Overview

Note: our Simian 2.x release is now available! This release offers a more comprehensive, usable web UI and easier setup.

Simian is an enterprise-class Mac OS X software deployment solution hosted on Google App Engine (why App Engine?). It scales to any enterprise fleet size automatically, and offers a future proof client extended from the active Munki open-source project.

Because the Simian server is live code, not a static file server, it offers unique benefits over a typical Munki+Apache deployment:

• Simian can generate software manifests dynamically, on the fly, based on client properties.
• The administration overhead of static manifest management is removed.
• Any possible customizations to client software offerings are possible by modifying the server.

In summary, Simian's feature set allows it to:

• Deploy new or updated software by targeting a single Mac or tens of thousands.
• Deploy updates whether the Mac is on an internal network/VPN or not.
• Force unattended/background installation of some packages, while allowing others to be optional.
• Forcefully deploy security patches and reboot Macs after a given date, with varying levels of warning notifications.
• Tightly manage Apple Software Update catalogs and update release, or let updates auto-promote automatically.
• Dynamically target clients based on user, hostname, os version, group (tag), and more.
• Obtain reports on all of this and the fleet overall.

Much of this and more is due to the outstanding work of Greg Neagle and the Munki community. To read more about the other features Munki offers please visit the Munki code.google.com project page.

Getting Started

Please refer to the Wiki documentation for instructions on how to download, configure, build, and deploy Simian.

For screenshots and an overview of Simian features, please see the SimianAtAGlance wiki.

Office Hours

The Simian engineering team will host office hours every other Monday from 11am to 1pm Eastern Time. Office hours are available as a video conference via Google+ Hangout, or on the irc network freenode. Feel free to use or not use a webcam for the hangout.

Join the Google+ Hangout (with Extras) here:

https://talkgadget.google.com/hangouts/extras/talk.google.com/google-corpeng

We will simultaneously be present on freenode in:

#google-corpeng

Our next office hours will be on Monday June 4 2012, skipping Monday May 21. We meet every alternating following Monday.

Upcoming Features

• Advanced Apple Software Update support, including unattended and forced updates.
• Munki still prompts for installation of all Apple Software Update updates. We'd like to give admins more control over how and when these updates are installed. ETA 2012-Q1.

• Four-eyes approval for package changes.
• Would you like two different admins to approve a push before it goes live? We plan on making that possible soon.

• Digital package signatures.
• One step beyond package hash verification.