Earlier this summer, longtime SimpleMDM customer David Kraushuber came to MacDevOpsYVR from Hamburg, Germany, to share his latest project — Terraforming SimpleMDM. We had the opportunity to sit down with David, senior system administrator at FREENOW, following the event to learn more about what motivated his team to take on this project, how he approached Terraforming SImpleMDM, and what he hopes the community will get out of his open-source work.
Why Terraform?
Terraform is an infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that has gained substantial traction among IT and DevOps professionals for its ability to build, change, and version resources efficiently and safely.
For David and his team at FREENOW, Terraform was a natural choice. While they already heavily utilized APIs and automated processes, they needed a more standardized approach to managing their infrastructure, including SimpleMDM for their Apple device management. The decision to adopt Terraform was a natural evolution to further streamline their infrastructure management processes as well as offer automation to other teams across the company.
Terraforming SimpleMDM
When David set out to write the Terraform provider for SimpleMDM, it took him only three to four weeks. The initial modules required more time as he familiarized himself with the process, but David quickly gained momentum. Subsequent modules took only a few hours to write.
Although SimpleMDM was just a small part of the broader initiative to implement Terraform across the company, it was still an essential component in the larger strategy of replacing manual processes and settings across individual solutions with a standardized, code-driven approach.
The FREENOW team particularly values the following workflows, which David prioritized in the Terraform project:
Onboarding and offboarding devices
Hardware ordering
Updating inventory
Exchanging hardware
Installing software with Munki for macOS
These particular workflows were also most valuable for SimpleMDM because they generate critical data and provide opportunities to automate processes, improving efficiency and user experience across the organization.
Another workflow that has been particularly useful for FREENOW in the transition to Terraform is managing custom attributes. Managing attributes was previously challenging due to their application at both the device and group level and the need to reference them within configuration profiles. Recognizing the potential for error, David used Terraform to streamline the creation, updating, and deletion of customer attributes, enhancing efficiency and reducing management mistakes.
David anticipates that configuration profiles will be valuable for both his team and others adopting the project in their organizations. At FREENOW, the team uses custom configuration profiles extensively; except FileVault, all are configured outside the admin interface via the API. By managing these profiles through Terraform, the team benefits from improved consistency and reproducibility, ensuring that configurations are applied uniformly across devices and groups.
While the FREENOW team did not see a significant change in infrastructure reliability due to their extensive use of APIs, adopting Terraform brought notable improvements in consistency across teams. It standardized handling code changes and additions as well as enhanced processes for code verification. These benefits have led to increased efficiency, reduced risk of human error, and time savings.
Community support
David has already received valuable feedback from the community, with several contributors reviewing and improving the code. Looking ahead, he is optimistic about the continued evolution of the Terraform project alongside SimpleMDM’s development of new features and functionality.
David aims to keep the project active and responsive for the foreseeable future, and he hopes increased community engagement will further enhance its impact. The provider already has a few thousand downloads, so David is optimistic that ongoing user involvement will continue to refine the project and expand its benefits to organizations big and small.
Resources
To see how SimpleMDM can help you streamline and simplify your Apple device management workflows, start a free 30-day trial or request a demo.
