Mac OS X "Tiger" Server Previewed

Remaining unmentioned in Steve Jobs' keynote speech at WWDC today are the many updates to the Server cousin of Mac OS X. As with the Panther Server release, Tiger Server will focus on open source, Windows, and ease of use. A preview DVD was, as with Tiger client, given out to WWDC attendees. Tiger will include some new content server options, including blojsom, a Java-powered "blog" server, which was inspired by Rael Dornfest's bloxsom.

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).

Comments

Jabber

[einhverfr]

I find it interesting (and cool) that Apple seems to be throwing their weight behind Jabber.

But one question I have is this: What market is currently being targetted by the OS X Servers? I see some posts on all the general email lists I am on (PostgreSQL anyway), but not too many, leading me to conclude it is a niche market. Any thoughts?

Re:Jabber

[Neil Blender]

What market is currently being targetted by the OS X Servers?

Life sciences, for one. Apple has always had a stronghold in that area (at least academics) and I know of several companies that are selling server based products which initially ran on Linux or a unix variant that are now running on OS X.

Re:Jabber

[afish40]

I currently administer a private school running 10.3 Server on an Xserve G4. I'm very much looking forward to these new features, such as Mobile Home Directories. Currently, we're going to implement third-party alternatives for backing up the student's files (they all have iBooks they can take home), but this looks to be a much better solution.

Re:Jabber

[linuxelf]

The Publishing industry has been mostly Macintosh oriented for a long time. I work for a large metropolitan newspaper, and we really love the new G5's, and the stability and ease of management offered by OS X. We used to have quite a few file servers that ran on Windows with Extreme Z-IP for appletalk file sharing. Now, we've migrated all of them to OS X with Samba for Windows sharing.

Re:Jabber

[Johnny Mnemonic]

, leading me to conclude it is a niche market. Any thoughts?

I'd be kidding you if I told you it wasn't. How it's actually being used, of course, only Apple's Sales manager knows--but I can tell you the target market:

• Graphic dept skunkworks--they need a fileserver for their Macs and some PCs. Apple does fileserving really well; 500MB a minute over AFP.
• Schools who need management of low needs users, but the security has to be pretty tied down. By "low-needs", I mean no App serving, etc.
• Designed for SOHO users--have an office of 6? Want business email, brochure-ware web site, some collab share points? Throw an Xserve in and forget the licensing.
• Also, Apple is trying to get more and more into the HPC space, with Xgrid, Xsan, XRaid, and Cluster Node Xserves. Some sucess with this; I think there's quite a few 12-node clusters sititng in corner someplace, and all IT knows about them is that they have one less IP to give out.

Still niche, yes: they don't run 10,000 employees with Workgroup Manager, for example. But it serves as a good fileserver when a the extra workstations just can't quite keep up, or when the workgroup uses Macs for whatever reason and needs a server to help them work better amongst themselves (without necessarily involving IT).

Re:Jabber

[Qbertino]

But one question I have is this: What market is currently being targetted by the OS X Servers?

The zero-fuss-open-source-aware,-non-x86-crappiness, fully-unix-compliant all-top-notch-reference-grade-quality open-source-goodies-preinstalled and operational out-of-the-box-with-two-mouseclicks-maximum market.

Gues how long it takes me to have phpCMS or Typo running on Mac OS X? Or any other MySQL/PHP/Apache Webapp? Something between 30 seconds and a minute. Try that with any other Computer. Now they come with a jabber server and a java based oss blogger and a ton of other features that makes everyone who knows what these features mean drool.

I'd say the market for OS X Servers is pretty healthy and in for some steep and steady growth.
All I can say is I'm sold. If there is any project due that requires me to deliver a server, Apple is going to be the first place I'm going to look.

Re:Jabber

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Small, overworked, data centers.

I run an IT department with 4 people to service 200 users, an AS/400 based finance system, 30 ticket stations, 4 MSSQL databases, a retail store, 2 remote locations, in-house email, web services, and NT domain services. And when we aren't doing that, we are setting up a network for a traveling show that's coming in, or a for a rental.

We just bought a bunch of them to take over for our gaggle of Dell boxes that are EOL. We wanted 24 hour warm-body support. We wanted to be able to pre-buy spare parts. We wanted something off the shelf that pretty much used all the software we use today. (Postfix, MySQL, Samba.)

We will still use Gentoo on x86 for all our front-line stuff. (DNS, firewall, web serving) but we have 2 servers that have to be up, rain or shine, and stay running with a minimum of disruption for 3 years at a time. Gentoo is great, but new versions of stuff breaking our site configurations almost cost me my job on a few occasions.

Re:Jabber

[bluepinstripe]

As the parent post said, life sciences. I work for a large government life sciences research institue, and about half of our total computer base is Macs. There are a lot of labs that use older G4s as if they were servers, and will probably upgrade to X servers over time. Given the general level of ease of use and "reliablity" of our Microsoft equipment--which mirrors my experience pertty much everywhere I have ever worked--these labs would never accept a Microsoft solution.

Re:Jabber

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Panther Server makes an excellent general-purpose small business server. I set one up for a friend a few weekends ago. It's their directory server, provides DHCP, runs a web server, hosts the company's mail (installing SpamAssassin was the usual pain in the ass, but I see now that it's included in Tiger Server), is their FTP server, supports VPN connections via IPsec, and provides file services via AppleShare, NFS, and SMB. It's also their database (with FileMaker Pro, but Oracle or PostgreSQL or Sybase would work too) and their scheduling hub (MeetingMaker).

And it's all running on a 500 MHz Power Mac G4.

I don't know about targeting that market, but it's a great solution for that market.

Re:Jabber

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Apple does fileserving really well; 500MB a minute over AFP.

You must be talking about old-fashioned 100BASE-T. Over Gigabit, I usually see about 40 MB/s, and I suspect that the limiting factor there might be the hard drive in our server. (We don't have a RAID attached, just an internal disk for our non-critical day-to-day work.)

Blogs

[ModernGeek]

Is it just me or are we getting too deep into the whole blog thing? It's just like a personal site with news, what's the big deal with it anywhoo? I mean google even has a blog now. And why is it people want things already written for them, like PHPnuke, why can't people just make things on their own from scratch (like I do, see my site), and try to make somthing unique and stand out from everyone else. It seems everyone is just getting more and more uniform, using templates and cookie cutters nowdays.

Re:Blogs

[gl4ss]

there's shitloads of blogs that have been started just because yet another guy wanted to just code his own blog, but later the guy realised he doesn't even want to blog or have anything worth blogging about else than the blog software, which let's face it, isn't that intresting even to other coders.

with a blog, like with any site worth visiting, the content matters more than the presentation!(as long as the presentation doesn't hide the content of course), the engine that actually pushes out the presentation(generates the html) matters even less to the reader.

why do you suppose that it would be good for people who don't know to code 'roll out their own blog'? why the hell not leverage on other peoples work when it is possible? or you only read blogs about making blogs which is the stupidest blogs out there with empty content like "I'm not sure what to write here now, but it sure is cool, peehoopeee aaall the way baby, I ruule, I wrote my own blog engine".

using the same tools other people use makes some things easier anyways, like migrating to another software later or being able to use tools other people wrote for the software, like j2me posting apps & etc...

Namig Convention

[someguy456]

Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, etc

How many felines are left? Even including "cat" and others, they are bound to run out, aren't they?

Maybe for OS 11 (OS X1?) they will start doing canines or something... Wolf, Coyote, Bear?

Re:Namig Convention

[Wyatt Earp]

They used Puma and Cheetah already. For 10.1 and 10.0.4, I think.

So we have, Lynx, Caracal, Serval, Ocelot, Leopard, Lion, Bobcat left from a quick look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felidae

Areas I hope are improved

[tbo]

Documentation. OS X Server 10.3 ("Panther Server") is nice, but there are just too many areas that are poorly documented. My setup time would have been a quarter what it was if they had really excellent documentation. It's surprising, because Apple's docs on the consumer side are quite good. A lot of Apple's market is relatively inexperienced admins in SOHO or educational settings, and more HOWTO-type documentation would be wonderful.

VPN setup. This one needs some serious help. I (and a lot of other people on Apple's OS X Server Discussion Board) have had a great deal of difficulty getting PPTP working in Panther Server. I also managed to stump Apple's Premium support with a problem with L2TP. Still waiting to hear back, more than a week later.

Firewall setup. The Panther Server GUI interface for setting up firewalls is somewhat broken. Server Admin times out on trying to load mildly complicated rule-sets (say, a group of twelve IP ranges with 15 ports open). The default configuration doesn't make use of ipfw's stateful capabilities, and doesn't block UDP packets. They could really have a better interface and a better default ruleset, or at least an option to set up some stateful rules via the GUI. The setup they have for XML editing of the GUI's port list is cool, though, as is the ipfw.conf setup.

Windows Services / SAMBA. SAMBA still has some bugs and issues which make it annoying to use as a replacement for a Windows-based PDC. Apple should help out the open source community here. In particular, find a good solution to the problem where visible .INI files show up in weird places in a user's roaming profile--having one of these suckers pop up upon login every time a user logs in is annoying. (This happens because SAMBA does not store the "Invisible System File" windows file attribute that would keep these files from being visible. There's a work-around but it's ugly and only partially effective). Also, more GUI-based control of security for Windows file sharing would be good--I don't want to have to dig into the bowels of samba just to learn how to disable LANMAN passwords.

Open Directory. Fix the bugs in Open Directory or Workgroup Manager that prevent entry of "City" (and certain other attributes) in user LDAP records. Set up a better means of storing contact information in the LDAP directory, and document how to configure Mac OS X clients to access it via Address Book.

Backup Solution. There are lots of third-party backup solutions out there for backing up an OS X Server, but none I completely trust to do a bare-metal restore and give me a bootable system. Carbon Copy Cloner? Had issues with it when backing up an iBook via Firewire, so I don't trust it. Rsync? Doesn't handle resource forks. RsyncX? Slower than rsync (too slow for network backup). This would probably be pretty simple for Apple to implement and integrate into Server Admin.

All in all, Panther Server is pretty good, and Tiger Server looks even better. I just hope Apple fixes these things so others are spared the trouble I went through.

Re:Areas I hope are improved

[imac.usr]

Carbon Copy Cloner? Had issues with it when backing up an iBook via Firewire, so I don't trust it.

I've seen the same thing with CCC and FireWire drives, where eventually the process times out and you have to force-quit CCC and start over. I have found that there is a workaround of sorts that generally prevents this from happening:

• start the clone operation as normal
• open the Terminal
• cd to the root directory of the target drive for the cloning operation (i.e.

  /Volumes/whatever

  )
• do an ls -l of the directory every 4-5 minutes or so

This usually works on my drives. My theory is that something in either CCC or Apple's FireWire implementation is screwy and it causes ditto (the unix tool that forms the basis of CCC) to flip out.

Re:Areas I hope are improved

[ptudor]

...but none I completely trust to do a bare-metal restore and give me a bootable system.

The 60G Toshiba failed in my 12" PB last week, a perfect test of my SuperDuper based backups. I booted off the external backup with no problem once my PB was returned and just backed up, in the other direction. Two hours and a reboot later, it's like nothing happened.

I've been pleased with SuperDuper since the start, and now that it's passed a big test I'm even more so.

Just mentioning because it wasn't in your list...

Java application middleware

[sys49152]

Currently OS X Server ships with JBoss, and opinions about Mark Fluery aside, that's a good thing. However, there's a ship about to leave, and Apple should do what they can in the next 12 months to be sure and get on it. That ship is the "tiny container" (for lack of a better name). Those frameworks that aim to compete with J2EE by introducing a simpler, lighter container for hosting your Plain Old Java Objects. They do not provide persistence (you get that from Hibernate, for instance), they do not provide transactions (you get that from a JTA provider), etc. What they do provide is a lightweight container and an integrtated AOP framework for glueing it all together.

There's no argument that these containers are getting a lot of attention (so much so that the latest J2EE spec does what it can to emulate them -- not enough). Apple can win some serious street cred among app server developers by adopting one of these frameworks, enhancing the code, hiring the developers (maybe away from BEA -- hint, hint) and integrating it with X-Code.

And by "lightweight container" I mean Spring, Pico, and, yes, even JBoss (once all the overweight J2EE stuff is tossed). There are others, of course, such as Excalibur, but Spring and Pico have all the mind share. Spring especially, it seems.

While I'm at it, if Apple really wants a piece of the application server space they should endorse Mono with equal vigor. Imagine, a .NET compatible runtime on OS X supported by Apple. Furthermore, those important Java/.NET sub-projects need full fledged support; Hibernate, Junit (Nunit), Ant (Nant), XDoclet, one of the umpteen MVC frameworks, and so on.

So there you have it Apple: Proudly ditch the complexity of EJB. Raise the flag of lightweight containers and AOP. Embrace .NET via Mono. Support those all so important tactical projects. And integrate -- fully -- the whole kit & kaboodle into your development environment.

You're welcome.

Apple copying shareware again?

[shigelojoe]

Go ahead and mod me 'Flamebait', but some of the new features very strongly resemble applications written by independent developers. Dashboard? Meet Konfabulator. Spotlight? Meet Launchbar. Safari's new RSS feature? Meet NetNewsWire. IIRC, Apple did the same thing involving Watson when it added channels to Sherlock.

Maybe this is why Apple distributes the Developer Tools free of charge; so they can coopt any product that is created using those Developer Tools?

Re:Apple copying shareware again?

[superpixel2000]

This is absolutely a valid point. I was considering Konfabulator (and until I see more/better widgets from Cupertino may still) until I saw Dashboard. Apple is getting into a rather nasty habit here...

Of course, Microsoft isn't much better, but at least they'll buy you out before crushing you... Right?

Then again, there are cases where 3rd parties are making better stuff than Apple. Witness 'A Better Finder Rename' and 'Wheel' (Wheel is from Spymac, along with a host of .mac-esque services that outdo Apple on pricepoint at least).

Re:Apple copying shareware again?

[TheOtherAgentM]

Yeah, it looks like Apple is shoving smaller developers out of the market. The same thing happened when iTunes came out and Audion got forgotten. (I even had to look up the name of the software just to be sure, and I used to use this software.) Like when iTunes was released, I doubt anyone will be complaining except the developers being bullied out. Apple does a good job of making you forget they aren't the original creators of a lot of things.

Re:Apple copying shareware again?

[sparrow_hawk]

Interestingly enough, I noted in the Apple Developer Tools license (which I read just today) that Apple says something along the lines of "using this product doesn't mean that we won't take your ideas and make our own." That warning is really close to the top, so if you read the license at all, you can't claim nobody warned you.

Re:Market: Academics, education

[jabberjaw]

The High Energy Physics group at UW Madison is also a bit of a mac shop as they just purchased quite a few new G5's.

Re:ACLs

[bruns]

They are probably impemented the same way its done in the linux 2.6 kernels - either taking advantage of the underlying file system's ability to store the data natively, or using a hidden file. IIRC, this is all done on the VFS layer, which I'm pretty sure MacOS X has the equiv. of.

Most of the standard tools like chown/chmod/ls/etc are ACL enabled and aware. The only applications which will have an issue with this are ones that are not ACL aware, AND ones that use a copy/save method which will blow away the underlying ACLs (passwd does this right now, as do many editors).

Otherwise, it is completely transparent to applications (even ones that aren't ACL enabled/aware).

Re:Finally 64-bit

[iabervon]

It took Linus about a year (1994-1995) to do the Alpha port, which was 64-bit, a completely different architecture from x86, and required adding support for having multiple architectures in the same tree. Of course, making something 64-bit clean is easier if there's less of it, and Linux was small then.

pf, is it in OSX?

[ChocoboKnight]

Does anybody know if pf (OpenBSD's firewall) is included in OSX?

Very excited by Core Video

[gsdali]

Depending on how exactly it works. Hopefully, in the same way as core Audio it is not just a plugin and interconnect layer for video applications but a complet abstraction layer for hardware as well. Hurry up with some godamned documentation.

at the same time I was dissapointed not to see distributed rendering using Xgrid for Apples Pro Video Apps.

Mobile Users same as 10.3 Server

[Wally4u]

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.

So does this mean they implemented the same Syncing as .Mac for the Servers? Because the current server can't do this. You have mobile user account but this only syncs the access rights etc not the user data.

Re:Apple copying shareware again? - Patent

[jcoder]

Ah, but they are an innovator. Not only with software, but certainly with hardware also. I suppose your definition of a reputable innovator is one that only comes up totally original ideas? Please.

Whiners? Whiners? Isn't this the context of this very thread, you idiot? The original post was a whine, and I'm posting my opinion. Go figure.

As far as Microsoft is concerned, I don't bitch when they come out with new features for the OS or other software that *resembles* software that is already out there. I welcome it. Nothing drives innovation like competition.

Re:I think I just wet myself.

[Anonymous Coward]

for the record, it was Flavor Aid, -not- Kool-Aid that was used in the Jonestown massacre. This has got to be one of the most widespread misconceptions. ;)
I think people just refuse to use the correct product name because it doesn't sound as "Kool".

--

Justin (largo) lost my account a -long- time ago and I don't care to make another one just to post once every 3 years. ;)