Jamf Blog
August 12, 2019 by Kyle Ericson

MDM migration in 8 easy steps

Kyle Ericson, a systems engineer at a large manufacturing organization, explains how to easily move from an existing mobile device management (MDM) solution to Jamf.

The other day I had a client who wanted to move from one mobile device management (MDM) solution to another.

About a year ago I did the same thing when I moved from AirWatch to Jamf. This client was moving from one Jamf Cloud to another Jamf Cloud.

In this guide, I will show you a process on how to move from one MDM to Jamf MDM with a pretty seamless experience.

Step 1. If you don't have Jamf Recon app installed, get this from your Jamf Nation account under assets.

Step 2. Open Jamf Recon and create a QuickAdd Package from your new Jamf instance that you are migrating to.

Pro Tip: Make sure that this Jamf management account is different than the old MDM's account as this can cause issues if the username is the same.

Step 3. Upload this QuickAdd Package to your old MDM.

Step 4. Create a new static group in your old MDM for excluding devices from configuration profiles.

Step 5. Go through every configuration profile in the old MDM and add this static group as an exclusion.

Use Caution: When devices are added to this group it will remove all MDM settings from devices.

Devices will lose all configuration settings set via MDM, such as Wi-Fi, VPN, approved kernel extensions, etc.

If possible give as much time for this to process through, so if devices are powered off they can get this policy.

Pro Tip: This will remove the MDM profile so that they don't get stuck on the device when you enroll in the new MDM. If this happens, you have to unenroll the device from the new MDM to remove theses old profiles.

Step 6. Create a new policy in your old MDM to deploy this QuickAdd Package.

Step 7. After you have given step 5 time to process, scope Migration Policy to devices to enroll in the new MDM.

Once this QuickAdd Package has been installed on devices the device will now be enrolled into the new Jamf instance.

Step 8. The final step is to approve the MDM profile in Systems Preferences.

This step due to Apple security restrictions has to be approved by someone in front of the computer. If you want to learn more about this click here.

Your devices will now be enrolled in your new Jamf instance.

info and tools:

Jamf Professional Services
If this task seems too complicated or you need help, Jamf has engineers available.

Jamf's Professional Services

Jamf Homepage

https://www.jamf.com

Let me tell you all about Jamf...

https://infl.tv/fCrg

Jamf Migrator
A tool to migrate data granularly between Jamf Pro servers.

https://github.com/jamf/JamfMigrator

Jamf Professional Services Unmanaged MDM Script

Thanks to Leslie Helou at Jamf for sharing this script which can automate this process via script.

https://github.com/jamf/ReEnroller/blob/master/ReEnroller/apiMDM_remove.txt

Kyle is a member of Jamf Heroes and systems engineer at a large manufacturing organization. This post orginally appeared on Kyle's blog.

Kyle Ericson
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