Apple Remote Desktop to Manage Macs
Apple Remote Desktop (www.apple.com/remotedesktop) is a remote administration tool for Mac clients and servers. You can use this tool to manage any Mac running Mac OS X 10.4.11 or Mac OS X 10.5.7 and later, including Mountain Lion Server.
Apple Remote Desktop is, at heart, a remote control program — it lets you operate and control a Mac from another Mac on the network. Because you can see the desktop of the remote Mac, you can use the remote control feature to give tech support to a user or fix a problem remotely.
But Apple Remote Desktop can do much more than that. For one, you can use this tool to distribute, install, and upgrade software on hundreds of Macs at the same time.
You can also use Apple Remote Desktop for asset management. It can read what’s installed on users’ Macs and generate reports about what applications are being used, what versions of OS X are installed, and who is logging into the computers.
Apple Remote Desktop can also perform remote Spotlight searches on the Mac clients. You can even copy any files you find to your Mac or delete them.
You have to set up each Mac that you’re going to administer with Apple Remote Desktop, but you can partly automate that procedure with Apple Remote Desktop itself.
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