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Leopard Server cost $999 for an unlimited-client license, Snow Leopard Server cost $499, and Lion Server costs $50.

Deploying and supporting Macs presents distinct challenges, particularly in organizations where Macs are in the minority or are being introduced for the first time. As with many aspects of IT, having the right tool for the job is the key to managing a.

The good news is that there are many tried and true solutions for handling common Mac deployment and management tasks. The better news is that many of the best are available for free, whether from Apple, as open source projects, or as free/donationware creations of other Mac administrators and IT professionals. [ See InfoWorld's. Learn why. Keep up with key Apple technologies with the. ] [ Stay up to date with. Get. ] Here you will find the top 22 tools -- most of them free -- for managing the. As you'd expect, the list focuses on the core areas of systems administration: deployment, client management, and directory integration.

If I missed a favorite free Mac tool, please highlight it in the comments below. Essential Mac tools Nos. 1 and 2: Disk Utility and Apple Software Restore If you have more than a couple of Macs to deal with, you'll need an easy way to configure them. How to sinc google for android with google for mac. For monolithic imaging, the process by which you create a snapshot of one workstation and copy it to others, nothing beats and Apple Software Restore, both of which are included free with every Mac OS X install. Disk Utility comes as both a GUI tool and the diskutil command-line option. It is equipped with plenty of local disk management functions, including partitioning, formatting, integrity checking, and repair.

It also offers the ability to clone volumes and create disk images using the.dmg format, which makes it perfect for capturing a configured volume for monolithic imaging. [ ] Apple Software Restore, which is, allows you to locally or remotely deploy disk images to one or more clients. It can be used to image a Mac from a disk image on a local drive, a network share, or a multicast stream (the best option for mass deployments). When used for, one Mac hosts the stream via asr commands for others to join. As you might expect, any client imaged using asr must be booted from a source other than the destination volume, such as an external hard drive, a flash drive, or a bootable network volume. While Disk Utility and ASR provide the backbone for Mac deployment, either individually using an external drive/unicast network connection or a multicast stream, there are several tools to speed up, automate, and improve your workflow for capturing a source image, preparing it for use with ASR, and initiating deployment.

Be sure to check out and for image capture and basic single-Mac deployment, and for setting up ASR sessions. Essential Mac tools Nos. 3 and 4: NetInstall and NetRestore Building off of Apple's free image-based offerings are two features of the company's Mac OS X Server: NetInstall and NetRestore. Network booting has been a staple since OS X Server debuted, and Apple has built off the NetBoot concept with NetInstall and NetRestore, both of which allow servers to host boot volumes, thereby enabling clients to boot directly from the network based on your deployment options. NetInstall is designed for booting into the OS X installer utility and allows admins to configure options for a traditional OS X install. (It is not monolithic imaging per se, though that is possible.) It also performs pre- and post-install tasks such as disk partitioning, directory binding, and application installation. NetRestore is designed around ASR and provides a broader range of options for monolithic imaging.