Open Distribution Server (Tech)
The Open Distribution Server (ODS) is an in-progress web application to provide a potential alternative package distribution server for IT administrators to the existing Jamf Distribution Server (JDS).
The goal of the ODS project is to provide the base feature set of the JDS with several additional technologies to better control and integrate distribution servers into IT environments.
In addition to core tenant of simple and automatic package replication, the ODST project is being written around the following design:
Better cross-platform compatibility
The ODS application is written to be de-coupled from the underlying OS and using cross-platform friendly technologies. While developed and testing primarily on Linux, the goal is for the ODS to also work on Windows and Mac systems as well. This de-coupling will also prevent issues arising where updates to platform prevent the application from working.
Push notification framework
ODS instances use webhooks and APIs to perform on-demand actions as events occur. File and data changes in one ODS instance are "pushed" to others resulting in faster propagation of changes across the ODS network as opposed to timed sync operations.
Mesh network style syncing
Instead of a parent-child relationship structure as used by the JDS, the ODS will adopt a many-to-many relationship model. One ODS may be registered to and number of other ODSs. When a package is uploaded to an ODS it will send a sync notification to each ODS it is registered to. Once they have finished syncing the package, each one of those recipients will repeat the process until the package has been synced throughout the network.
Automation and scripting accessibility
In addition to the private API used by ODS instances for automation, a full "admin" API will be made available to allow an ODS instance to be integrated into existing workflows (such as Autopkg). In addition to the admin API, a webhook framework will also be built to allow the ODS to directly notify other IT systems of events as they occur (some carried over from the ODS automation mentioned before).
Web UI
A user interface will be available for managing each ODS instance directly. Instead of being a separate interface from the admin API, the web UI will be built directly on top of the admin API providing 1:1 feature parity between the two forms of interaction.