

These tools can deploy fully configured images with all of your desired programs and customizations, but if you need to make changes for individual computers or departments, you’re left to either make these changes manually or create and maintain multiple images, adding to your workload.Įnter DeployStudio, a free third-party tool that combines the convenience of NetBoot with flexible and customizable tools for automating application installs and post-configuration tasks. The System Image Utility, part of the OS X Server Admin Tools package, can capture your images, and the NetBoot service will let you apply that image to multiple Macs without the need for third-party programs or bootable media. The tools Apple builds into OS X Server are more useful for larger deployments, but they don’t make it all the way there. Software like Disk Utility or Mike Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner, which can copy the contents from one Mac’s hard drive to another’s, are fine for imaging individual Macs, but these tools typically don’t scale very well, and administrators will still need to perform some post-install configuration tasks manually-things like renaming computers and binding them to directories.
#IMAGING SOFTWARE FOR MAC INSTALL#
Supporting Macs means coming up with ways to manage and configure them to run your programs and comply with your IT department’s best practices, and doing that quickly and effectively means finding ways to install pre-configured operating system images and approved applications on them. Macs are on the rise in businesses and educational institutions, and while IT managers might not like it, users are increasingly asking for more Mac support from their workplaces.

