Maintaining with Radmind

Radmind can help you maintain a master configuration and then deploy that configuration to multiple computers on a file-by-file basis. When you make changes to that master, the changes can be automatically seen by the clients. You also have the option of reversing the changes, which is particularly useful if you have installed an update prematurely.

Radmind uses loadsets, a collection of files to be maintained along with instructions for Radmind, as the basis for maintaining remote systems. For instance, the base, or initial, loadset contains a working copy of Mac OS X, as well as any applications you want to keep updated on your Mac OS X computers. When you want to deploy new applications or files to your Mac OS X computers, you build a loadset that contains the applications or files and create a transcript for Radmind. You can accomplish all of these tasks using the Radmind Assistant for Mac OS X.

There is also a server component to Radmind. Using the Server Manager, you configure the Radmind server to deploy, serve, and merge loadsets. Please refer to the appendix for more detailed information on Radmind server.

Radmind tracks changes made to a file system after an application has been installed. It can also track changes made by the application itself when it runs. This information is important as you revisit your deployment plan, but is also useful from a security and stability standpoint, since unauthorized changes will be automatically undone the next time Radmind is run.