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Mac OS X "Tiger" Server Previewed
It also adds a Jabber server that provides the option of serving iChat. SSL/TLS and Kerberos can be added for security. A single Tiger iChat client can have chats running on multiple servers, so a user can be on the main iChat server, while having private chats on a company server. Because it is Jabber, non-iChat (and non-AIM) clients can participate too.
Tiger Server also works to make network setup even easier with Internet Gateway Setup Assistant. In Panther Server, setting up a network with DNS, DHCP, NAT, firewall, and port mapping was easier than most other platforms, but still required a good deal of manual configuration, and separate configuration of each service. The Setup Assistant will provide single-button setup of it all.
A Software Update Server can cache and control Apple software updates. So once you're satisfied that the new OS update won't delete home folders, you can OK it for your users to download; and they won't take up your Internet bandwidth, because the server cached it.
Mobile Home Directories allows a mobile user to sync his home directory with a central server, backing it up and allowing an admin to manage it.
A new Windows migration tool will allow Windows admins to migrate from Windows-based servers. Tiger Server can act as a Primary Domain Controller for a Windows network, and the tool will migrate user and group account from an existing Windows PDC into Open Directory 2 and Samba 3.
Tiger Server will retain the pricing structure of the previous versions: $500 for the 10-client edition and $1000 for the unlimited client edition (the number of clients referring only to simultaneous file sharing clients).
What market is currently being targetted by the OS X Servers?
Someone else mentioned life sciences. They also seek the K-12 Academic markets where it's hard to employ a full time network admin to set up Active Directory, Exchange Server, etc. The same applies for small businesses, those who are likely to prefer the idea of one server does all (or most) of the services they need, especially email and file sharing. Another big market (almost the cliche Apple niche) is the creative market, from media agencies to smaller publishers to design/creative departments at larger companies. Often these organizations don't employ a full time admin, leaving that to outside companies and a designated person within the group. In the case of a creative department within a larger company, they often have a disconnect between the rest of the company (being on Macs while the rest of the company is on PC, for example) along with different needs.
leading me to conclude it is a niche market
As Apple adds more features to OS X server, they hope to please their existing niches while making it apparent to others that they can easily configure a complex server without having to rely on Microsoft. They get the stability and security associated with open source plus the ease of use from Apple.
We use an XServe G5 as a single sign-on and file server for a "lab" of about 14 FreeBSD and Windows XP machines. The computers are used as workstations (and occasionally for light numerical work) by theorists working on quantum information and quantum computation.
Macs seem to be quite popular among the quantum computing community. Ray Laflamme's group (U. of Waterloo and Perimeter Institute) uses them (although maybe they don't have an Xserve), and about 40% of the laptops at a recent quantum information conference I was at were PowerBooks.
Since a lot of code is based on FreeBSD 5.x, check out rwatson's page on POSIX.1e.
ACLs in FreeBSD (and by extension "Tiger") are based on the last public draft of the POSIX.1e document (it was never ratified). The procedure will be the same as is done in Solaris and Linux(?).
chmod and chown do not affect ACLs; to do that you have to use setfacl . When you use ls you do not see the extra ACLs, but a '+' character after the traditional permissions. The '+' tells you that ACLs are present; to view them you have to use getfacl utility.
Apple has added Darwin-level support for resource forks in Tiger, and have recompiled their Unix tools (including cp, mv, et cetera) to properly handle resource forks. So rsync will work properly with resource forks now.
especially considering NT 4.0 was a 64bit OS on Alpha back in 1996
Wrong - Windows NT for Alpha/AXP was NOT 64-bit. It used the Alpha's 32-bit mode. This was a well-known issue at the time. (I was working for government environmental monitoring facility at the time, and we had some company come in and demo NT on an AlphaServer for us, so I learned a thing or two about it.)
Also, Microsoft may have internal builds of 64-bit Windows, but no shipping products for IA64 or x86_64 so far. That's right, not one. So yes, MS is very much behind the curve. Linux was 64-bit on Alpha some time ago, for example.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"