Cross Platform Lab Management software?

May 17, 2008 9:07 PM

Does anybody know a way that we can manage dual boot Macs regardless of what OS they are booted into.

I work in a high school and we are going to be placing about 30 dual boot Macs (Mac OS 10.5 and Windows XP) in a lab. We currently use Crosstec SchoolVue to manage Windows Machines and in our Mac lab we use ARD (Apple Remote Desktop). Does anybody know a way that we can manage the dual boot machines regardless of what OS they are booted into. The basics we are looking for in lab managament software is: screen locking, logging out, shutting down, restarting, sending messages, remote viewing, remote controlling.

Any ideas? I suppose we could have 2 machines, 1 Mac and 1 windows that would cover the lab and the machines regardless of the OS they are booted into but it would be nice to have a cross platform solution.

posted by crios to computers & internet (4 comments total)

VNC can give you remote view/control, but I'm not aware of anything that'll cover your other requirements... a slight improvement over having 2 management machines would be a single Mac with ARD plus SchoolVue running under Parallels...

and not directly related to the question, but if you haven't seen it you might find Mike Bombich's Boot Picker (plus the other Mac lab deployment tools/tips on his site) useful...
posted by russm at 10:37 PM on May 17, 2008

I basically do what russm suggests. We use Novell ZENworks on Windows and ARD on OS X. I have an iMac at my desk running Parallels with Windows XP so I can (among other things) use ConsoleOne.

Haven't heard of anything that would work with both OS's. Certainly it would be possible to build such a solution. I just don't think anyone has done it yet.
posted by sbutler at 11:03 PM on May 17, 2008

I never even thought of using parallels but that might be the answer right there. Thanks
posted by crios at 6:36 AM on May 18, 2008

iTALC is free software and has the features you asked about, but I think there are only Windows and Linux version.
posted by PueExMachina at 1:55 PM on May 18, 2008