NetRestore.

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by dawho9

Is there a reason you cannot use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC)?

We do this for all of our lab environments. We start with one machine, then copy it to the next. Then we have two masters and we do it again, then 4, etc. Takes about 4 hours to "image" the lab of 30 machines this way. This is of course much longer than the 7 minutes for the PC's - but its much better than doing each one by hand.

CCC is just using the built-in utilities in the OS itself... so using Disk Utility would be similar.

[mpancha]

Originally Posted by tooki

Why do that when Tiger Server can do multicast NetRestore that'll do the whole lab in minutes?

I don't understand why so many people here are advocating highly-manual methods when, with a bit of thoughtful setup, highly-automated methods can be set up that'll save a lot of time.

tooki

I was wondering the same myself.

[Jellytussle]

Originally Posted by CatOne

Maybe... once you get it set up it's definitely faster. The learning curve with NetBoot/NetInstall is typically a few hours... and you have to set up the lab properly with respect to subnets.

With block restore and a 2 GB image, the "boot from external drive and lay down an image" approach can take about 5 minutes per machine -- 1.5 to boot, and 3 to lay down the image. Block copy mode (select "erase target!") is ripping fast.

2GB? Out of the box, an iMac is over 16GB. Even with stripping unwanted localisations, printers, apps, fonts etc. you'll be looking at over 10GB, without any extra software. If this guy is really going to need 'a few hours' to set up a NetBoot server; he would be better off paying someone else to do it.

[mpancha]

10-16GB??? :S

My install out of box, with printers/localization stripped was under 1.5 GB.... after updates, and the basic software (office, adobe CS, iApps), I'm looking at about 5-10 on my iBook.

[Jellytussle]

A typical higher ed install of the type i do all the time wants all the iApps, CS2, Studio MX 2004, and Office 2004. You could probably build a box with 700MB, but it wouldn't do much!

[stevesnj]

My school is getting 30 Intel iMacs and a MacPro with just Tiger (not server) how can I do this without Tiger Server?

[tooki]

Doing it without a server is stupid, to be frank. But I can see how a school may have unrealistic budgets imposed on it.

I'd suggest Radmind. It's free and will do the job well. The downside is that it's got a steeper learning curve.

tooki

[moonmonkey]

Originally Posted by Jellytussle

Which isn't currently supported on either the MBP or the intel iMac.

Its Universal so will work fine.

[tooki]

Moonmonkey, please note the date of the post you responded to. This thread was started 6 months ago, and a LOT has changed in terms of UBs in that time.

tooki

[Jellytussle]

Originally Posted by stevesnj

My school is getting 30 Intel iMacs and a MacPro with just Tiger (not server) how can I do this without Tiger Server?

You can still use NetRestore, and just set up your Mac Pro as a temporary NetBoot server to image the iMacs. There's a description of how to set up a client for NetBoot here. If you share the image over AFP, you'll be limited to 10 concurrent clients, so multicasting might be a better option.

I'd still be pushing for a server, though.

[besson3c]

If you are really on a budget and can't afford OS X Server, you could also use your OS X Client machine and rsync or scp to blow out your build. This still requires some manual work though each time you want to push out the build (although this could be fully automated via scripting), so NetRestore would be ideal and easier to setup so long as your client machines can be tethered to their respective server.

[tooki]

I'd suggest NetRestore to do initial rollout and then Radmind for incremental updates and/or state preservation.

tooki

[inkhead]

Contact Apple, in the Apple developer discussion lists, it tells you how to build a "slipstreamed" version of OS X installer, that install OS X without you only selecting the drive, and you can also have it install other applications as well.