4 ms·

A tool-chain like this is needed for Apple to move widely into the enterprise. As a sysadmin, it is a major pain to worry about unpatched, outdated, apple lapto

A tool-chain like this is needed for Apple to move widely into the enterprise. As a sysadmin, it is a major pain to worry about unpatched, outdated, apple laptops that have to conform to a security policy. Without automated tools like this, you are left running around patching the latest java/flash/pdf issue!

ajasmin 14y ago
Are sysadmins really the target audience? At first glance it seems the intent of Boxen is to get your developer tools installed and configured. I guess how useful it is for a sysadmin would depend on whether changes are pushed automatically to the macs.
- WestCoastJustin 14y ago
  Ultimately someone is responsible for that machine, I think that role should fall with the sysadmins, if they exist yet. Github is large enough that they should have in-house IT looking after the desktops/internal network. They might even have two teams, one looking after employees, and one looking after the server infrastructure. Start-ups grow organically, so there might not be "someone" at first, other than the developer. This quickly turns into a burden when you have 50+ employees running around and warranties start to lapse, there is no current inventory list, you have a mish-mash of machine configs. Then comes the stage of getting a consistent config on each machine, so that person X and person Y can collaborate, using the same dev tools, at the same rev level. Looks like Puppet/Boxen is a tool to solve that problem. This problem is compounded when you are in a hiring frenzy, because new people almost appear out of thin air, and you are supposed to have a machine for them. Having a quick deploy script will save your hair line considerably.
MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
Exactly. I have been fighting to allow people to choose Mac or PC when they are due for new hardware, and now that 80% of people are choosing Macs, it is getting to be a pain to manage them. I am so glad to see this as an alternative to the tools that Apple has been neglecting since they stopped trying to sell server hardware.
rdl 14y ago
I still don't understand why Apple hasn't built something like this for the SMB market. Maybe they don't want to play in the true enterprise space, but even if a company has 5 workers, having a central cloud service to handle system configuration, baselines for security, backups, vpn, software push, hardware replacement, etc. would be essential. On mobile there are a variety of MDM services so you can almost do this for phones, but there isn't much for the SMB market for desktops/laptops. In the Microsoft world there are some tools, but even those are generally too much work for a small business to set up (even a non-tech business with 100 employees isn't likely to do it, at best they'll have ghost or something to image new machines -- a tech business might after 25-50 employees)
- homosaur 14y ago
  They don't see themselves in that market...yet, and the trends don't look good in that direction either. As we all know, Apple has continued to shy away from actual computing in recent years. Now if you could do something like this for Linux, businesses that don't yet have an MS infrastructure could find this very compelling, especially if the rumors of Linux MS Office come true. I work in IT in a large nationwide law firm and we spend so much time of our days dealing with viruses and general Windows headaches when what people do is mostly either 1) through Citrix, where we manage the Windows instances or 2) on the web. If MS Office for Linux dropped, I think businesses like ours would find this a very compelling option.
  - wes-exp 14y ago
    "we spend so much time of our days dealing with viruses and general Windows headaches" Rather than maintaining all this enterprise stuff to fight off the Windows tar-pit of viruses and dreaming of a day of MS Office on Linux, why don't you switch to Macs which require no such special effort to stay virus-free and already have MS Office available? Am I missing something here?
    - LunaSea 14y ago
      Because double the price ?
muraiki 14y ago
For enterprise Mac management I've found the Casper Suite to be awesome: http://www.jamfsoftware.com/ http://www.jamfsoftware.com/ (no affiliation) It can easily create thin images for setting up new machines (make a small base install and then give the computer applications X Y and Z), package software and remotely deploy it to computers, create rules to push out new versions of software to computers, etc. You can set up self service so that users can browse a general store of applications but you can also assign applications to specific computers. They handle iOS devices now too, and their community is great. It also has SCCM and Altiris plugins, but I haven't used either of those features.

ajasmin 14y ago

Are sysadmins really the target audience? At first glance it seems the intent of Boxen is to get your developer tools installed and configured. I guess how useful it is for a sysadmin would depend on whether changes are pushed automatically to the macs.

WestCoastJustin 14y ago
Ultimately someone is responsible for that machine, I think that role should fall with the sysadmins, if they exist yet. Github is large enough that they should have in-house IT looking after the desktops/internal network. They might even have two teams, one looking after employees, and one looking after the server infrastructure. Start-ups grow organically, so there might not be "someone" at first, other than the developer. This quickly turns into a burden when you have 50+ employees running around and warranties start to lapse, there is no current inventory list, you have a mish-mash of machine configs. Then comes the stage of getting a consistent config on each machine, so that person X and person Y can collaborate, using the same dev tools, at the same rev level. Looks like Puppet/Boxen is a tool to solve that problem. This problem is compounded when you are in a hiring frenzy, because new people almost appear out of thin air, and you are supposed to have a machine for them. Having a quick deploy script will save your hair line considerably.

MiguelHudnandez 14y ago

Exactly. I have been fighting to allow people to choose Mac or PC when they are due for new hardware, and now that 80% of people are choosing Macs, it is getting to be a pain to manage them. I am so glad to see this as an alternative to the tools that Apple has been neglecting since they stopped trying to sell server hardware.

rdl 14y ago

I still don't understand why Apple hasn't built something like this for the SMB market. Maybe they don't want to play in the true enterprise space, but even if a company has 5 workers, having a central cloud service to handle system configuration, baselines for security, backups, vpn, software push, hardware replacement, etc. would be essential. On mobile there are a variety of MDM services so you can almost do this for phones, but there isn't much for the SMB market for desktops/laptops. In the Microsoft world there are some tools, but even those are generally too much work for a small business to set up (even a non-tech business with 100 employees isn't likely to do it, at best they'll have ghost or something to image new machines -- a tech business might after 25-50 employees)

homosaur 14y ago
They don't see themselves in that market...yet, and the trends don't look good in that direction either. As we all know, Apple has continued to shy away from actual computing in recent years. Now if you could do something like this for Linux, businesses that don't yet have an MS infrastructure could find this very compelling, especially if the rumors of Linux MS Office come true. I work in IT in a large nationwide law firm and we spend so much time of our days dealing with viruses and general Windows headaches when what people do is mostly either 1) through Citrix, where we manage the Windows instances or 2) on the web. If MS Office for Linux dropped, I think businesses like ours would find this a very compelling option.
- wes-exp 14y ago
  "we spend so much time of our days dealing with viruses and general Windows headaches" Rather than maintaining all this enterprise stuff to fight off the Windows tar-pit of viruses and dreaming of a day of MS Office on Linux, why don't you switch to Macs which require no such special effort to stay virus-free and already have MS Office available? Am I missing something here?
  - LunaSea 14y ago
    Because double the price ?

muraiki 14y ago

For enterprise Mac management I've found the Casper Suite to be awesome: http://www.jamfsoftware.com/ http://www.jamfsoftware.com/ (no affiliation) It can easily create thin images for setting up new machines (make a small base install and then give the computer applications X Y and Z), package software and remotely deploy it to computers, create rules to push out new versions of software to computers, etc. You can set up self service so that users can browse a general store of applications but you can also assign applications to specific computers. They handle iOS devices now too, and their community is great. It also has SCCM and Altiris plugins, but I haven't used either of those features.