Allow "Thin Imaging" in Task Sequence

With macOS 10.13 around the corner, Apple doesn't recommend monolithic imaging. Imaging gets more complicated as 10.13 requires internet access in order to update firmware required for all Macs to upgrade to 10.13.

Since Apple is sandboxing more of the OS on the hard drive, there's less of a need to image. Unless SIP is explicitly turned off, root level System files and folders can't be modified, even with root access, when booted off the same drive. Also, since Apple only has one version of the OS, there's less of a need to re-image a brand new Mac. Especially when all most companies are doing is installing their LOB applications, mobileconfigs, binding to AD, etc.

A workaround to allow for "Thin Imaging" is using Apple's DEP. However, for companies that haven't enrolled in to DEP, or are still in the process to enroll, Thin Imaging provides an intermediate solution until DEP is set up.

Thanks for your consideration!

 

I have talked with some parallels guys about this. In my eyes it would be a task sequence, run from netboot, that does not require an OS load. With pmm 7 we can run a tsx without an OS, but to my knowledge(have not tested yet), this is limited to current clients.