Issues in a lab environment
Hello, first post in here. I've been effectively the mac admin for my university for the last 4 years almost having originally never used a mac. I'm quite comfortable in Jamf Pro now and everything is going smoothly.
I support Multiple Mac Labs of varying ages (2 iMac labs running ventura, 1 mostly intel mac mini, and 1 M1 Mac mini lab). I am having an issue specifically in my M1 Mac Mini lab, which i would have thought would be my most stable lab. for context, all of the macs are joined to the domain and mobile accounts are created and cached whenever a user(student) logs in. We are working on deploying Jamf connect over the summer, but this is what i have for now.
The issue is in the M1 lab that everyday, a large portion of the lab has to be restarted sometimes after every user that logs in. When a user logs out and a new one tries to log in, the computer freezes and just shows a loading beachball and the clock stops updating. Afer restarting, the m1 mac works fine and loads fairly quickly. This does not happen in any other lab. The only configuration difference that i have is that "switching user" is enabled and i have an automatic logout after 30 minutes of inactivity set.
My first thought is that perhaps the users are not logging out, however, after observing a class leave, pretty much everyone logged out properly (shockingly) and nothing was on the lock screen. there are about 10-20 user accounts created at most on each mac and one local admin account. Is the number of accounts potentially the problem? I was trying to figure out a way to delete old accounts 90 days old or more, however i couldn't find a good way to do it. Or is the fact that they are mobile accounts causing the issue? In which case, why doesn't this happen on the other Intel Mac Labs? If switching to Jamf connect/local accounts will fix it then great, but i just have to finish this semester.
Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.