Current State of Mac Support

Overview

The purpose of this section is to outline the current state of macs within each IT environment at Tufts. Each IT group should provided as detailed explanation as possible of where they stand with mac support and management. Any information about the number of Macs and iOS devices, how they are managed, current tools, etc is appreciated.

OIT

OIT has approximately 110 to 130 macs that they support, almost all of which are within the medical school. OIT don't currently have an exact count of the number of macs without Landesk it is probably around 20-40.

OIT technicians are instructed to install Landesk on every computer so the few macs which do not have Landesk installed are generally very old machines that have been around since before OIT was installing Landesk agents as a standard. Almost all of these macs are personal computers, shared machines within labs, or connected to research equipment.

OIT has a poilcy outlining to procedure for setting up new macs for deployment. OIT does not currently install a customized version of OS X on Macs but uses the stock OS that the computers come with. The checklist for OIT mac computer deployment can be found here: Mac_Checklist110721.pdf
The general procedure involves, applying the latest OS updates, installing standard software including the landesk agent, naming the computer according to OIT standards and joining it to the domain.

OIT currently has 1 apple certified technician (Gloria Lam).

OIT currently does not use ARD or any other Apple management tools (like profile manager). OIT also does not currently use any third party tools with the exception of Landesk.

Landesk is used for remote control, software distribution, and inventory.

UIT

• UIT currently installs Landesk on all new macs but it was not installed on them previously
• Very few macs are on the domain
• Users are given admin access on Macs
• UIT installs their standard applications on top of the stock OS.

ITS

ITS Computer Labs:

• Currently running Open Directory on an OS X 10.6 Server running off of a Mac mini server
  • provides workstation management/restrictions for approximately 70 clients
  • hosts DeployStudio for client imaging (Netboot and multicast enabled)
• All clients are joined to Tufts domain and are required to login using Tufts username and password
  • Running OS X 10.6 and 10.7
• Clients are remotely accessed and managed using Apple Remote Desktop
• Apple Certification in process

HHSL

Operations & Public Safety

The Operations Division IT Department (OpsIT) currently has about a dozen Apple Computers that we support, primarily MacBook Pro laptops. We also support about 25 iPhones and 12 iPads. These computers and devices are all University owned. We also provide limited support for personally owned devices in the division.

The Apple computers managed by us are all running the latest operating system 10.7.3 and have the latest LANDesk package installed on them. We do not currently use Apple Remote Desktop to manage our Apple Computers. However, we have began testing and using Lion Profile Manager to create profiles for our iOS devices to help us manage them. Ideally, we hope to move to a Mobile Device Management software to be able to manage these devices better. All of our Apple computers are joined to the TUFTS domain and users authenticate with their UTLN to login.

We do not current have an imaging solution in place. Since we only have a few computers at this time, we build them individually. Some Apple Laptops also have a Windows VM on them to allow users to run necessary software that is not yet Mac compatible.