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Inside Apple's Leopard Server OS
An anonymous reader writes "Mac expert John Welch, author of the widely read OS X versus Vista comparison, delves into Apple's Leopard Server OS. He and Information week have on offer a deep dive into what's known so far about OS X Server 10.5, which will be showcased at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Welch weighs in on Leopard's iCal, Wiki, file, Quicktime, and mail services, along with Xgrid 2, Open Directory 4, and 64-bit capabilities. What does it all add up to? His assessment: Apple probably isn't aiming at 'big' enterprises; just the same, Leopard Server is shaping up to be a great SMB (small and mid-sized business) product. Welch writes: 'For about a thousand bucks on existing hardware, or for the cost of an Xserve, you get a really solid server, able to support Web services, collaboration, groupware, IM, and file services. You can run it with its own directory service, or as part of an Active Directory implementation out of the box. It provides some features that due to pricing and/or setup requirements, have traditionally been reserved for big enterprises — in particular clustering of both email and calendaring servers.'"
A comparison between Leopard Server and Linux would've been better, IMHO.
Tell me how fast it copies files...
Thanks
--Bill G.
The one thing that has really helped MS in the enterprise has been that the sell an entire solution that all works together. Windows desktops sign into Windows Active Directory run by Windows Servers. Outlook connects to Exchange running on Windows servers with Kerberos AD logins. Office and Sharepoint getting along to create and maintain intranet content.
Apple has made huge inroads with solving the desktop issues of running Unix on the desktop. For the most part though I have seen either Linux or MS solutions on the server for file sharing and web serving and NIS/NFS and such. Even on the mac I would imagine that Entourage connecting to an Exchange server makes up a large portion of the Enterprise mail community.
If Apple can provide a cheaper end-to-end solution from the server to the desktop with LDAP directories, email, calendering, intranet etc - all preloaded on their server hardware and ready to go - then they have a real winner. Hell the cheaper licencing costs they can offer from basing on open-source can help subsidize their higher hardware margins to make this a comparable, if not cheaper, solution compared to something MS from the likes of Dell or HP.
If they really wanted to twist the knife in they should release some client software/drivers for Windows that make it just as easy to connect that to their servers and services as Macs to accomodate the need for having some PCs in a newly mac office.
Now is the time to do this as companies are faced with upgrading to Vista on the desktop, a new version of Office, and soon a new server platform. Most of this means new hardware purchases anyway. They might be able to just swoop in and offer a complete solution the likes of which linux has been unable to - all bundled with and guaranteed/supported on their own hardare as well.
Still looking for the "maximize" button when your Mac has "zoom" instead? Take the hint, switcheurs: If you can't deal with multiple windows at once, GTFO of our platform. The Mac wasn't designed for one-track minds.
...i wanna know: is it able to delete files?
*scnr*
Actually, it would be a Ferrari compared to a Lambourghini with a shitty paint job.
*nix (In my case, FBSD) lets me run a solid multi-service server on a box Apple would tell me to throw in the dumpster.
'all you need is newer hardware'. Now, where have I heard that one before...
I just bought my son an iMac and playing Lego Star Wars on it can throw it into a loop that only a power-off can break. OSX is pretty, and waaaaay better than anything from Redmond, but Cupertino shouldn't pat themselves on the back just yet.
it's not running in "big" enterprises. Then, in all seriousness, where is it running these days? I ask out of curiosity, not criticism. Is it enjoying the modest gains that the desktop offering has over the past couple of years? If I use Server, will Steve Jobs do a jig in my front lawn? Ok, the last one was a corny attempt at humor, but I am genuinely curious.
Apple's infamous closed-mouthed approach to major OS releases, while great for marketing purposes, isn't always so great for the IT world.
The thing is, they don't wanna be great in the IT world. They wanna show the Mac fans "see? we can do it" and simulatenously provide something to tie together Mac based little networks, where it's not the cheapest or more powerful option, it's the EASIEST option. "It just works" - you know, this is Apple.
While certainly possible (and being done in some datacenters), Apple based server for public facing sites is a terrible idea, though unless you have money to waste and don't care for industry-grade support, so don't confuse the one kind of servers with the other.
You see, the IT world is boring and predictable, it's like the PC guy. The PC guy will put out public betas years in advance and listen to feedback.
The Mac guy will keep quiet and at the last moment, wow the audience with the latest gimmick.
But he's not the kinda guy you'd normally hire in your company. You'll hire the boring and predictable guy, who delivers.
I think that might be the game itself, I've played call of duty 2, as well as NWN. Jedi KNight 2. When they crash, sometimes it was more serious then others, occasionally it took a saved game with it. But they always crashed back to the desktop. It could be because most of these games are being played through Rosetta, which is what I gather, that pesky layer so that programs believe that its still aG5, not the slick new dualcores, of which I have. I love it. and for the GTFO anonymous fan-boi-zealot, i run mac, windows, and linux. Enoughs enough.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
I'm not much up on Windows, but isn't this a weird comparison? I though Vista was targeted to desktops, not servers. Shouldn't this be comparing the OS X Server to Windows Server 2007 (or whatever its going to be called)?
Also, a comparison between OS X Server and some server oriented Linux distro would be nice to see.
There would be some lame "Kevin Rose is Steve Jobs bitch" comment about now. But it isn't and there isn't.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
The Windows guy ain't delivering.
He's not Dilbert, he's Wally. Look at Vista... it's got a few improvements, but most of what's new in Vista is the business it's running out of its cubicle selling music and movies for the entertainment industry.
The Mac guy, maybe he's the guy in sales with executive hair, but luckily there's a better choice for the server room.
The employees you really want are in the Tron suit and devil costume.
Okay here's my comparison.
If you are going to have anything less than 20 computers, and you actually have a bussiness in which time is valuable and you don't have IT-class people with time on their hands, then Linux is insanley expensive to maintain. Get the apple even if the cost per node is higher.
Okay now you say you have 50 to 100 nodes. most of these are behind a cluster router so don't have to be locked down. They all don't have to be running services or what they do run is identical. Well then get Linux. There's zero need to get the apple cost per node. And to boot they will probably reun just a tad faster since you can strip out all those services you don't need. At 100 nodes, having a machine run 10% faster is like 10 extra nodes, so it's worth the optimization at that level of use.
People who claim different, must consider their time has no value, the risk to their bussniess from uncertainty about the patch level of their system has no value, or they have free access to high level sys admin.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
A comparison of a beta product to a currently shipping one is hardly worth the electrons used to publish it.
Mach is hardly a microkernel, or if it is, so is NT.
:) :) :)
Yes, OS X has a lot of unnecessary overhead, and where kernel performance is important you're better off with a traditional UNIX kernel rather than a high overhead modularized one (OS X *or* NT). But it's unfair to tar microkernels with the Mach brush while you're pointing that out.
Anyway...
Why anybody wants it on a server is a mystery.
Same reason they want NT on a server, despite it only being a decent desktop OS (albeit one that's been increasingly screwed up as it's been targeted more as a game console and video player by Microsoft). It's a trade-off between computer processing time and human processing time.
Linux users make the same tradeoff when they use glibc instead of building a custom Gentoo around uLibc.
Slllluuuuurrrrrrrrpppp; Yum!!!!!!!!
That to Apple, SMB is SOHO and the home family structure.
Yeah, enterprise gets the big ticket win, with the follow on support and infrastructure pricing.
However, take a family, each one gets their own laptop (2 kids) and maybe the parents share one laptop or desktop. OK, now throw in the TV and phones, it may be an easy sell for a server in the house for media and file serving.
So now do the math, how many laptops and ipods are out there in the "family" environment? Like I said, it is isn't a big, single win but capturing the home market could start the bleed into the work environment.
The article states that Leopard is for small to medium size businesses. Okay. Apple, where is the small to medium size business hardware? Unless you're doing heavy duty image editing you do NOT need an xserve for a server in the small business environment. It is total overkill and a waste of money. Get a mac mini you say? Umm, no. There is no redundancy in the disks and the disk IO is slow. Where is the headless "Mac" tower that allows for SATA and SATA RAID? You've got mini's, iMac's, Mac Pros, so how about just a Mac? OS X Server is a kick-ass OS that would do wonders in many an office, but the cost of entry is far, far to high for the print / central word doc storage server crowd.
If they get ZFS working, as is the rumour, and it's not buggy, then I think they may have a killer feature on their hands.
Even Microsoft shops might be inclined to test this out for a NAS box. One of the big reasons why people by netapp boxes is for the snapshot and snapmirror capabilities. With ZFS, OSX would have very similar capabilities for a lot less $$.
I would like to congradulate you, sir, for making the most nonsensical post on slashdot today. I have now added the ludicrous term "pisstakeable" to my repetoire and feel that much more enlightened for using it.
Can someone translate that into (American) English for me? I swear, some day we'll teach you Brits to speak real English. ;)
My girlfriend does give good BJs. I didn't know it was because of her mac.
is the small businesses and nonprofits who need the magic of a central calendar and working email. These are groups that have between 5 and 5 seats. The MS solution for them is punishingly expensive, it OFTEN is the cause of their bankruptcy. Exchange server, a PD and BD controller, an AD server, all on separate boxes in a 20 man shop? I don't think so. What they do is share out directories.
Maybe they'll take a stab at ClarkConnect.com or smeserver.org, both are linux based, but both have very serious errors in configuration that are showstoppers. The ClarkConnect CUPS server is set to pause the printer upon any and every error, this disqualifies it for just about any use where there are ordinary end users, and their forums are unresponsive. smeserver is just totally weird.
If Apple can follow through on this, it'll be killer. And there are millions of these small shops, how many Fortune 500 companies are there?
I'd guess that John C. Welsh has never laid his hands on, installed, or tried to configure OS X 10.5 server. I installed the developers' preview edition of Leopard server, and, well, someone's got a lot of writing to do.
In particular, I tried to set up the iCal server and test it with various clients. There's essentially no documentation, and what exists is less than helpful. It appears not to work well with the iCal application that ships with Tiger. I had a little better luck with Mozilla calendaring clients, but only a little.
If iCal is going to be the great alternative to MS Exchange that Apple aficiondos and the IT press would like it to be, it's got to a) work with a variety of existing clients (including Tiger's), b) be easy to set up from the client side, c) work with existing authentication databases, and d) have some meaningful documentation. Anything less, imo, and Leopard's iCal server is basically vaporware.
Is the Mac for me?
As well we should be when compared to Linux and Windows experts because, unlike them, we actually have the free time necessary to receive and enjoy a blow job.
Without full support for exchange, this is a wanna-be server. The exchange, outlook integration is still way better than the ical approach. With exchange shared adressess books, shared calendars and really good email integration works. The apple server "sort of" supports imap and pop... and a couple of poor open-source web integration alternatives.
Exchange alone is a good enough reason to go with Windows servers (and yes, I know some people have difficulty setting up exchange.)
Plus Linux experts often forget to shower which can be a deal breaker. See RMS ...
"I can't decide witch."
Now that's a beauty of a homophone error. The guy should put that in his sig.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Lego Star Wars: the number one benchmark for enterprise-ready servers!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It's interesting to note that ALL Apple computers ship with a functioning enabled TP Module. Microsoft has complied with the TCGs recommendations with respect to TPM. You'll find that Apple has no controls, no oversight and no statement as to the use of the TPM installed in their machines. This is one place where Microsoft has actually been better.
ANY vendor can be more stable by locking its hardware platform and focussing all of its dev dollars into ensuring that its OS operates REALLY WELL on that platform. The key point to consider as an IT buyer is 'What kind of vendor lock in will my company suffer?' Once a firm decides to go with one platform over another they're committing to at least a 3-5 year implementation and support schedule.
Considering Apple's record (or complete lack thereof) of Trusted Computing how confident should any business feel about committing to Apple? Sure it's shiny and works well, but any OSS on a fixed platform could provide the same (if not better) results.
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
Joke taken, but just how much difference do you think exists between OSX versions? A lot? Well then, turn off the GUI. Completely.
That's what I thought...
...because documentation is available on Apple's developer site and a simple Google search would have gotten you decent instructions on how to get even the earliest versions working under Tiger.
Also, developers know that the shipping version of iCal uses a different file format than the version in Leopard.
I'm guessing that rather than being a legit developer, you got your hands on an illicit copy of the (now ancient and obsolete) Leopard preview from last August's developers conference. Otherwise, you'd know WTF you were talking about.
Get a mac mini you say? Umm, no. There is no redundancy in the disks and the disk IO is slow.
For small business, a mac mini with firewire external disks would handle most of your disk speed problems. It's not SATA, but it's not bad, and the performance boost over the internal (notebook) drive is quite noticeable.
My home desktop is a mini with a firewire drive. I boot and run off the external drive, and only use the internal for backup storage and crash recovery.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
The articles mentioned are way to limited and ony talk about very superficial topics of the two OS's. There's so much more that's new or improved under the covers of Vista (and Leopard as well I'm sure). That stuff is the reall meat and potatoes of the operating systems, not the superficial crap these articles actually decided to hit on. These articles were garbage.
And Apple:
Do you see the problem here? Both Microsoft and Apple give you short term information (points 2), but not long term information (point 1). Microsoft has a beta program, which is essentially what Apple announced at last year's WWDC. So short term, they are the same.
Long term, Microsoft gives you unreliable information, but Apple gives you none. You might argue it's misleading on Microsoft's part, but to what end? Let's say you had an idea for a product, but discovered Microsoft was going to implement in their next OS. So you decide not to. Then they don't release it. You missed out. But the same things happens with Apple when they release a feature you've already implemented.
It doesn't look like they're too different to me.
yawn
Web consulting +
no, you are wrong it's because she did a lot of bj before... ggg style.
Remember that this is the same Apple that has a history being, if anything, even more proprietary than Microsoft. The problem is that the "Cult of Mac" tolerates this. They don't care if their operating system or apps "phone home" to either Steve Jobs or Steve Ballmer. There's something wrong with that.
I use GNU/Linux, yes, even on a couple of Apple G3 and G4 boxes. I see no reason--no benefit for me--with using any version of either Windows or Mac OS. With a F/OSS platform, I have a much higher level of assurance that my computer isn't being instructed to "phone home" to corporate HQ, reporting on whatever I do. With a F/OSS platform, it's much easier for me to fix things on those rare occasions that something breaks (usually because I was tinkering with something). I personally don't give a rip about QuickTime and Windows Media movies; if it's not in either MPEG2 and Ogg Theora, then I don't need it, or even want it that badly.
No, I'll stick with GNU/Linux and F/OSS. I'm far, far too pragmatic to give up my freedom for "a little temporary convenience." The freedom is far more important.
mailto:spitz@cmosnetworks.com
SMB was a linux to windows networking protocol... it has NOTHING to do with Apple, duh!
...and it should be known by now
What's Apple using the TPM module in the OS for? To keep open source drivers out of the kernel, to lock down computers so they can't play "protected" content? No, that's what Microsoft uses it for. Microsoft's use of strong DRM is already so draconian that multiple security researchers have called for people to boycott Vista. Apple's using it as a cheap dongle to keep casual users from running OS X on PCs without their module - but with an open-source kernel that's hardly more of a barrier than the DRM in iTunes they *tell* you how to bypass.
I'll take a company with no track record with TPM and a history of undercutting their own DRM to the point where it's basically "honor system" to one who's got an official statement on TPM and a history of locking people out of their own computers.
... as soon as Leopard comes out they'll lose all their customers:
From the article, it says that Apple's introducing an iCal Server, based on interoperability standards from the CalConnect Consortium. From that website, it shows that Google also joined the consortium a couple weeks ago. Leopard's iCal will, no doubt, be a much more groupware-capable client all on its own -- it's not hard to conclude that before long things will be working together quite nicely without the need for third-party syncing tools.