The firmware installer just needs to run one time on your target machine. This isn’t really a concern if your machines have run through the High Sierra/Mojave installation at least once. So the one difficulty in imaging High Sierra or Mojave is the firmware update for APFS. If you need help getting a macOS Server or DeployStudio Server set up, there is no shortage of resources available. But I’m going to assume you are using what I listed above and already have it all set up. If you want to try using Jamf Imaging or something, go for it. You will also need a DeployStudio Server (at least version 1.7.7 to support APFS imaging). First of all, you will need some type of server that’s going to host macOS Server for a NetInstall service and for File Sharing. There is some infrastructure you will need to have in place in order to perform what I’m about to show here. With all of that out of the way (whew), I can jump into how I’m imaging High Sierra and Mojave. So this process can still be useful and of some help to others out there.Īlright. And I’m guessing for the next few years, we’ll probably all have some Macs that support NetInstall (the 2015/2017 MacBook Air is still going strong in educational institutions due to its affordability). 20-30 minutes to erase and install from Self Service, or 35-45 minutes to install from Internet Recovery. At this point, it takes about 5 minutes for me to image a MacBook Air with macOS 10.14.3, vs. Yet, I felt it necessary to write about this for two reasons: 1) People still seem to be asking about how to do it and/or if it’s possible, and 2) there are still plenty of machines (without the T2 chip) at our respective institutions or places of business that can benefit from imaging. Imaging isn’t dead, but it is certainly dying. It’s just the hassle of booting up and changing the settings every time you want to image something when there are other ways to install macOS that are not too difficult. It’s not even the concern that security settings are being lowered in order to do it we’ve been operating with the ability to external boot for a long time. Let’s just be honest: no one wants to do that. Macs with the T2 chip can’t Netboot, and in order to boot off of an external drive, they need to boot to recovery and have some secure boot settings changed. The T2 chip is what will kill off imaging for good. All that to say, APFS didn’t kill off imaging, as I will show in a bit. This is because of the firmware update which is required to be installed for APFS support, which is installed during the upgrade process. It doesn’t say installing macOS in general, but instead is very careful to state that it isn’t supported when upgrading. But maybe more important is the second half of the sentence which specifies that imaging isn’t supported “when upgrading or updating macOS”. First of all, as any tech person should know, “recommend or support” isn’t ever an emphatic way of saying “this won’t work”. After all, Apple did in fact have a support article up at one time which stated “Apple doesn’t recommend or support monolithic system imaging when upgrading or updating macOS.” That sentence is deceptively worded, however. Now let me be clear, I place no real fault on any of these people. There are no shortage of forum posts of people asking for help imaging High Sierra or Mojave, with most answers being “Imaging became unsupported when Apple switched over to APFS.” I was actually told this by a Jamf trainer as well who happens to be pretty well known in the Apple support world. Imaging is dying off, but not for the reason everyone thinks. If you’ve been in the Mac administration game for more than a couple of years, you probably read that title and said “It’s 2019… why are we talking about this?” And yes, you’re probably right.
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