I have been using DeployStudio for a year or so now and Netrestore before that. After visiting another campus, I found they used Casper Suite from Jamf Software. After looking into the cost, it is significant. Especially when compared to our current free alternative. I wanted to know, who out there uses Casper and if they think it’s worth the cost. I really like some of the features, it’s just that we can do most of it already. It’s not a easy and neat but it costs us nothing.
I’ve been wanting to purchase part of the Casper Suite, Composer, for a while now for its snapshot ability.
Being able to find out which prefs files change or are created during an install would be really really handy in determining what files to wrap up for remote deployments over ARD.
An old colleague used Composer regularly, almost every day. I know he is using DeployStudio now so must ask him whether Composer is still getting used.
This is a late reply, I know.
I began my current position a little over two years ago as a three month consultancy with a fair sized school district (54 K-12 schools across 40+ campuses). At that time, they were deploying their Macs 1:1 with external firewire drives and needed something… more robust.
Our first prototype was also Netrestore (which was a great tool). After Mike EOL’d the project, I wrote a recommendation for Deploystudio, drafted a roadmap and prepared to move on. To avoid the long history, I was asked to come back and revisit the project and write an official proposal, build a prototype and hand the project off to an FTE. The client was adamant that they wanted enterprise support — so FOSS solutions were out.
I did my homework, reached out to the handful of service providers and, ultimately, recommended JSS/Casper. (The client has nearly 14k Wintel boxes in place and were not interested in cross platform support; this was a solution for their 1k odd Macs). Over the course of six months, I inventoried the clients, built new image configurations and imaged 90% of the machines — this was as a consultant working without full privileges to half of what I needed and working alone.
At the end of the project, I was asked if I would consider coming on full time to drive the bus. Which is ironic, as had that happened before the whole deal, I would have kept Deploystudio as the choice — as it is, I wound up with Casper because they weren’t going to bring someone in full time.
Long and short; it’s a fantastic suite and well worth the ticket cost if you’ve got limited (human) resources available. I’m currently managing a little over a thousand Macs (labs, carts, one offs) from a centralized seat and two Xserves (as well as testing a sandboxed JSS build on Debian as I plan the migration away from Xserves and OS X Server).
I’m not offering rose coloured recomendations, JSS’s MCX management can clash with OD/WGM. Casper Remote is a great tool once you’ve setup your workflow; but for remote login, it’s still a VNC client and is nowhere near as robust as ARD when it comes time to remote in. InstaDMG is still the best way to build your base image (but JSS works beautifully for handling dynamic package development and deployment on top of that base) and you’ll want to avoid JAMF’s netboot creation tool if you want to be able to ARD into netbooted boxes.
All said, I am happy to have it to work with — and for a single admin with lots of (physical) ground to cover in order to be hands on and constantly working on other projects, it’s a real time saver. Scheduled reimaging is a breeze, package deployment is drop dead simple and the JAMF/Casper mailing lists are full of really helpful people (mirrored by an amazingly helpful staff.)
Again, I realize this was an old post; but I thought I’d drop add this just in case you’re still pondering the question.
Happy New Year.
thom