Hardware logistics may be a simple issue for some, but for larger deployments the logistics of handling the physical hardware can be a major undertaking. This section explores the ramifications of deploying new hardware and guides you through the process of estimating and planning the deployment of new hardware and the disposal of the hardware you are replacing.
Infrastructure Considerations
First, you must determine whether your infrastructure is equipped to handle the new or additional computers you intend to deploy. If, during your rollout, you discover that your infrastructure doesn’t have the power, cooling, or bandwidth capacity to support your new computers, you will be faced with an additional costly infrastructure upgrade that you didn’t see coming, or your deployment will fail. With proper planning, however, this scenario can be avoided.
Power Infrastructure
Apple and Intel have made great strides toward minimizing the power requirements for Macintosh computers. Nevertheless, the demand for higher-performance equipment is driving power requirements for computers ever higher, and the additional peripherals in your new system will also draw from your power infrastructure. Further, the electrical systems of many older buildings were not designed for modern computing environments. Even if you’re using infrastructure that supported your previous computing resources, you should double-check the power requirements for your new hardware and make sure that your infrastructure can handle the load.
Planning Usage Management
You can spend weeks perfecting your deployment system configuration, but without a proper usage management plan all that work will be in vain. Unavoidably, users will attempt to make changes to your deployed computers, or they may unintentionally install software that can negatively affect your systems. To ensure the continued health of your deployed computers, you should develop usage policies and a plan to enforce those policies.
Usage Policies
Computer usage policies vary from nonexistent to draconian. The level of detail and restriction defined in a usage policy has more to do with the type and size of the organization than with technical details. The larger the number of deployed systems, the more rules need to be in place to keep problems under control. Thus, smaller organizations tend to have more liberal usage policies, and larger organizations tend to require more control. Also, different types of users often require different usage policies. For example, the policies for an open computer lab will probably be much stricter than the policies for individual faculty and staff computers. As a result, you will most likely have separate usage policies for different situations. If your organization already has usage policies, you should take time to evaluate those policies for your new deployment. As technology changes, new features are introduced that your previous usage policies may not address. For instance, all new Macs come standard with wireless networking and Bluetooth; will you allow all your users to have access to these new features?
There is no best plan for defining usage policies, but the following list presents main categories that you will need to consider when creating or updating your computer usage policies:
- Computer access Policies should define acceptable use of computing resources, including who has access to which computers.
- Software Policies should define which applications are required and allowed. Many policies also restrict usage to only an approved list of applications.
- Peripherals Policies should define acceptable use of peripherals, including which peripherals are allowed. Many organizations require strict policies when it comes to the use of shared printers in order to minimize costs.
- Storage Policies should define acceptable use of storage, including storage permissions and usage quotas. Your storage policies should also dictate where the users’ home folders will reside. Storage security is also something that should be part of your usage policies.
- Network access Policies should define acceptable use of network access, including which users and computers have access to your network resources and access to wireless networks or secure networks via VPN connections. Policies should also define regulations regarding how to deal with rogue network activity.
- Shared network resources Policies should define acceptable use of shared network resources such as file servers, internal websites, and network printers. Many organizations have strict policies regarding the use of communication systems in particular.
The point of creating comprehensive usage policies is to define enforceable rules that must be followed by the computer users, so it’s vital that management agree on and support them so they can be enforced.
Policy Distribution
It’s also important that the users be made aware of and agree to your usage policies, so you must have a plan to distribute those policies to the users. Laws differ from region to region, but having users agree to the usage policies may give management more power toenforce those policies.
One option is to have users actually sign a paper contract before they are allowed to use your computer equipment. Although this provides an easily enforceable document, it also creates paperwork. Further, any time you change the usage policies, you will have to have users sign new paper contracts. A very popular trend in recent years is to have users agree to usage policies electronically. For example, nearly every web-based service uses an electronic agreement system during the sign-up process. The service provider can then easily update its usage policies at any time, making the system redisplay the usage agreement for the user the next time the user wants access to the service. There are many ways to implement this sort of scheme using different authentication systems. Perhaps the most popular method when using Mac OS X is to modify the login window using client management settings as described in the followingsection, “Policy Enforcement.”
Policy Enforcement
Just because users have agreed to your usage policies doesn’t mean they will follow them. Fortunately, Mac OS X includes several built-in technologies that allow you to enforce usage policies at the system level. Planning and configuring these usage enforcement technologies will be a major part of your system deployment. Mac OS X offers five primary technologies that can be used to enforce usage policies: user account management, home folder management, file system permissions, authorization management, and client management.
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