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Mac OS X Server 10.2 Announced

Posted by pudge on from the if-jobs-can-round-up-i-can-too dept.

Aqua_Geek writes "Also announced was Mac OS X Server 10.2. From Apple's PR site: '"Jaguar" Server introduces more than 50 new features, including powerful new NetBoot and NetInstall network management tools, based on Apple's new LDAPv3 Open Directory architecture that simplifies user and computer management for business, education and government customers.'" The price is $500 for 10 clients, and $1000 for unlimited clients.

1 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great desktop software .. but server ? Why ? by @madeus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To say it's a 'waste' of nice hardware and software is to discount the ease of administration and monitoring of the system.

    It's considerably less effort to maintain a Mac OS X server than it is to setup and maintain Solaris, BSD, Linux and the associated monitoring tools (Big Brother, Cricket, configuring SNMP support, RiverSoft, etc) and the functionality is identical (for the most part, sure you don't get ACL's or MAC's under Mac OS X (as you do with Trusted Solaris, Pit Bull or LIDS) but certainly more BSD & Linux software compiles on Mac OS X than does on say Solaris or on AIX).

    Firstly, the use of expensive and tested hardware in a commercial environment should not be discounted easily. Most professional organisations choose on expensive name brand equipment such as IBM, Dell, Compaq and Sun even when they could get much cheaper 3rd party Intel or Sparc systems, simply for the name brand reliabilty.

    The benifit of tested hardware combined with a complimentary operating system designed specifically for that platform multiplies the attactiveness of the solution (witness the corporate reliance on Sun & Solaris, HP & HPUX, IBM & AIX and to a lesser extent Compaq & True 64).

    Secondly (and more importantly) the quality, flexiblity and ease of use of Apple's server software is what makes it appealing to me (and I'm not inclinded to credit a product that doesn't deserve it). I can run my own Java or Perl software on it without modification, I can also run my own or 3rd party open source C programs with little or modification and running the majority of software (Apache, Samba, FTP, SHH, etc) is entirely GUI based and a *click* *click* no brainer - much more straight forward than even Windows 2000). The slick real time monitoring tools (something like Big Brother but much slicker and designed specifically for the hardware and OS) and the remote access software (which is much like VNC) make spotting faults and dealing with problems very easy indeed.

    For example (albeit an unrepresentative one, but illustrative none the less) I would much rather maintain 100 Mac OS X servers than 10 BSD, Linux or Solaris boxes. Actually with NetInfo and Apple Events for remote batch control of servers I'd rather set up and manage 1000 Mac OS X servers than even 100 BSD servers (and I've managed over 3000 horribly configured insecure P.O.S. AMD Linux boxes with Red Hat at once :).