Speakers: J David Hester & Jeremy Baker
Level: All Levels, Lecture
Excerpt: How to ask the right questions in order to move from one management system to a new one. We will discuss our own set up, but more importantly: we will discuss the method we used to help us make the right choices to meet our clients’ current and future needs. Bring your own stories, and collaboratively we may be able to learn and even help those of you facing a similar migration.
Description: There was a death in our family, leaving us with no option but to select from a variety of tools available to us in order to replace our dearly departed LANrev system. But rather than simply showcase our new environment (comprised of AirWatch, Munki and Chef), we will provide you with a heuristic model of discovery and solutions creativity that helped us make the right choices for our environment. In this way, you will learn that no one product may be the right one for you and your environment, depending on your specific user community needs and your specific administrative/security requirements.
How do you make the right choices? How do you know what platforms to consider? How do you even start?!
By asking the right questions.
Come ready to discussion your own circumstances, your own obstacles, and the ways you overcame them to develop your own solutions. Or maybe you are in the middle of this decision making process: bring your questions and collectively we can apply this model and help you make the right choice for you.
About the speakers
Jeremy Baker (Twitter: @jerbaker10) – Mac Systems Administrator – NIMH
I am a Mac Systems Administrator for the National Institutes of Mental Health.
J David Hester (Twitter: @altpibroch) – Senior Systems Architect and Subject Matter Expert – LCG Inc.
My first computer was an Apple IIe which ran on Beagle Brothers DOS. Taught BASIC and Fortran. Then I went onto more interesting things in the humanities, where I got my PhD in religious history, rhetoric and ideology. After finishing my post-doc in Germany analyzing the patient-parent-physician relationship and the rhetoric of constraint in cases of newborn hermaphroditic (intersex) children, I returned to the US to return to IT. Been at the National Institutes of Health for 14 years where I’ve helped a number of ICs integrate Macs and support iOS devices.
I also play the bagpipes, and you can hear me practice out back of the Conferencer on most evenings, since competitions are usually within a week of PSU Mac Admins.