Lion Server: Is Mobility in Workgroup Manager related to Profile Manager in the Server.app?

Question

I'm about to set upon a difficult task -- well, difficult for me anyway: Lion Server and Profile Manager with an eye toward managing a couple of MacBooks that will be taken out of the office from time-to-time.

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I have several questions about it, but I'll take them one at a time as I learn more.

I was on the phone with Enterprise Support and asked them how I might manage a couple of MacBooks in my Open Directory environment. They pointed out the Profiles section in server.app and that I can set up mobility in there so I can guarantee that laptop users can still login and access their server-homed desktop and documents while they're physically out of the office.

Recently, I set up some Preferences options in Workgroup Manager and noticed there's a "Mobility" icon there.

Are Profile Manager and Mobility related to one another? Or do they operate independently?

As a side question: Do I need to enroll ALL computers in the profile manager regardless of whether they're going to be mobile or not? If so, will that affect my current setup which is primarily done through Workgroup Manager.

Cheers,

tcv

Answer 1

Mobility in Workgroup Manager and Mobility in Profile Manager are tools to do the same job. If you have used previous versions of Mac OSX Server Workgroup Manager is familiar but is now deprecated. Profile Manager should do all that is required to set up a network account that is accessible on a laptop out of the network office. What I have found is that using both tools at once on a single device/account is, as you might expect, not helpful in identifying and setting good syncing rules. My experience is limited to small networks (<10 devices) and this information comes as a result of my test server experience, as I have yet to upgrade any production servers.