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Inside Apple's Leopard Server OS

Posted by Zonk on from the nice-place-to-visit-wouldn't-want-to-live-there dept.

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.'"

3 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. The magic end-to-end bullet by Deviant · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:The magic end-to-end bullet by 0racle · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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
      First, no, it would take a lot more then just that to have people choose an Apple based network over SBS or other Windows setup.

      Second, Leopard pretty much is the last piece they need to provide that. it adds iCal server which is really all they were missing. With iCal server, Open Directory, Cyrus IMAP, Postfix and MySQL OS X Server could essentially do everything an SBS Premium install can do with out the 75 user limitation. However, you will need someone with some knowledge and experience to set it up. OS X doesn't have a million little wizards to get everything going with 4 mouse clicks. Initial set up should be done by someone who has an idea what they are doing.
      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
  2. ZFS by boxless · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 $$.