The admin's freeware friend: DeployStudio

You want a reason to consider using Deploy studio? How about the fact that Bombich himself has decided to drop Netrestore 11/18/08 and is recommending publicly the use of Deploy Studio? I am an avid Bombich user (Netresore, CCC, and PHP) and love all his products. I rely heavily on Netrestore and have used it to manage over 800 computers beautifully. On paper, Deploy Studio seems promising. I will have to give it a try (and Dan, I would like to try to use your script to migrate my PHP over to it, so thank you in advance).

It seems like a merge between Netrestore and the new Apple mentality of mass deployment with packages. I am also excited to try something that also works with my PC's (I only have a few, but would like the same power and haven't investigated Ghost yet). Nervous, but excited and happy that I at least have some time to investigate and test this before I need to reimage all my macs again.

i agree. its quite useful. http://www.hindlist.com

Any tool to backup and restore Applications with License, Prefs, etc.
I have got 10 Macs and have to load the same set of Applications, so instead of installing it 10 times and entering the product key 10 times and changing the settings 10 times. An app to copy selected Apps along with the Library folder and Pref. Plists would be great....

Any such app...?

I have used both Bombich's tools, Filewave, and this. If you do not understand the differences between the tools then so be it, but this tool is very different from Bombich's.

First off, Bombich is a king. Without his hard work, tools, & Mt. Fuji-sized efforts, we would all be worse off.

DeployStudio kind of takes the whole NetBoot / NetInstall / NetRestore scenario to another level and enables you have a true server-client setup. You can create workflows specific to machines, groups, etc. If you are familiar with Symantec Ghost Solutions Suite, this is about the closest Mac equivalent I've found so far.

Your workflow (or "task" as its called in Ghost) can include a multitude of operations - restore an image, create an image, execute scripts, install licenses, whatever you want. These workflows are all setup on the server side of things, and clients know what's available to them by computer group, access level, and MAC address. As long as you have NetBoot working as it should be, taking advantage of evertyhing that DeployStudio has to offer greatly reduces your overhead.

It's really quite cool & a breeze to setup. Again, don't get me wrong, I love Bombich's tools and still use them.

boo! netboot only works on OS X server.

What's the point of dealing with something new when I've gotten the process for deploying images via NetRestore in place, and it doesn't need updates to work with new client OS versions?

I mean, heck, I had a NetRestore setup that was done from 10.3, served from a 10.4 server, delivering a 10.5 image, and it didn't even cough.

The SysAdmin in me says YES!!!
The Designer in me says YES!!!
I am now complete.