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drAlberT
Asked: 2009-07-16 10:08:17 +0800 CST

How to deploy 10 new iMac and configure it programatically

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What is the best and quicker way to deploy and customize a number of newly arrived iMacs (say 10 or more) using an already configured iMac, a DHCP/DNS server, a LAN and Remote Desktop installed on the configured machine ?

The main tasks to be performed are accounts creation (1 account per machine of course), system settings customization, security, filevault, firewall and other minor tasks.

If needed I can think about a PXE/bootp netboot, serving an install image via tftp or similar (sorry, i'm new to MAC, but I'm pretty expert on linux/unix and I'm used to configure RHEL5 servers via cobbler+puppet... so please don't hesitate to be geek ;)

Thanks in advance

deployment mac-osx mac configuration

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you have a Mac Server License, you can use Deploy Studio, a free program that has decent documentation.

    To create images, a great tool our Mac specialist uses is Insta DMG. It creates images well, and allows you install packages you create within your image. Good Luck, hope that helps.

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  2. I think you want NetInstall rather than NetBoot. NetBoot basically boots the OS across the network, kinda like a thin client. NetInstall boots into an automated install image. You can do this with a regular iMac acting as a NetInstall server: http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-Your-Regular-Mac-a-NetBoot-Server!/ . Those instructions are somewhat old, but the concept stays the same. Also check here: http://www.macgeekery.com/hacks/hardware/make_any_mac_a_netboot_server

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  3. The system you are interested in is call netboot it is described starting from page 88 of the Mac OS X Server v10.5 - Server Administration

    I have retagged this question with netboot and collected a couple more questions under that tag

    If you do not want to buy any more money then buy an external disc. Get one machine how you would like it. Boot from the macos CD start disk utilities, create an image of the internal disc on the external disc.

    Boot the destination machine from CD and restore the disc image using disk utilities once more.

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  4. We are using the "cheap" version with Carbon Copy Cloner. Since - I think 10.5.5 - Leopard installs all drivers for all Macs (MB, MBP, iMac, ...). So what we did was setting up one Mac with 10.5 with our admin account with all settings (sleep settings, appletalk, printers), installed all updates, installed all "basic apps" (Firefox, Skype, whatever we put on all Macs). Then we created a "read-write"-disc image from the entire HDD with CCC (read-write simply because it let's us drop&replace newer versions of e.g. Firefox within the disc image).

    And whenever a new Mac arrives we fire it up in Firewire-mode, start CCC and clone the created disc image to the new Mac/HDD.

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  5. What about building one up, doing a backup of it using time machine onto a firewire or USB drive (or two or three drives) and then restore onto the 10 new boxes?

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