Does anyone use mac servers

In truth, I could stand to be more vigilant about making sure that I shuttle files onto the mini more regularly. Since I do most of my day-to-day work on the iMac, I generally only remember to move files from there every once in a while. But many of the the files on that mini go back a long way, in some cases all the way back to the very earliest documents I created on my original Macs. Now Apple is finally throwing in the towel on servers.

Of course, Apple didn't come right out and say that. Instead, in a support note, labelled Prepare for changes to macOS Server , Apple announced: "macOS Server is changing to focus more on management of computers, devices, and storage on your network. As a result, some changes are coming in how Server works.

Apple then presents you with a laundry list of deprecated services. An ordinary user won't have a clue about what getting rid of these will mean. A sysadmin will know at a glance that Apple is ripping the guts out of macOS Server. Read also: Ode to the Mac mini: Craving an update for Apple's little box that can do it all.

First, Apple is getting rid of its calendar, contact, instant-messaging, and email servers. So, you can kiss Apple-supported internal communications goodbye.

Apple doesn't say Profile Manager is history, but since Profile Manager is used to set up user accounts for mail, calendar, contacts, and messages -- and those services are being killed off -- its functionality will, at the least, be far more limited. Good luck running a business network without those. If, for the sake of security, you've been booting systems with Apple NetBoot, you can kiss that goodbye, too. Do you have your remote workers login to your servers using a virtual private network VPN?

All in all, I can only recommend to really learn what the different architectures offer and what your requirements are and make a decision based on that. A boss who just wants to add a few Macs to the network for no other reason that to be hip and have a Mac, without thinking about the consequences is the same kind of idiot than the admin who shuns everything Apple because "Apple is for fanboys only", without knowing anything about the platform.

I work at a university and we use it to run Deploy Studio for imaging our Mac labs, as well as for netboot, which works hand in hand with Deploy Studio. AD will do credential verification and issue Kerberos tickets, and OD controls those pesky Mac-only settings that Group Policy doesn't apply to.

This is still a very new development, and honestly something I really don't understand where Apple is heading with. First, I have to admit that I don't yet really use MacOS iCal server, and also have very limited experience with any other groupware solution, both as user and admin.

Nevertheless, my impression from toying around:. With the standard admin tools, all you can do is adding a mail account to a user and decide wether this is forwared to another address. There is only a very thin layer of integration between Mail. Squirrelmail stands completely on its own, without any integration into the system at all, also featuring a hopelessly outdated and clunky UI. Calendaring is pretty basic as well. This is offered on two different levels, for users and for workgroups.

Calendar sharing and delegation is possible, but has a somewhat broad permission scheme. The web interface is quite nice to use much better than Squirrelmail , offering basic calendaring, blogs and wikis, again on two separate levels for users and workgroups, with little integration between the two levels.

Contacts are handled exclusively by the desktop adressbook app, with no sharing at all between users. Adressbook can read LDAP trees, but has no way of modifying entries in there.

All in all, groupware in OS X Server is a collection of loosely integrated pieces. It doesn't offer very much, but what is offers is mostly easy to use and administer, and might be just enough for what Apple appears to consider it's typical server customers: Small creative agencies and the like. If you want more, every major groupware suite Exchange, Zimbra, OX etc will put Apples solution to shame.

We have one where I work, installed before I started there. It's used only as a file server for the graphic artists, who of course use Macs. While it's a magnificent machine it's also a complete waste of resources as there is no reason the files couldn't be stored on the main Windows file server I've been overruled.

I'm sure there are those who use a Mac server to advantage but I'm sorry to say we don't. My former employer bought one to support some Macs in infrastructure.

In the end, it was a miserable failure, after a year of below-bar support, broken features and instability we scrapped the whole mix-in-some-macs project and sold all the Apple hardware we had. I use these in the Golden Triangle approach in our Active Directory environment, and it's definitely my server of choice. I don't understand why people think OS X server is more expensive than Windows. You have to compare feature for feature what you're getting to get a fair matchup.

Windows does one thing or the other out of the box and requires additional licensing for extra stuff; Mac OS does it all. Yeah, I can use netatalk on Linux, but it makes a mess on the file system. This software runs on my server, and allows me to view videos on my Apple TV, my Macs, my iOS devices, and even remotely.

OS X Server lets you back up your Macs over your network to the server. So if you have one or more laptops in your household, you can set them to back up automatically to Time Machine on the server, rather than worrying about connecting external hard drives to them for backups.

If you can, devote an entire external hard drive to Time Machine; the more space you provide to Time Machine, the more backups it will be able to store. Select it, and your backups will go to the server. The Mac Security Blog.

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