There are plenty of great blog posts and walkthroughs for setting up munki, the indispensable tool for admins looking to deploy and update applications on macOS. I plan to eventually write up my own guide for setting up and securing munki, but this isn’t that. Instead, this is what I hope is a very clear explanation of how the different parts of a munki set-up work together. Many people, myself included, seem to have problems wrapping their heads around munki, understanding how it works, and how the different pieces fit together. Ideally, this is the post I wish I’d read before starting to work with munki for the first time.