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Review - Mac OS X Server 10.3, Part 1
Sure, I can read. I can go to the Mac OS X Server web site and read all the documentation for things related to "standards-based management," "share printers and files," "n-tier" solutions. Yawn. I know all about this stuff, and I know I can do it already. If I am paying good money for this, it better have value I can't already get for free.
First Things First
Essentially, Mac OS X Server is the same thing as Mac OS X (a.k.a. Client). It's the same core OS, it has the same versioning (10.3.2 as of this writing), it runs the same programs. But Server comes with programs and tools and configurations geared toward being a server, rather than a user's workstation.
Server comes in two flavors: a 10-client version for $500, and an unlimited client version for $1000. The only difference between the two is that the 10-client version limits file and windows sharing to 10 simultaneous clients. You can have any number of users, but only 10 can connect to those services at the same time.
With that money, you also get 90 days of "up-and-running" support covering the software that ships with Server. So if you've read the frelling manual and still can't figure out why the firewall doesn't seem to be working, you can get some help. After 90 days, you can still get help -- including more advanced topics -- but it will cost you from $6,000 to $50,000.
Hardware
The Xserve, Apple's rack-mountable computer, comes with the unlimited client version of Server preinstalled; and really, Server is built with Xserve in mind. Server Monitor, included with Server, displays uptime, temperature, drives, power, network usage, fans, and security of Xserve boxes.
You can configure Xserve boxes automatically with Panther Server preinstalled. Design your configuration on one machine, set up an LDAP server and put it in the DHCP server settings, and add your configuration file to the LDAP server. Turn on the other servers for the first time, and each one will find the DHCP server, find the LDAP server, find the configuration file, and configure itself automatically. You can also put the configuration file on a USB key or somesuch, and the machines will configure themselves that way, too.
My test box is a dual G4/1.25 GHz Power Mac; it performs with nary a hiccup. If I had a large network or many users, I can imagine wanting more power: with a Power Mac or Xserve G5, I'd be able to take advantage of an OS that is optimized for the 64-bit CPU. For me, however, this would result in a depressingly, perpetually, low CPU load.
Initial Security Considerations
Out of the box, assuming no one has set up a rogue DHCP server on your network, Mac OS X Server is mostly secure: only SSH is on by default. As other services are turned on, more security concerns are created, because new security holes may be opened.
For the most part, the default configurations of the various services are secure, but that largely depends on your specific environment. Mac OS X Server is excellent at making advanced server configuration easier, but this ease of use comes with a price: you may be opening yourself up to attack. Mac users are often not used to the idea of making themselves vulnerable just by clicking checkboxes.
This may look like a Mac, and may be easy to use, but it is no substitute for having a real live sysadmin on hand to -- at the very least -- audit the security of the system. It'd be nice if Server included audit tools; I envision UI elements that warn you when you have conflicts, or when you've opened up a hole, or when you've violated predefined security policies. On the other hand, it would be more reliable to have a third-party system to do the audit, on basic principle. But that's so un-Mac-like.
Open
Tom Goguen, Director of Marketing for Mac OS X Server, says that Apple is 100% into using open standards and open source in the core operating system.
Mac OS X Server has always been largely based on open standards, but the Panther incarnation has gone even further. Gone are Apple's proprietary mail systems; they are replaced by postfix, mailman, and cyrus. Mostly gone is NetInfo; it is replaced by LDAP. Rendezvous, also an open system that others can plug into, is a bigger part of Server now: FTP, LPR, and web services are all announced via Rendezvous.
Of course, as always, Server -- just like Client -- is based on FreeBSD (now version 4.8, with some of 5.0 stirred in), and most of the Apple core OS itself is under the Apple Public Source License.
A Case for Case
New to Panther is case sensitivity in HFS+. For many years, Mac OS has used the HFS as its file system, which treated "Foo" and "foo" as the same file. Some years ago, HFS+ was introduced to overcome many of the limitations of HFS, but case sensitivity -- seen more as a usability feature than a limitation -- remained.
But in Unix, this certainly is a limitation for many people. "Makefile" vs. "makefile" and "head" vs. "HEAD" have caused many a headache for Mac OS X/Unix users. But now case sensitivity is a formatting option.
Because case insensitivity is still seen as a usability feature, this feature is not available by default on Client, although you could always connect your drive to a Server to format it. It is also possible, in theory, to format a drive with case sensitivity in Client using various tricks.
Setting it Up
My server is connected to my home network via a 100BaseT switch, to which is also connected a cable modem and an AirPort Extreme base station. My PowerBook G4/867 connects to the network via AirPort or the switch. My wife has an iBook G3/600, and I've got a PowerBook G3/400 in my stereo closet for playing MP3s. The PowerBook doesn't have internal AirPort, and instead is connected to another switch and another Extreme base station, configured to do WDS. I've also got the PS2 connected in there. Everything is running Panther Client (except for the PS2, last I checked).
Looking at the various services offered by Server, I can already see many things I want to set up: file sharing (Apple Filing Protocol, or AFP), DHCP for guests, DNS, FTP, SMTP, printing, and web. I have most of those already set up now, but I wouldn't mind if they were easier to configure and manage.
After surveying my situation, I installed Panther Server and took a look around.
The first thing I wanted to see was what my configuration options were. And lo, there in my Dock were not the expected iMovie, iTunes, iPhoto, and the like, but icons that a mouseover revealed to be representative of programs like Workgroup Manager, the aforementioned Server Monitor, and Server Admin.
Workgroup Manager uses a lot of terminology that is completely lost on me, and I am not managing any users, really. My wife doesn't need the file server -- we can exchange files via iChat, or I can copy them to her machine via scp -- and she keeps all her own files on her machine. We won't be using any print quotas. I do use Workgroup Manager to create some basic user accounts for friends, but I don't need any features more advanced than what is in Client.
Server Admin is what I want to sink my greedy little digits into. I opened it up, clicked the "add new server" button, typed in my server name ("Sweeney.local") and password, and started playing.
As I started looking around, I remembered that there was an extra CD in the distribution called Admin Tools. It allows you to install these tools on any Client machine, so you can manage the Server remotely. I want to go hang out in my La-Z-Boy while I configure my server, so I installed the tools on my PowerBook. Nifty.
Server Admin lists each machine and the services available to it, with an icon next to each describing its status. If you select a machine's name, you see several tabs: Overview, Logs, System, Graphs, Update, and Settings. Overview reports the system version, names, and dates. Under Logs, you can view the system log, watchdog log, etc. System reports what network interfaces and volumes are available. Graphs displays CPU and network use in pretty pictures. Update runs Software Update. Settings controls the system names, the date and time and timezone.
This is basic stuff, and each service is laid out in similar fashion. All of them have at least two tabs: Overview and Settings. Most also have a Logs tab. Some have other tabs like Connections, Graphs, Clients, Activity, Accounts, Queues, and Jobs.
The available services are AFP, Application Server, DHCP, DNS, Firewall, FTP, Mail, NAT, NetBoot, NFS, Open Directory, Print, QuickTime Streaming, VPN, Web, and Windows. Somewhat conspicuous in its absence, to me, is MySQL, which is included in Server, but doesn't have an interface in Server Admin.
Server Admin does have its problems. It will crash on occasion, but I see no evidence of my settings being corrupted, or any other lasting ill effects. Some of the lists are not sortable, though they appear to be: for example, the DNS zone listings are not sortable, even though clicking on the column headers indicate otherwise.
Also, it can be slow to update. This is understandable, but annoying. Logs don't refresh immediately, and when you hit reload, the wrong log is selected, instead of the current log being refreshed. When restarting services or viewing logs, I will sometimes use the command line tools, as they are more efficient; it would be nice if Server Admin would display the path to the log you are looking at, so you can easily find and tail it in a shell.
Sharing
Some of these services are available in a minimal form in Client, in Sharing under System Preferences: file sharing, Windows sharing, web, FTP, and printing. In Server, the Sharing preferences are still there, but contain only three items: Remote Login, Apple Remote Desktop, and Remote Apple Events. Remote Login is simple: it allows users to connect with ssh/scp, and can be turned on or off. The other two require, perhaps, a bit more explanation.
Apple Remote Desktop is a way for an admin to control client computers. Previously, the client was distributed only as part of the software package of the same name, but now the client is included with Panther. It is, of course, off by default, and once turned on, each machine must define what users have access to what resources (this can be done via the command line, too). I most commonly use ARD for controlling and viewing the screen of another computer, installing packages, and copying files.
Remote Apple Events has been in Mac OS for many years, since back in version 7-dot-something. It allows controlling "scriptable" Mac applications -- such as with AppleScript -- over the network. It used to run over AppleTalk, but now runs over plain old TCP/IP. Not many people make use of remote Apple events in my experience, but I use them often; for example, I have a Perl script that queries iTunes on a remote box, and sets the current track in iChat.
Windows
I don't use Windows, and therefore can't really test the new Windows integration in Panther Server. But from what I can tell, Apple has added quite a few improvements. Samba has been updated to version 3, and the lists of Unix and Windows users can be united via Directory Services. But I confess to a crippling ignorance and apathy about this small corner of the computing world. Sorry.
To Be Continued
Tomorrow, I'll get into the details of setting up the services I use on my network.
Actually that would mean that Apple is charging per connection, not per user. So if you have 100 users a 10-user license would work as long as your users can be limited to 10 at a time. So lo-and-behold they didn't succumb to what you're asserting.
This has always been their pricing scheme. It's assumed that if you need more than 10 concurrent connections, the $500 difference is negligible, and you just go for the $1000 unlimited client version. Which is still _much_ cheaper than MS server licensing. Think of the $500 as a cheap version for small businesses or students.
Novell does the same thing. It's not that surprising, businesses are used to paying per client. What I do like is that it only costs $1000 for unlimited clients. That seems pretty cheap. You have to buy Mac hardware though, so it makes sense that they don't charge as much for the OS.
Please stop saying that MacOS X unix tools is based upon FreeBSD.
:
/usr/bin/* /bin/* /sbin/* /usr/sbin/* 2>/dev/null | fgrep OpenBSD | wc -l /usr/bin/* /bin/* /sbin/* /usr/sbin/* 2>/dev/null | fgrep FreeBSD | wc -l /usr/bin/* /bin/* /sbin/* /usr/sbin/* 2>/dev/null | fgrep NetBSD | wc -l
:
Apple actually took parts of NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
Most tools actually come from OpenBSD.
If you got MacOS X and if you need a proof, just try
ident
ident
ident
Here's what I get on Darwin 7.2.0 (Panther, everything up to date)
OpenBSD : 303
FreeBSD : 258
NetBSD : 143
The rest is mostly GNU tools.
{{.sig}}
If you buy an xserve you get osx unlimited client version...
there is a two tier Mac OS X server licenseing structure...
little guy - 10 clients - $500
everyone above that - limited only by performance - $1000
the drop-dead MSCE-simple admin tools of Mac OS X Server more than justify the $1000 difference in price vs Linux if you're going to be running these things by yourself, and you have a real job on top of it.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
You're missing the killer server features.
You know how Kerberos can be a real pain to set up and manage? Well with Panther Server, if you've set up a box as an Open Directory master, it automatically integrates itself as a KDC.
Any boxes which log into that OD/LDAP directory automatically retrieve the relevant Kerberos information from the LDAP store, no extra configuration required.
The AFP server, the SMB server, the POP/IMAP/SMTP servers are all Keberized, as is the ssh daemon, and the loginwindow of any client machines.
It's probably worth discussing the fact that Apple have finally gotten their shit together with regards to command line administration, as in that everything you can do with the GUI tools you now have *simple* command line equivalents.
ie, no more screwing around with NetInfo and inserting properties by hand to construct mounts/users, you now have proper tools.
Apple finally did the smart thing and followed what most OSXS admins have been doing for a few years, they've dropped their proprietary AppleMailServer in favour of postfix+cyrus.
They've pretty much dropped NetInfo for network directories, it's now just restricted to a local store, and LDAP publishes this information by default. You can still run a NetInfo directory, and indeed I've got boxes logging into both my old NetInfo directory and my new LDAP directory so that I can do user migration more easily.
There are a wealth of features that weren't even touched upon by this review, it's just kind of lame to read a home user's review of a server product.
i don't read slashdot anymore.
I used to work for a reseller, and we were beta-testing Mac OS Server 10.1. We noticed that on a 10 user license, AppleShare clients did indeed top out at 10 users. However, SMB, NFS, Apache, etc. was unlimited. We asked if this was normal behavior, and the answer was that if you were using MOSXS for anything other than AppleShare, there was intentionally *no* difference between 10-user and unlimited. Therefore, if you had 5 Macs, and 500 other clients, you could still use the 10-user version!
Weird, but true. Of course that was over 2 years ago, so the policy may have changed, but I still believe that the 10-user limit is only for AppleShare clients. Odd, as you could have more than 10 OS X boxes browse SMB shares on OS X Server without exceeding the limit!
CC
As pointed out elsewhere, they're actually limiting the number of simultaneous connections in the $500 version of the software, not the total number of users.
I would like to point out that the Xserve hardware ships with the unlimited client license by default, a selling point Steve Jobs touted when unveiling the Xserve G5 at his latest MacWorld keynote address. This provides an incentive to businesses to purchase the latest Xserve hardware; since Apple still makes the lion's share of its profits off of hardware, this makes all kinds of sense.
The Workgroup Manager (as mentioned by another poster) combined with OpenDirectory and Samba 3.0 make a killer competitor to MS's Active Directory. Definitely very cool and very easy to use and set up to server your windows needs. Panther Server is probably the best solution to bridge between your Windows, Apple, and Linux clients. Combine this with very good, cheap storage (2 TB fibre channel raid), and it's hard to beat.
Most source files that, when compiled, have RCS IDs in the resulting object file, and that are used to build tools, came from OpenBSD.
Try running a script such as
and look at the output. Many tools have no RCS IDs in the binary. Some of them have multiple RCS IDs in them, as more than one source file for a tool in that set has an RCS ID in it that shows up in the object file.
If we prune that output to leave, for each tool, only one line for each OS for each tool, we get 85 lines for NetBSD, 75 lines for FreeBSD, and 19 lines for OpenBSD - OpenBSD is overrepresented in your results because, for example, the OpenSSH stuff came from OpenBSD, with each tool having multiple source files, and most if not all of those files put the RCS ID into the binary.
NetBSD is slightly overrepresented by the counts I gave, as Panther's yacc came from NetBSD, and its skeleton parser puts an RCS ID into the object file; if we remove those 7 lines, we get 78 for NetBSD.
Of course, there are a lot of commands that don't have any RCS information at all. 171 commands do, but there are a total of 928 commands. This means that your counts and my counts don't necessarily give any believable information about the number of tools that came from FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD, unless all the tools without RCS IDs came from elsewhere (GNU, Apple, etc.).
There are a couple points of note. First, MacOS X cannot do group policy. Nothing other than a Win2k server can--so it could be harder to lock down workstations if that is a goal. Second, MacOS X has a little bit of difficulty joining a Win2k domain (ie, a file server in a Win2k Domain). *BSD does not have nss, so Apple drew up a little " AD Integration" tool. Its a great concept and basically does what nss does, but it is still far from perfect*.
*=This is as far as I know--Apple's own forums tell of horror stories about the subject. I have not attempted to use AD Integration with Panther Server. I had a developer preview CD that I DID attempt AD integration, however, this was quite broken and there was no documentation. It was a developer release. It also wasn't very important. It way my home I'm-a-big-nerd-with-a-home-lab-that-has-too-many-O Ses-installed lab. Once I can afford a copy for home use, I'll know for certain.
I have no idea about his situation, but I know that some houses here (in Denmark) are protected (as historic buildings), and as such the things you can do to them are limited. In that case it might make perfect sence to use wireless, if you want to avoid having cables lying around. Or maybe he just wanted to have the connection hidden and found that having proper hidden cabling done (in his home) would be more expensive (and/or otherwise undesirable) than doing a wireless link.
I find it odd how you can be personally offended by someone's use of a base station. For a PowerBook G3/400 you need to use a PCMCIA Airport card running the open source driver found here: http://wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net/
There is no Airport card for the PowerBook G3/400 or a supported USB device.
However, I'll tolerate your lack of knowledge, but I can't give your comment much credit.
Here is a review of Panther Server for you from OS News http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5221
.\.\att Clare
TROLL ALERT. None of the above stuff is true. Well, except for the part about DNS not being set up by default. No, DNS is not on by default. That's because most people don't need or want to run a DNS server on their Xserve. Anybody who does want to can turn it on and key in the information.
In an all-Mac network, of course, DNS is completely unnecessary. Rendezvous takes care of hostname resolution for you.
</Blatant Plug>
--Paul
Trainer/Curriculum Developer
Apple Computer
Think of the $500 as a cheap version for small businesses or students.
For students, it's even cheaper. The educational pricing is $249 for the 10-user version and $499 for the unlimited version.
I am using FreeBSD-CURRENT at home and I am happy with it. And sometimes I'm getting sad about how crippled Mac OS X Server got, because Apple decided to make GUIs for most things, which:
Let's take cyrus-imapd, e.g.
Secondly, I don't like the Classic environment. It is highly unstable in conjuction with Apple-events (Applescript). I am getting "Apple Event Timeouts" all the time with Adobe's Framemaker and the error messages are not very helpful.
Sometimes Classic goes up to 100% CPU usage and I have to kill it manually. It happens mostly when one application starts another application within Classic. This happens often when VISE-installer is calling himself to install a second application, which is a part of the whole package. I managed crash the Classic-engine a couple of times, while starting Mac OS 9 applications.
Maybe you have different experience, but for me it stays a disaster, because I need the G4 sometimes. One thing is sure, the upgrade from 10.2 to 10.3 brought more stability, but that's all to be happy about.
Wow, you're a bad reader. Settle down already. Where did you read that he had an XServe?
nowhere, that's where.
Yeah, that's not actually... true. I called Apple a couple months ago about a really odd password problem with Mac OS X Server (you could log in as any user on my server by entering a blank password!), and while they did charge me, it was only $100.
Now here's $100 worth of secret, annoyingly undocumented Mac OS X Server information: you can use the password of an Admin account to log in via AFP as any user on the system. For example, if one of your admin passwords is "fl0nk", you could use "fl0nk" as the password to test any user on the system.
So make sure your Admin passwords are strong! And secret! And not blank!
~jeff
Heh. A 9500 only has two drive bays- three if you feel like ripping out the floppy and boring holes in the case with a dremel. When it comes to internal drive capacity, you want a 9600, 8600, or beige G3- all of which have internal tray capacity for five drives (one 3.5, then four in the front that are universal trays with mounts for floppy, zip, hard drive, and CDRom- you can easily drop out the floppy and smack in a hard drive). Alternatively, you can add a few firewire cards and load in several drives, but you're still limited by the system bus. :P
:)
:D
My home fileserver is a beige G3/266 with 256 megs of ram. Two IDE hard drives - a 60 and an 80- UWSCSI for an internal 4g disk, an Adaptec 29{3|4}0 card for the outboard 9g SCA drive that holds the OS, and an Apple rom 10/100 ethernet card. It's running 10.2 Server (10.2.0- I've never bothered to patch it up) and runs out basic file services to my home network. Runs like a champ, minus the initial pains in the arse of getting the OS actually ON. All of the SLOW one experiences in OS X is totally at the graphical userland level, in my experience- which isn't something the server uses. My workstation (also a biege G3, running Panther Client thanks to XPF) is a slug, and it has 128 more ram than the server... but I use it largely for gui stuff, and the OS is (UNFORTUNATELY) on an IDE drive- the big SCSI went into the server.
I could easily do the server on my 9600 with the Sonnet ATA/66 card that's in my 7300, but the ATA card seems to be a bit flaky, and the 9600's already running linux just fine....
Alternatively, I could toss on Server 1.1 without using XPF at all. It's neat to play with if you can find the media, although I personally wouldn't use it for anything other than Apple File Services.
It is less hassle to get 10.2 or 10.3 onto a beige mac, if you don't have much linux experience- but linux has this funny habit of supporting older hardware that OS X screams about.
As mentioned in the article, this capability was present in the System 7.0.x days (late '80s/early '90s). When you enabled filesharing (Localtalk based), there was an option to enable program sharing.
If you enabled that, you were able to script applications on a remote machine (assuming you had an user account with the rights).
What was really nice about Apple's scripting engine was that you didn't have to do anything extra to enable remote scripting in an app. If you took the effort to make your app AppleScriptable, you got remote scripting for free.
http://afp548.com/
It's a great site with lots of very informative, down and dirty technical articles. They also have a forum where you can post questions.
The same guys produce some utilities designed to make VPN and DNS easier...
The reason why it isn't "set up correctly" as you say, out of box, is that it shouldn't be.
Why should DNS be turned on and preconfigured if you are joining a domain with a preconfigured DNS server? This would break everything if that were the case.
I'm willing to bet you didn't read anything and just started filling out the setup assistant, without taking the time to understand the questions you were answering. I've set up several servers up and never turned on the DNS service. Oh yeah, and everything worked, too.
When I got an Xserve for my company, I was quoted $995 for a year's onsite hardware service, and $995 for three years of OS updates.
D
There were a ton of under the hood changes in 10.3 with respect to the directory services, including a command line utility to change the ip address of the server without damaging the user accounts.
Also, retrospect sucks. Don't bother with it. We're using BRU and haven't looked back.
Apple Xserve G5: 2 x 2.0GHz IBM 970's, 1GB RAM, 80GB SATA, 2 x GigE, with Apple Fibre Channel card (LSI 7202, includes copper HSSDC2 to SFP FC cables), Mac OS X Server unlimited and the 3 year premium service and support costs $5,449
Compaq DL360, 2 x 3.06GHz Intel Xeons, 1GB RAM, 18GB 15krpm SCSI drive, 2 x GigE, universal sliding rail kit, Windows 2003 with only 10 CALs costs $6,438
The HP Storageworks FCA2214DC PCI-X HBA costs $2,500 bringing the total to $8,938
You might consider getting your head out of the sand
I'm sure it would help, but looking over the specs for Pixar's software (available for outside licence) indicates that, not only does it run on Windows and other Unixes, but some of it is not available for OS X.
If you run a Mac network, you can do really cool stuff with Automount points. All my Macs mount a /Network/Application, /Network/Library, and a few other mount points thrown in. The GUI land includes /Network/Library in the search path for stuff, (/System/Library for system installed stuff, /Library for stuff installed by the Admin, ~/Library for stuff installed by you, nice and clean and straightforward).
/Network/Applications (server installed apps with drag-and-drop, really nice) /Network/Library (frameworks for custom Cocoa apps, etc) /Network/Software (software installers, why not, right) ... and the Users share, that unfortunately can't be automounted as /Network/Users
Each AFP mount counts against the license, no biggie... 7 Macs, all permenantly connected, and we had 3 connections left for laptops.
Incorrect. While all my connections, once logged in, go through one AFP connection, the Automount connections are done anonymously. Oh no, 2 AFP connections from machine->server, anonymous automounts, then w/ permissions mounts. It's worse! Each automount creates it's OWN connection.
So we were automounting:
well, I had 4 (at the time) automounts, so the first two machines to boot were fine, but machine 3 was all messed up.
Took forever to diagnose and realize that we needed an unlimited license.
Took a few hours with Apple support to diagnose, and they didn't figure out the problem until I started at Server Admin and had the problem. Users couldn't log in, because starting with machine 3, they couldn't get their home directories.
I REALLY like OS X Server's admin tools. LDAP went from scary and impossible to point-and-click. However, even with Panther Server, MUCH better than Jaguar Server, it has some issues.
Alex
Yes, for over ten years. And yes, virginia, there is security (albeit limited): you can set up which users can send apple events to your machine.
I used to run a Mac LAN in the early 90s, and AppleScript was a complete godsend for administration.
And now with OSX, the scripting language lines blur a bit, because I can have applescripts that execute command-line apps, and vice-versa.
Being able to tell Excel to open a document, update it from its ODBC data source, save changes, then tell Mail to email it to a bunch of people as an attachment. It's a good thing.
Running those same commands on my FreeBSD 4.9 server, I get the results: 60/6769/440
The *BSDs share so much code between each other, and most source files have ident tags from different *BSDs, that Apple could have mostly pulled from FreeBSD and may still produce the numbers you saw.
So my point is, Linux is a better solution for this group. They're not savvy enough that the GUI tools would be helpful to them, and I can use cron to replicate the important information. The point of their system is to have the servers mirror everything, including user accounts and passwords, and that's easier and more flexible for me to set up on Linux.
And if I set up a password server, I couldn't change the IP address of the machine. Ever.
This has been addressed by Apple with a script to change the IP settings everywhere necessary, without breaking any services.
Works like a charm, I had to do it a couple months ago for a client.
~Philly
An important feature of OS X Server is the Server Administration tools. My own home server, which has the internal 6 meg ATI chipset (see above post in this thread) is a slug when I need to hit the gui. But I don't. Apple has provied Server Admin Tools with OS X Server, and the tools for Jag run very well under Panther client. These gui tools allow me to add users, manage shares, manage printers, quicktime streaming (if in use), configure Apache to an extent, DHCP, Netboot.... basically, everything you DO with a server that you don't do with client. And the tools can be installed on ANY machine running OS X. Load them up, they ask for a server IP or domain name. Enter it in, it asks for your password for the server (admin accounts only, naturally). And BLAM!
:-)
:-) And I've never had problems with hard drives bigger than 8g running OS X on IDE host adapters- I had 10.1 installed on a 60g in a 9500 awhile back, and it was Just Fine. This is due entirely to the controller- the system sees it as a SCSI drive. :D
I have complete remote control of all of my server functions from my workstation, and the ones I can't access via the gui tools can be hit through the command line. With the older Server 1.x, you needed a web browser to manage shares, which was both interesting (the convienience) and annoying (security, you needed to be at ANOTHER MACHINE that WASN'T THE SERVER to do it).
Yeah, you can do hardcore awesome amounts of remote management with linux (I recently recompiled a kernel, formatted a RAID array, installed and set up samba, netatalk, and genrally completely configured a linux server from my desktop through a slew of terminal windows. SO SEXY OMG), but the gui tools for OS X are AWESOME for admins with limited command line fu- I got Jaguar Server up and completely configured just how I wanted it without help, compared to both of my monitors being strewn with google searches and man page entries with my linux configuration process. Some people don't want to do it the hard way, and can't afford the new toys.
As for compatability and stability of G3 boards... I only had stability problems if I diddled with the defaults on the control software. So I didn't. I've run OS X, Linux, and MacOS 9.x on g3 upgraded machines, rock solid, without difficulties.
And concerning the 8 gig limit- that only affects Beige G3s and the original iMacs. And only on IDE drives. My workstation had to be partitioned (80g- 8/2/$), my iMac had to be partitioned (60g, 6/54), and my server didn't (9g SCA). It's an IDE thing, not a SCSI thing, and the old beige machines such as the 9600 are SCSI.
There is no UI in ServerAdmin, but there is a GUI tool for MySQL management on OS X Server called 'MySQL Manager.' It is pretty limited in functionality, but it is there.
Note that all XServes ship with X Server, so the cost of the software is only if you are installing it on other hardware.
The features that make the software nicer than Linux (simple setup, integrated password management, easy to use/set up Kerberos, hand holding phone support, etc.) are aimed at a class of people who typically find that it is well worth the $500 they may have paid.
Those who are happy to spend the sea of time and effort reading the docs on configuring a completely integrated PAM/KDC/OpenLDAP/Samba/Apache setup on their choice of Free OS don't appear to be in that target market. IMHO, you can't really sell much in the way of software to people like that, anyway.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
If you are asking "If I set up a computer with non-server Mac OS X and use it as a server, how many other clients can connect to it at a time?" then the answer is "Ten."
Paying for Server gets you the fancy tools, which you may or may not need depending on what you're going to do with the box. Also, Server comes with all of those things installed and ready to go. Putting things like a mail server onto OS X non-server requires work and manual admin, whereas turning on the mail server in Server is a few clicks.
There are also a lot of advanced settings that aren't available (or close enough for mere mortals) in non-server, such as the ability to make and manage multiple AFP and SMB mount points. For example, if you connect to a non-server server via AFP, you can mount your own home directory, anyone else's public directory, or a volume. That's it. No more "make a folder and share it out as..." like Windows and OS 9 have. (Although snb.conf will do whatever you tell it.)
Oh, and some things, like using it for a NetBoot server, are close to, if not totally, impossible. So things like sendmail and samba can work as well as any other UNIX, but Apple tools, like AFP and NetBoot, can't.
We use plain-vanilla OS X for a file server (light use, just a repository for application installers mostly) and a web server without a hitch. File serving is 4x faster than Personal File Sharing was in OS 9.
Oh, and Apple doesn't support the use of non-Server as a server. So, if we were to call up one day and say "Our OS X box keeps dropping connections in the middle of large file transfers" they wouldn't help.
PS--I suppose there is the same 10-user limit in Samba that there is in AFP, but I haven't seen it first-hand and nothing is jumping out at me from smb.conf, though of course that limit could exist elsewhere. But, I did indeed try to connect 11 boxes to an OS X non-server and got a warning on client #11.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
How much does redhat cost, now that they've gone to advanced server? Here it is:
item: basic, standard, premium
red hat enterprise, x86: 349, 799, -
red hat advanced, x86: -, $1499, $2499
red hat advanced, pseries: -, $1992, $2998
Not bad, really - it's cheaper than rhas on POWER.
The beauty about the Server Package are the easy to use integrated tools that allow anyone to use this Server in a already implemented Network, Active Directory or LDAP for example. You gotta have other OS's to test and review this.
Afte playing with Panther, you won't go back to another system for Services, it's easy to use and you have all the utilities you normally would use on a Unix environment + Apple Tools.
0011 1111 0111 1010
You apparently don't understand the concept of a review, wherein I try to find out whether or not the GUI is worth the expense.
Where did you get this "After 90 days, you can still get help -- including more advanced topics -- but it will cost you from $6,000 to $50,000." quote? Link? Facts?
:-)
The link's right there, sport. Read it again, see the link this time, and click on it.
No, I meant Windows is a small corner of the computing world. I never see Windows, so it must be true.
:-)
And maybe I am isolated, but the rest of you are jealous.
There's virtually no software that runs on them except the standard Unix stuff.
X Free86
I hate to break it to you - but theres ton of that standard unix stuff - and most of it runs just as well on all real operating systems e.g. GNU/Linux, the BSDs and MacOS X.
Apache
PHP
MySQL
Postgresql
Sendmail
SSH
Gimp
To name only a few! And by the way I have almost exclusively x86 servers. Have an open mind!
NetBoot is a function based partially in Open Firmware that allows a client to be booted by a Mac OS X Server machine via ethernet. You connect the client to the ether and hold "n" while after you hit the power key. (You can also hold option to get a list of all bootable partitions/devices connected to the machine, which will include valid NetBoot servers.)
/really/ easy to set up and maintain on the server end.
We use it at work to image machines for a school system. There are a couple of dozen schools, each with its own image, and when we need to reimage a machine, we hook said machine to the Xserve's switch and bang, the machine boots and a program called NetRestore (third-party) is run to reimage the machine. (You don't need NetRestore, but it makes our day easier.)
NetBooting is really fast and really elegant, and on top of that, it's
I 3 NetBoot.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
you're missing the point. sometimes you need to logon as the user. the only way to do this in windows is to know the user's password or have enough rights to change it. in os x, if you're an admin you can login as the user without knowing their password or having to change it. that would be very useful feature for techs troubleshooting profile-specific issues.
It does.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Workgroup Manager uses a lot of terminology that is completely lost on me, and I am not managing any users, really.
You've just missed the boat. User management is the biggest reason to buy an OS X server.
Lots of companies run mixed environments. Here at the school we run Windows, Linux, and OS X. Having our windows domain controllers replicate user lists to OS X servers is a huge deal. Who wants to add 50 new users to three separate systems?
-ted