Jamf Pro: Why Bother with Anything Else? (except also get Apple Remote Desktop for a few cool things that it can do)
November 01, 2018

Jamf Pro: Why Bother with Anything Else? (except also get Apple Remote Desktop for a few cool things that it can do)

Brett Hendricks | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Jamf Pro

Jamf Pro is used across the organization. It addresses deployment, patching, software installs, and updates. It allows for fixes to be deployed quickly to users once problems have been solved. It allows us to keep track of our Mac inventories, and we are looking forward to using it to help with a possible deployment of iPads in one of our science labs.
  • The Jamf Pro JSS is great at reporting on inventory. It is easy to set up an advanced search with multiple criteria that targets hardware, software, and other markers, including organizational and meta structures (like computer groups, building, or assigned user).
  • Jamf Remote is a great tool for "do it now" tasks. Using Jamf Remote, I can do pretty much everything a policy can do (install a package, run a script, execute a command, perform an inventory, etc.), but I can do it right away just once, so I don't have to go through the process of creating a policy for a one-off. I can also use Jamf Remote to connect to a system remotely.
  • Jamf Composer makes packaging software for deployment a breeze. It can pull in files from multiple folders, you can add scripts to run pre and post install, and it's all very straightforward.
  • When using Jamf Remote, the check for the latest jamf binary and binary location often produces enough "errors" that the procedure shows as having "failed" even though it succeeded, so it is difficult to know whether a procedure that "failed" actually failed or whether it just had a time trying to figure out which binary to use.
  • In the JSS profiles, it would be great to have an option to configure a particular setting in an area (e.g., security and privacy) without also thereby configuring all the settings for that area. Something like MS group policies for settings which can be enabled, disabled, or not configured.
  • No hard numbers, but Jamf Pro has enabled us to increase our Mac deployment numbers significantly without increasing staff dedicated to Mac management.
Jamf Pro is pretty much in a class by itself. Apple Remote Desktop has a few distinct advantages, however. 1) the ability to execute a unix command on multiple systems and to see the output of those commands in one place on screen; 2) the ability to observe multiple desktops at once 3) it's easier to do quick one-offs to a group of machines or to run commands/programs under a current user context 4) it shows the state of each computer and whether it's logged on.
I think its suitability is inversely proportional to the number of systems under management and the amount of time one has to manage them.