As the WOU infrastructure has grown and matured, we have come to understand certain complications and inefficiencies in some areas.
Specifically, and as we all know, the Apple technology was never designed for Enterprise use (not Star Trek). Large organizations (and a few small ones) continue to be challenged with managing their fleets of Apple technology. For WOU, our largest challenge recently was the increasing number of Macs that had an outdated OS or browser (not to mention other software).
Enter Munki.
Oh, he looks like a party animal, but down deep this primate is a solid machine.
Munki is super flexible. It can pretty much run on any webserver. No stupid services to keep running. You can even set it up on OS X. The tools are pretty straight forward (as long as you don’t scream when you see command line). It’s pretty clean, NOT chatty, and easy to fix (like when you type the wrong stupid command…like me…more than once).
Munki uses a UI like the old Software Update:
Awesome features:
- Can be installed with one package and a file copy … ~60 sec.
- Runs on 10.5-10.9 Can you think of ANYthing that still does that?!?!?
- Clean. Quiet. Configurable.
- Can install software. Patches. App store apps (w/o the appstore login….hello!). OS updates.
- I can remove software. Seriously.
- I can copy files and scripts and … the fun just doesn’t stop.
- Um, it’s called Munki?
Some folks are even using it to do full box configs. Think of it. Pull a mac out-the-box. Install Munki. Reboot. Walk away. It figures out who it is. Where it is. What to install. It installs is, patches it and the OS. Then reboots. And waits for more.
Power.
Control.
And it’s still kinda stickin’ it to Steve Jobs.