Speakers: Greg Neagle
Level: Intermediate, Lecture
Excerpt: Recent developments in the Mac world mean that installation workflows, not imaging workflows, are the future of consistent Mac deployment. Greg will discuss how recent Apple changes mean you can no longer delay exploring alternate deployment workflows. He’ll discuss alternatives to the traditional imaging workflows, including those initiated by DEP and MDM, and show how you can use Apple and third-party tools available to deploy and re-deploy machines in a consistent, repeatable manner.
Description: Recent developments in the Mac world such as the release of the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, the transition to the APFS filesystem, and the new iMac Pro with Secure Boot mean that installation workflows, not imaging workflows, are the future of consistent Mac deployment. Increasingly there is more to ensuring a Mac is in a supported, bootable state than simply making sure the boot volume has the right files. Greg will discuss how recent Apple changes mean you can no longer delay exploring alternate deployment workflows. He’ll discuss alternatives to the traditional imaging workflows, with a focus on installation-based workflows, including those initiated by DEP and MDM. Greg will show how you can still use Apple and third-party tools to deploy and re-deploy machines in a consistent, repeatable manner.
About the speaker
Greg Neagle (Twitter: @gregneagle) – Sr. Systems Engineer – Walt Disney Animation Studios
Greg is the engineer primarily responsible for deploying and managing macOS machines at Walt Disney Animation Studios, a studio with a long history of family entertainment reaching back to “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and forward to our latest films: “Moana”, and the upcoming “Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-it Ralph 2”.
Disney Animation has released several Mac management tools developed by Greg as open source. Among those are Munki, a software deployment framework, and Reposado, a platform-agnostic replacement for Apple’s Software Update service. Greg is also a contributor to the popular AutoPkg tool.
Greg has presented on various aspects of macOS management at Macworld, Apple’s WWDC, the MacTech Conference, Penn State Mac Admins, Mac Admins and Developers UK, and MacSysAdmin.