Casper Suite vs Altiris Remote Management
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seanbrittus
May 17th, 2009
I've played around with casper suite and I am currently comparing it to Altiris Remote Management client. Any thoughts on why one is superior than the other? Anyone using Altiris for Mac management?
Not here, sorry...
Sean,
We don't manage the few Macs we have in our environment (yet!) so can't give you much feedback there. I guess one major advantage to using Altiris over another product is the integrated reporting capabilities; you can probably report on Windows, Mac, and *nix remote control all in one report. There are a few Mac users who visit the Connect site, maybe one of them can chime in. I know from conversations with senior product management members and the last Altiris ManageFusion conference that the Apple product line is a platform Symantec is looking to increase support for going forward.
Thanks,
Kyle
Symantec Trusted Advisor
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Hello, I will not go into
Hello,
I will not go into great technical detail comparing the two products - others who may have used both products can comment on their experiences.
Casper Suite from Jamf Software is an ideal solution for a pure Mac environment. It does not have any Windows management capabilities. If you have a completely separate Mac IT staff, and sufficient Apple infrastructure to accommodate Casper Suite's system requirements, then it may suit you to maintain multiple management tools.
Altiris Client Management suite is the ideal solution for a mixed (heterogeneous) environment. It manages Windows, Linux, UNIX, and Mac OS X and allows for a single view into all platforms from a single console that interfaces to a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). With the release of Client Management Suite 7, there was a significant increase in Mac management capabilities, a trend that you will continue to see.
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Product Manager
Symantec
Currently doing a comparison between the two
I have been asked to compare the two suites from a technical standpoint and have been hard pressed to find really good documentation around Mac support within Altiris/Symantec. My takeaway from all of this is that Altiris, with some configurations and hand-holding, can eventually become a "good enough" solution to get by on. I have read some of the horror stories people related in trying to accomplish some of the basic Mac support options and I am leery of recommending Altiris over Casper at this point. I know the arguments for the centralized reporting and all that, but the key stakeholders want to make sure that when they build and/or deploy an image for the Mac, they can just get it done. Likewise with software delivery and patching. I see Casper as being ideal for these scenarios as well as the other more advanced tools they provide.
Hopefully, Altiris/Symantec is working very hard on getting full Mac support built in so there isn't a lot of outside configurations required.
I would love to hear feedback on this.
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