Source
r/macsysadmin•
ilickthings

New to being a Mac Admin (like me, kinda?). Stay the F*CK away from Fleetsmith.

To be clear, this isn't a "what MDM should I use" post - it's a post for all the people hunting right now why to stay away from Fleetsmith.

I setup a Fleetsmith instance in July, completely unaware of how much had been gutted already from the service (it's first-party, so any new machine changes will hit their desks first, right?). The barebones work - FileVault, local Firewall, custom packages...it does the job. But if you're looking to actually manage updates, you might as well turn around now, because they have zero intention of ever supporting Apple Silicon devices - their machine update process has always followed terminal commands, which isn't supported by M1 macs. Even with Intel macs, I can't get their update process to work - I select update in Fleetsmith, it goes to their built-in update screen for a half hour, and nothing happens. Contact support about it, they can't explain it.

To be fair, their support team is pretty responsive - but they're really quick to say "nope, no idea why it doesn't work, sorry!" And just leave it at that. Biggest thing I'm going through now is issues with Migration Assistant - if you use it, it breaks the MDM Profile. Their support response is to remove and re-add, which isn't really an option with a machine enrolled via ABM/DEP. Do they have any intention of fixing the problem with their MDM Profile and Migration Assistant? Nope. Do they let you turn off Migration Assistant in the Device Setup Experience, so a DEP machine can't even use it? Also nope. So they don't support a baked-in, normal end user action, nor do they provide a means of stopping users from using it.

I'm going to Mosyle or Addigy as fast as I can, but as someone who's currently in the hell of using this product that must've been torn open for Apple Business Essentials parts - just don't.

Edit: fixing typos post-rant

Posted Jan 31, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC · edited

3543
doktortaru•

Just as a FYI, Migration assistant breaks completely no matter what MDM you are using.

34
ilickthingsOP•

Good to know, thanks!

5
theray76•

For anyone who wants to use migration assistant in their environment, we have a lot of success by:

  1. Removing destination machine from mdm using a remote command.
  2. Removing the local binary from the destination machine (sudo jamf removeFramework in our case).
  3. Running the migration.
  4. Re-enrolling the machine from the migrated user account using sudo profiles renew -type enrollment (if system is in ABM) or by reinstalling the enrollment profile.

Also make sure you use a proper Thunderbolt cable to do the transfer!

5
hb3b•

“Migraine Assistant”

4
---daemon---Consultation•

Truth

2
gargravarr2112•

What on earth was the point in Apple buying it then??

11
ilickthingsOP•

To gut it for ABE is my guess, but honestly no idea.

13
da4•

I think they made a deal with Jamf - Apple gets a polished GUI for their new small business MDM ("Apple Business Essentials") and Jamf gets to focus on enterprise and larger education customers. Avoid a real frenemy situation.

2
ilickthingsOP•

ABE is just ABM with more buttons and a different look (If you haven't joined the beta, it literally just redirects you from ABM to ABE).

Only reason it's not on my radar is because it doesn't support custom apps.

5
slykido999•

Turn it into Apple Business Essentials.

3
Iknappster•

FleetSmith was bought by Apple, so it's probably abandonware until they integrate it into a different product. just my opinion I don't have any more intel other than I know first hand Apple uses (or used? been out of AppleCare 5+ years now..) Casper/JAMF for years to manage their fleet

That said, I moved my organization to JAMF and couldn't be happier, generally.

10
jason0724•

Apple Business Essentials. https://www.apple.com/business/essentials/

5
Iknappster•

makes sense, I've been living out of Apple School Manager for years now, so haven't even had a chance to investigate the apple business essentials myself.

2
MacAdminInTraning•

I’m looking right now also. We use JAMF which is still one of the better ones but their pain points with miserable OS update support is working my last nerve. I probably will stick with JAMF in the end but I’m annoyed enough to be looking.

6
Lynx1080•

Check out Addigy. We made the move from Jamf and it’s been a breath of fresh air.

1
ilickthingsOP•

I'm really liking my Addigy demo so far.

5
ntvirtue•

I personally know most of the Addigy team (Worked at Kaseya with them) they are good folks who make a good product with an excellent support team.

6
dudyson•

Jamf Now? Honestly the capabilities with Jamf Pro surpass Addigy in my experience. It’s been two years that I last used Addigy so perhaps it has changed but I can imagine it somehow improved to be on par with Jamf Pro.

Extra benefit the Jamf training courses are very good.

The bad update process is a Apple framework issue that hopefully has been resolved for good with Monterey (for DEP enrolled machines).

2
Lynx1080•

No, Jamf Pro.

Definitely recommend checking Addigy out if it’s been two years since you’ve seen it, because it’s been great for us. I know it’s newer to the scene and I had read it came a long way quickly from r/MSP where I first found out about it. We’ve only been using it the last 6 months, so cannot really personally speak to before that.

It doesn’t have as many integrations as Jamf Pro, but for our business cases, and some of them are quite complex, it can accomplish a lot more with much less effort.

3
NE-DeviceSolutions•

I have used Jamf for years. I tested fleetsmith and thought it was “okay.” But I was truly impressed with mosyle. I use that or jumpcloud. Jumpcloud has a lot of growing to do. But overall it’s a good product for what it’s designed to do.

5
macgeek89•

I use JumpCloud myself I agree it has a lot of growing to do. But they are very easy to manage and the cross platform MDM was what catch my my eye. I've been using it a few years now and I'm very impressed. I'd would have loved to jump in the Jamf bandwagon but they just dont fit my budget at the moment.

1
NE-DeviceSolutions•

Jamf is great. But it’s far from worth the price tag. Jumpcloud is expensive too. I hope they add more payloads and tools soon. But I’ve been building custom profiles for years so all and all I get what I need out of it.

5
macgeek89•

That's great. I mostly use it for one or two machines that I manage. I also use Spiceworks agent. Hives a great list of stuff installed on the machine.

1
---daemon---Consultation•

If all you need is the basics, yes Jamf Pro is too much. It’s not for the basics, it’s for the SAP, Apple, and IBMs of the world. But that’s why they made Jamf Now Plus plan, Jamf Now Plus is the current competition for Mosyle and Addigy. They don’t compete with Jamf Pro on integrations and feature set by a mile, hence price. https://marketplace.jamf.com integrate with all the things.

0
MostViolentRapGroup•

I was testing Fleetsmith and close to going with it. Then the Apple purchase happened and I jumped to Mosyle.

4
nickomac•

+1 for Mosyle

6
DumbBrainwave•

Mosyle takes a bit of getting used to in my opinion. But their support is top notch, and they actually escalate issues only when they are over their heads.

3
bb79•

Same. At the time only Fleetsmith and Mosyle had reasonable pricing and a simple sign up process.

What a lot of these MDM firms don’t realise is that there are many small companies under 10 people, each staff member having a MacBook. MDM becomes necessary but enterprise pricing and sales channels aren’t appropriate.

0
denverpilot•

Narrator: After he posted, he switched Apple MDM providers and learned they're all this way.

4
ilickthingsOP•

Pff $10/device/month for 50% of what other MDMs can do? Anything is better.

4
denverpilot•

You'll run into something that doesn't work right on all of them.

You're correct that not wasting money on them as much as possible is the right play.

Apple continues to be openly nice about MDM for OSX and in reality fully hostile to it.

iOS, slightly better.

My auditors love my excuses for not being able to properly enforce FileVault. Ha. You can get close... But then it's going to need manual intervention, and then what's the point of automating it...

3
ProfessionalHandJob•

Check out Nudge for doing updates regardless of which MDM you land on. We still have to use it with Jamf https://github.com/macadmins/nudge

Should be able to manage OS install deferrals with a config profile, a custom one even if they didn’t have a template in their GUI to do it (which is a pain kinda). Can you add custom config profiles?

That’s really all you can do to manage updates sadly. Most fleets doing a blind MDM forced update push without notification isn’t an option anyways.

2
RavenIl•

A tip for migration assistant is to uncheck "System and Network"...I had to tell JAMF that because I ran into the same issue with them. It'll install/use the new profile instead of the old one.

1
jason0724•

Take a look at Kandji as well.

0†
ilickthingsOP•

Honestly, only reason I haven't is because their ads annoy the shit out of me. Not even the content, but it's just...anytime I'm looking ANYTHING up MacOS related, there's a Kandji ad.

13
innermotion7•

That's Series C funding...i mean Marketing for Ya ;-)

8
excoriator•

Kandji just hired away an Apple SE who was such an expert on MDM that he was a regular presenter at the Jamf conferences. They must be doing something well.

5
a_frayn•

The amount of awesome people now working at Kandji is phenomenal. Them and Jamf have been hiring some of the best Mac admins.

4
---daemon---Consultation•

Correct, and Jamf has been buying all the best Mac centric security and compliance solutions.

0
speartongue•

We tried Kandji but everything needed a custom script.. went with Addigy

4
sampsen•

Can go into detail there? I’m familiar with both Kandji and Addigy. What did you want to do in Kandji that needed a script but did not need one in Addigy?

4
Lynx1080•

This is what I felt too when we evaluated Kandji against Addigy.

2
Old-Banana-802•

u/speartongue - Can you give a few examples?

2
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1