[MACEP] Push Technology

[Eric Neiwert]

We use a more standard workstation setup with Macintosh computers. The workstations are updated with an image over the network. The real security comes through implementing managed users on an open directory server. The users have a home folder on
the server that they use exclusively for saving. (no saving locally except for large  imovie files saved to a local partition that is not touched if the machine is imaged.) The beauty is that users can set their machines to work as they want to
work. Their bookmarks get saved, their desktops look how they want, their icon sizes are set by the user, and when the next user steps up to log in to the computer it looks like it was when they last touched it. If I re-image the only thing they
might notice is that it runs better or their icons might be different from putting a new version of the software on their computer.
Users can't load software because they don't have admin priveleges.
It also makes backing up of the user's files very easy.

macep at macep.net writes:
>Who around here in the Northwest uses push technology to support the
>computers in their environment ?
>
>We are defining push technology as each night (or at what ever interval) 
>the central servers would go out and save the user files and then replace
>or reload (push the s/w from the server to the workstation) the entire
>system to get it ready for the next day. This would wipe any new s/w
>loaded by the end user and fix any problems that the workstation was
>having and make a clean load for the next day. For our purposes, Linux and
>Windows terminal servers running thin clients do not fall into the
>description.
>
>If you are running something like we describe, could you please tell us
>1.	Is it Mac and Windows compliant (Same s/w to run both environments)
>2.	What's the brand of the product you are using
>3.	How many servers to support how many workstations
>4.	How hard to alter the master layout if an image needs to be altered by
>s/w being added or removed.
>5.	How many different layouts of systems in one site could it support.
>(like the layout in the lab would be different than a teacher system and
>the system deployed in SPED would be a different setup also and so on.
>6.	Storage requirements for how many layouts
>7	Ball park for the cost of the s/w to control how many workstations
>
>I am looking for your opinion pro or con and if you know about a product
>that would do what i described above.
>>
>>
>
>Jeff Thompson, Network Services
>Reynolds School District		Voice: 503 491-3410
>1218 NE 201st Avenue		Fax: 419-715-8980
>Fairview, OR 97024-2499		junk at reynolds.k12.or.us
>
>_______________________________________________
>MACEP mailing list 
>MACEP at macep.net
>Archive: http://macep.net/pipermail/macep/
>http://macep.net/mailman/listinfo/macep



Eric Neiwert
Technology Coordinator
Gordon Russell Middle School
http://russell.gresham.k12.or.us
Gresham-Barlow School District
Gresham, OR



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mesd.k12.or.us/pipermail/macep/attachments/20061002/dfe23f86/attachment.html