May 2017 – Mac Managers Meeting

12 May May 2017 – Mac Managers Meeting

May 17th 2017 – University of Utah, Mac Managers Meeting

The University of Utah, MacAdmins Meeting is held monthly at the Marriott Library on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at 11 AM Mountain Time. Presentations cover Apple technology and integration in a heterogeneous university enterprise environment. This months meeting will be held on Wed, May 17th 2017, and we will provide live broadcasted and archives that will be made available 2-3 days after the meeting.

If you have suggestions on presentations, questions or comments, please your the Contact Us option.

Fleetsmith – By Jesse Endahl,  Co-founder, CPO, and CSO at Fleetsmith

Before Fleetsmith, the choice was open source or commercial solutions. Managing a Mac fleet with open source tools typically requires IT and security engineering resources and expertise beyond what most SMBs have in-house. (Open source Mac management tools can be excellent when done right though!) Existing commercial solutions are (ironically) a huge resource drain, both in terms of people and cost. Can you imagine paying for a solution so complicated that the vendor requires onsite training just to start using it?

Fleetsmith democratizes the power of advanced internal computer management systems. We designed Fleetsmith to be so simple to use that anyone can sign up in a few minutes and get started using managing their fleet, without any previous IT expertise. Update applications, settings, and security preferences across your whole Mac fleet in one click, no manual packaging required.

This presentation will include an overview of the Fleetsmith product and an in-depth look at its technical background. Jesse will cover the security engineering and architecture choices that were made to ensure Fleetsmith is secure by design.

Jesse is co-founder, CPO, and CSO at Fleetsmith. He previously worked at Dropbox, where he spent a year as an IT Engineer and two and a half years as an Infrastructure Security Engineer. Prior to Dropbox, he was the IT Manager at C&T Publishing, a publishing house in the Bay Area.

•  Fleetsmith – For more information about Fleetsmith, see web site.

To view archived presentation, click here.

Device Enrollment Program – By Ben Knorr, Westminster College

In our enterprise environment, we have traditionally been a Windows PC shop. 7 years ago that changed and Macs slowy came in but were used sparsely. By two years ago, it was turning into the wild west as Macs which were mostly one-offs on the campus exploded into a distribution including a quarter of the faculty and to executives throughout the college. Our operations team was also lacking with Mac experience (only me!) and we did the best thing we could at the time when we were pushed against the wall; throw $15 at Mac Server and hope for the best!

We were introduced to the Apple Device Enrollment Program from a JAMF webinar, but we quickly realized we might be able to make it work using what little infrastructure we already have in place. A lot of hoops to jump through and some patience got us into the program and now we can save some time by preconfiguring new Macs before we get them. Will it prove to be successful in the long run? Hint: it’s hard to fix DEP after they are imported.

Ben Knorr is a senior system administrator at Westminster College. I’ve gone from supporting Macs in a computer lab setting to being solely responsible for imaging, software deployment and application/OS patching. In our shop, we wear a lot of hats and in the case of Macs, I’m the only one wearing the hat and I am frequently grabbing at straws to make them work right.

•  macOS Server – For more information about macOS Server 5, see web site.
• Device Enrollment Program – for more information about Apple’s Device Enrollment Program, see web site.
• Jamf Pro – for more information about Jamf Pro, see web site.

To view archived presentation, click here.

Arq Backup Overview – By James Reynolds, Biology, University of Utah

Arq is a simple and powerful incremental backup product targeted for end users. It runs native on Mac and Windows operating systems for maximum device fidelity and maximum performance. Arq encrypts data before it leaves the computer with all transmission over the network is through SSL/TLS. It and can store that encrypted data using Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon Cloud, AWS, any SFTP server or NAS, and more.

Arq keeps multiple versions of your files — a backup history. So if you discover a file was corrupted or accidentally deleted, you can go back and get the old version.

James will give an overview for Arq and demonstrate how to use it.

•  Arq – For more information about Arq, see web site.

To view archived presentation, click here.

Open Discussion

Questions, comments, problems and fixes.

Directions

Note, due to scheduling conflicts with our usual meeting location, we will be meeting at the Marriott Library room 1705A located inside the Faculty Center located north of Mom’s Cafe.

For directions to the University of Utah monthly Mac Managers Meetings see the following web page.

Archive & Live Presentation(s)

• A live broadcast of the presentations will be available from this web page.
• Archives of the presentations will be available from this web page.