Basics of integrating modern Macs onto a Windows network, FAQ: Deployment images
Apple OS X can very easily be cloned to apply to other machines in a procedure vaguely similar to using Symantec Ghost to clone Windows machines.
OS X images are hardware independent so you could create an image on a Mac Mini and deploy it to a Mac notebook and desktop machines without worry. The only time you need to keep multiple images is to support different processor architectures; you obviously cannot expect to deploy a Power PC image to an Intel processor based machine and expect it to work!
- Images can be taken, using several tools, and stored on either a FireWire disk for deployment by hand, or on an OS X server for deployment via NetBoot over the network.
- The package we use is Carbon Copy Cloner which is shareware so can be downloaded and tested for free – and the author generously allows education to continue to use this product for free!
- Also from the same site, DeLocalizer is a useful tool for removing language settings which you don't use from the OS installation, which can save over a Gigabyte in disk space… which really helps when deploying over a network!
- It currently takes about an hour to deploy a 30Gb OS + apps image over our network. This compares well to a network deployment of Windows type machines with our full package load.
I suggest performing a clean install of OS X onto a system to use for your image "baseline". This gives you a chance to ensure that you definitely have all the components you need present, and that you remove all the un-needed stuff that you can. An extra hour or two here can save you
days later on if you make a mistake!
When installing your "baseline" I suggest performing a custom install of OSX and taking the chance to remove things such as printer drivers you know will never be used on your network, and such-like. Some default installs also include application software demos which should also be removed at this point. This can make a surprisingly large difference to the OS install footprint.
If you are using a copy of OS X that came bundled in with a Mac for your baseline image, remember that tools such as
iLife and
iWork are not part of the base OS, but in fact are what Windows users would describe as an "OEM bundle". You cannot install iLife or iWork on a Mac unless you have a licence to do so, so you should leave these out of your baseline image unless you're certain you have the right licences to allow you to make a mass deployment of these packages.