Why IT Won't Like Mac OS X Lion Server 341
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's John Rizzo sees Mac OS X Lion Server as a downgrade that may prompt a move to Windows Server. 'Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Server adds innovative features and a new low price tag, but cuts in services and the elimination of advanced GUI administration tools may force some enterprise departments to think twice about the role of Mac servers on their networks,' Rizzo writes. 'Looking more deeply inside Lion Server, it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that Lion Server is not built for those of us in IT. The $50 price tag — down from $500 — is the first clue that Lion Server trying to be a server for the consumer. But the ironic part for IT administrators is that Lion Server actually requires a greater degree of technical knowledge than its predecessors.'"
mac /= server (Score:4, Interesting)
All that aside, I had a client who insisted on moving to OSX Server in 2003 to manage his email. FIle sharing was fine, even over a massive fiber/iscsi San config. But it didn't take long for his users to force a switch to an exchange hosted environment. The features just weren't there and the support or the tech resources to make corrections were far too time-consuming.
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I will tell you this... a Glassed in Server room full of Apple servers and Xsan are 800X more sexy looking than ANY other manufacturer. When I was IT manager at a comcast regional our Director of sales would take clients down to the production offices to show them THAT server room full of apple servers instead of the real one. Simply because that room looked professional and random Sun+Dell+HP servers look like a hodge podge mess even though it was very clean.
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You know if you want something sexy looking you could just glass in a room of sweet looking empty boxes with some leds and fans for a lot less.
Re:mac /= server (Score:4, Funny)
This reminds me...
Working for a university once, there was a dispute over whether our department should get to keep a small closet of a room during a department change. In order to make the room look busy and important, I built a "Beowulf" cluster of stacks of 486 machines. I made sure the disk activity lights and network switch were visible from the window in the door and then had the machines randomly requesting 1 kb files from each other. All the activity lights looked really impressive. And we got to keep the room for a year.
Looking back, I should feel lucky I didn't accidentally create skynet.
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How much koolaid do you need to drink even before you consider Mac OS Servers. I am a Mac Fan and I think using OS X for a server situation is idiotic.
It isn't that Mac OS X can't do the work, but you are not gaining much over any Unix Server, except for the fact you are stuck with Apple Hardware and an Apple OS. At least if you went with Sun Servers you have a Unix Server that is really designed to be a Server, with all the ugly complicated features that Jobs doesn't want to talk about.
I only saw OS X s
As a Mac admin, I agree. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've played with it for a few days now, and I absolutely agree. I'm not planning on upgrading any of my customers at this point, and I'm considering my options for replacements in environments where I can't maintain Snow Leopard Server indefinitely. I think it's likely to be relegated to calendar server duty, and I'm going to move mail, web, and FTP to some variety of Linux.
I'm really not happy with Apple about Lion - it just doesn't feel like an upgrade to me, and server is even worse. I don't like seeing the best operating system there is backsliding like this.
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We run a mixed OS X/Windows 7 environment. We use AD/Open Directory, but mail is done by Google Apps (as well as calendaring, etc), DHCP/DNS/etc. is done by network gear. Is Lion great? Meh. With email/calendar outsourced, the only thing we need it to do is directory services, software updates, etc., which it does fine.
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"but mail is done by Google Apps (as well as calendaring, etc),"
Read and you will receive the info he already told you.
Their Email client is called a web browser.
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This. Everyone uses Chrome. IT policy is to use the web browser for email, calendaring, etc. You *can* use Outlook if you prefer, but it's IMAP only, and calendaring is through the web still. Works like a fucking champ.
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Go here to download Server Admin, and gain back all of the old functionality:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1419 [apple.com]
Re:As a Mac admin, I agree. (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
"Once you locate and download the Server Admin tool, experienced Mac OS X Server administrators will notice it's a much thinner tool than it used to be. Roughly half the services that used to be there are missing. Most user-based services, such as file sharing, calendaring, and Web services, have been moved to the simple Server application. Others, such as QuickTime Streaming Server, have been completely removed."
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Other services removed (Score:4, Informative)
"Once you locate and download the Server Admin tool, experienced Mac OS X Server administrators will notice it's a much thinner tool than it used to be. Roughly half the services that used to be there are missing. Most user-based services, such as file sharing, calendaring, and Web services, have been moved to the simple Server application. Others, such as QuickTime Streaming Server, have been completely removed."
I wish you had quoted a bit more, because it leads the reader to conclude that if the one service removed that TFA mentions is quick time streaming server, then big f'ing deal. Here's a little more from TFA:
One of the more significant feature rollbacks comes in reduced support for Windows clients. For years, Mac OS X Server's LDAP-based Open Directory had the ability to function as a primary domain controller (PDC) to support Windows clients. The PDC provided Windows clients with single sign-on authentication, and for those who work on both platforms, it gave users access to the same accounts and server-based home folders from their Windows PCs as well as their Macs. In Lion Server, Windows clients still have access to file sharing, but are now second-class clients.
Another service that Apple deleted is the print server of previous Mac OS X Server builds. Lion Server contains only the same ability to share printers found in every copy of Mac OS X client for the past five years: the open source Common Unix Printing System (CUPS), which gives Macs the ability to host shared print queues and simple pools of printers but lacks the enterprise features that previous print servers had. For example, Lion Server's CUPS cannot prioritize printers in the pool or set quotas for individual users or printers. And you can't publish printers to Open Directory.
The print server would seem to be one of the more important removals in functionality.
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Except, as the above user explained,
"From TFA:
"Once you locate and download the Server
Re:As a Mac admin, I agree. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:As a Mac admin, I agree. (Score:5, Informative)
I think it's likely to be relegated to calendar server duty, and I'm going to move mail, web, and FTP to some variety of Linux.
You don't have to keep the Mac around for serving calendars. Apple open sourced the server [calendarserver.org] and you can run it on your favourite *NIX flavour.
Re:As a Mac admin, I agree. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I know about that.
It's not really ready for production server use yet:
Milestone: Linux Port
No date set
Milestone with the goal of a functional (to approximately whatever the current level of functionality is) server on some version of Linux.
This is intentionally vague; the point is to get a server running on something other than Mac OS, which should make future portability work a bit simpler by identifying and reducing the Mac OS dependancies.
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I think it's likely to be relegated to calendar server duty, and I'm going to move mail, web, and FTP to some variety of Linux.
I'm confused as to why based on this article. It sounds to me as if everything is still there, but some of it has to be command line configured like it would in Linux. I generally think that for servers command line and text file configuration are much preferred anyway, and it's the way you'd have to do it in Linux. I was reading the whole article trying to find out what the problems are. The installation issues sounded mildly annoying, but usually with a new server OS deployment I'm going to build one t
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I always hated OS X Server because I was brought up on the old UNIX boxes and I liked to do everything on the command line... but the #@$@#$ GUIs in OS X Server would clobber all of my config files (and they were not well documented either). I'm very glad to see OS X server go back to the command line and be more like Linux.
There are more options than this, no? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can easily think of two more:
I have not heard any reason why a currently working installation of OS X would suddenly stop working altogether just because the owner did not upgrade. Windows people have seen this before; there are plenty of people still running Windows XP even though two newer version of the same have been released since.
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Stay with what you have
How long does Apple continue supporting OS releases? (I have heard it's shorter than MS, but I'm actually pretty ignorant...)
Re:There are more options than this, no? (Score:4, Informative)
Who knows? They don't say.
No, seriously, I've gone looking for this information and wasn't able to find it. The best answer appears to be they will support the current version and the previous version, and that's it.
If someone has better information than that, I'd love to have it, but it makes suggesting a Mac OS X-based solution a bit difficult when I can't give a solid number on how long the platform will receive security updates.
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How long does Apple continue supporting OS releases? (I have heard it's shorter than MS, but I'm actually pretty ignorant...)
Apple only offers security and bugfix support for its current release and the one before it. So, 10.4 was deprecated when 10.6 came out, and now that 10.7 is released, 10.5 is deprecated.
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How long does Apple continue supporting OS releases? (I have heard it's shorter than MS, but I'm actually pretty ignorant...)
I have observed that since OS X came out ten years ago, Apple supports the most recent two versions of their OS for security issues. The current version gets their maximum attention, though.
I've even seen them reach back two 10.x versions to address severe security problems.
Long term support is where open source options can spank proprietary ones, not that they often do. (IE: Go with RedHat/CentOS Enterprise and not Fedora.)
It's weird to propose Windows as an alternative to Mac OS X server deployments since
Re:There are more options than this, no? (Score:4)
How long does Apple continue supporting OS releases? (I have heard it's shorter than MS, but I'm actually pretty ignorant...)
Longer than the average Linux distro (which in most cases is a couple of months if that).
Ubuntu releases are supported for 18 months. Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) releases are supported for 3 years on the desktop, and 5 years on the server.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases [ubuntu.com]
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I hear that RedHat is just now retiring RHEL 4 which came out in 2005. And RHEL 3 ended last year.
I would say that 6 years is a pretty good support time.
Apparently you do not normally deal with enterprise Linux distros.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Anywhere large enough that "IT" is a mass noun w
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Unless they've changed stances recently, Apple does not support running macs with any OS version earlier than the one they shipped with. They don't specifically try to stop you; but they make no effort to be particularly helpful about it. Outside of tiny shops, that pretty much squashes the "Well, we just won't upgrade" plan. People still routinely run XP because it is still quite easy to buy brand new hardware with full, vendor supported, XP compatibility.
Are Apple shops really that dependent on Apple for support? PC users, and shops that have large implementations of PCs running something other than Mac OS X, have become accustomed to finding support places other than their OS provider.
In other words, the software problems that people are having with PCs have already been seen by other PC users. It seems unlikely that this is distinctly not the case with OS X users. If the business is capable of running well with a current version of OS X (or any othe
Re:There are more options than this, no? (Score:5, Informative)
I mean, When Apple releases a new hardware model, they release a slightly different spin of the OSX installer that includes drivers, firmware, etc. for the new hardware platform. If the hardware platform drivers for your platform were released in conjunction with, say, 10.6, Apple will not bother to release a platform support package for running 10.5 on that hardware.
That's the difference: With Windows, MS does bundle a variety of drivers-that-are-commonly-used with their install media, in order to improve the odds of things Just Working; but the OEM you purchased the computer from, or potentially the OEM they purchased the chips from, are the actual providers of the drivers, and will have them available for whatever platforms they support. Apple doesn't do that. Their install media come equipped with all drivers for supported models as of the OS release. If you wish to run an OS that was released before a given piece of hardware, the drivers won't be included in that OS. If you are lucky, you might be able to bodge drivers taken from a later OSX release into working on an earlier one. If not, too bad.
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Apple does not support running macs with any OS version earlier than the one they shipped with.
Does anyone? I mean Dell won't support you running XP on a machine that they installed Vista or Win 7 even if the machine runs it. I remember that there was alot of complaining that consumers had to pay for downgrade rights to XP when Vista came out. For enterprises, they normally have separate agreements with MS for support and Dell doesn't even install Windows on the machine anyway.
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Beyond that, it matters a lot less if your random PC OEM supports XP: basically every component in the system(with the possible exception of some proprietary BIOS-
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Re:There are more options than this, no? (Score:5, Informative)
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And if you're not going to use the admin GUIs anyway, there's really no reason to switch to anything. The article is complaining about changes in the admin GUI, if you are competent enough to configure the thing through the command line, you're not losing any functionality.
Re:There are more options than this, no? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have not heard any reason why a currently working installation of OS X would suddenly stop working altogether just because the owner did not upgrade. Windows people have seen this before; there are plenty of people still running Windows XP even though two newer version of the same have been released since.
Apple doesn't seem to announce end-of-support dates for their operating systems (at least they don't make it easy to find), but many IT departments aren't allowed to run unsupported software because they have a regulatory requirement to keep the software up to date with security patches.
So sure, Keeping Leopard or Snow Leopard is a short-term fix, but they are only going to be a viable solution for as long as Apple continues supporting them.
If Final Cut Pro is any indication... (Score:4, Interesting)
Earlier in the year, Apple released a new version of it's popular professional video editing software, Final Cut Pro X [apple.com]. There was much belly aching [slashdot.org] by the user community and in the media about missing features. Indeed, the comments from professional users are eerily similar to those comments of IT admins about Lion Server -- basically that it's being dumbed down for the consumer market.
Just a few weeks ago, Apple updated the FAQ [cnet.com] for this software, with CNet quoting the following:
"Final Cut Pro X is a breakthrough in nonlinear video editing. The application has impressed many pro editors, and it has also generated a lot of discussion in the pro video community," the FAQ reads. "We know people have questions about the new features in Final Cut Pro X and how it compares with previous versions of Final Cut Pro. Here are the answers to the most common questions we've heard."
In the FAQ, which details specifics about importing, editing, media management, export and purchase, Apple's tried to make one thing clear: some of the missing features will return with future software updates.
Indeed, Apple may be as inclined due to this backlash to reverse itself with OSX Lion as it was with Final Cut Pro. It's entirely reasonable to project that missing server features may make their return to the Sever Admin panel or as stand-alone add-ons.
After all, I doubt that Apple is trying to get rid of the userbase of corporate departments that use OSX Server and technologies like the group print spooler and the Quicktime streaming server are already developed, coded, and released -- so why not roll them back in?
Re:If Final Cut Pro is any indication... (Score:4, Informative)
In the FAQ, which details specifics about importing, editing, media management, export and purchase, Apple's tried to make one thing clear: some of the missing features will return with future software updates.
Indeed, Apple may be as inclined due to this backlash to reverse itself with OSX Lion as it was with Final Cut Pro. It's entirely reasonable to project that missing server features may make their return to the Sever Admin panel or as stand-alone add-ons.
If there is one thing I've learned over the years, it's that promises of "Jam tomorrow!" are next to useless.
You or I have precisely zero idea of Apple's internal roadmap and even less idea of what issues are driving the decisions that form that roadmap, and future functionality can be changed at the drop of a hat. The same is true for more-or-less any IT vendor. Until such time as the product is released, it doesn't exist.
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I posit that anyone using a server version of an Apple product is not an IT professional to begin with.
I posit you're either an idiot or a bigot, or both. But it's clear you are uninformed. There are many installations, profit and non-profit, using OS X Server.
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John Rizzo (Score:2)
It's not for Enterprise IT (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed, the current blurb says this on apple.com: "OS X Lion Server gives you everything you need to provide workgroup and Internet services.".
For workgroup and SMB sized applications it's pretty nice, but a bit of a quandary when you hit the big leagues.
I put all my thoughts on it in my review on AFP548.com: http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=lion-server-review [afp548.com]
The real place in enterprise for the Mac has been in on the client side for quite some time now.
Re:It's not for Enterprise IT (Score:4, Informative)
"For workgroup and SMB sized applications it's pretty nice, but a bit of a quandary when you hit the big leagues."
when you hit that point you use a real Unix, and it runs really nice on their sexy hardware!
They need to have mac os X sever for any VM on (Score:2)
They need to have mac os X sever for any VM on any base hardware.
Apple does not even have a real sever any more.
The mini and mac pro are lacking in big plies like.
Dual PSU
lights-out management (LOM)
Hot swap HDDS -at least the mac pro has easy to get to HDD bays
Dual nics in the mini.
no easy to make bootable installation DVD or image for sever 10.7 -you can make a OSX 10.7 install image / dvd.
NO sever OS downgrade on the new hardware.
Some of those the mini has (Score:2)
Hot swap HDDS -at least the mac pro has easy to get to HDD bays
The minis these days make it very easy to get to HDD and RAM. You just unscrew a large cap on the bottom.
Dual nics in the mini.
How about 20? It has Thunderbolt.
no easy to make bootable installation DVD or image for sever 10.7
What? It's very easy to make a bootable clone using a program like Super Duper.
The dual PSU is an issue, but the mini's are so small and cheap enough why wouldn't you just be running several and have hot failover to the w
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ECC RAM is somewhat important in a server.
I agree. That said, I recently became interested in replacing my aging home server and, in my research, have learned that there are now lots of companies selling "mini-servers" and their mobos and MOST (all?) of the models don't support ECC memory.
Apparently, in that market strata, ECC just isn't that important.
This may be an occasion where Apple's marketing instincts are more correct than our prejudices.
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The dual PSU is an issue, but the mini's are so small and cheap enough why wouldn't you just be running several and have hot failover to the working ones?
They actually seem like really good server systems to me.
Hot failover is damn difficult. If your application doesn't support it (which many don't), your only realistic option today is to virtualise it and set up some sort of mechanism to shut down the (failed) virtual server and swap everything over to the hot spare - which usually implies shared storage of some sort.
There are ways to try and work around this with Linux and DRBD but AFAIK no distribution has yet done this in a reasonably neat fashion - you'd have to lash so much together by hand there's a very go
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The macminicolo.net folks seem to agree with you on that one.
I think that Apple is still squarely in the market they enjoy - and that isn't big iron.
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Advanced GUI tools still available (Score:2, Informative)
All of the advanced GUI tools (Server Admin, Workgroup Manager, etc.) have been updated for 10.7 and available as a separate download from Apple:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1419 [apple.com]
The whole premise of this article is bunk.
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The whole premise of this article is bunk.
No, the reinforcement of the premise is bunk. IT departments will still hate 10.7, if for the only reason they've always hated OSX - not for stability or user-friendlyness, but for the simple fact that having an apple backend will draw hipster know-nothings to apply to work at their company.
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1/10. Obvious troll is obvious.
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No, the reinforcement of the premise is bunk. IT departments will still hate 10.7, if for the only reason they've always hated OSX - not for stability or user-friendlyness, but for the simple fact that having an apple backend will draw hipster know-nothings to apply to work at their company.
1/10. Obvious troll is obvious.
Yes, an obvious troll. But no one said that trolling can't also be 100% truthful...
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The whole premise of this article is bunk.
No, the reinforcement of the premise is bunk. IT departments will still hate 10.7, if for the only reason they've always hated OSX - not for stability or user-friendlyness, but for the simple fact that having an apple backend will draw hipster know-nothings to apply to work at their company.
And push out all the un-hip know-nothing MCSEs. Silly Microsoft, copying Cisco in their drive to establish 4-letter fraternities.
Re:Advanced GUI tools still available (Score:5, Interesting)
Know how I know you didn't RTFA?
The article is not bunk, and the author mentions the admin tools. He also points out that a good chunk of the functionality of those tools have been ripped out, you're limited to the Server app or command line for quite a few things.
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Heck even Microsoft has realized that and made powershell. Perhaps due to the pain of running Hotmail on Windows
A good GUI can probably beat a CLI in many things, but not usually for stuff like "advanced co
Strange beef (Score:3)
I don't know any high quality sysadmins that want more point'n'click high-bandwidth GUI features on their servers, and less reliance on low-bandwidth SSH console commands.
I mean, I'm willing to hypothesize that they are out there, sure, but I'm also willing to postulate the existence of flying monkeys for the sake of discussion. I don't expect to ever meet one.
Windows? (Score:2)
If you're not satisfied with your upgrade path from an OS X server, why would Windows be your choice? Wouldn't another UNIX like platform be an easier, cheaper, and more reliable choice?
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Windoze is not an option, let alone my choice for an upgrade path.
I'm not replacing any currently running OS X servers just for the fun of it, but I'm not going to be putting 10.7 on them, and I'm probably going to be installing quite a few more Linux servers in the coming years.
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Not at all. However, a solution designed for a UNIX operating system (e.g. OS X) is likely to be less reliable when ported to a different system (e.g. Windows).
Nowhere did I say that Windows was less reliable than UNIX.
Oh boy, more speculative click bait about OSX Lion (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing changes. Haters hate, and people who hate change will bicker. Eventually 10.7.1 will come out and fix some of the problems that are discovered during general release and life will go on. I remember similar stories about Leopard and Snow leopard.
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Not this time. This isn't about bugs, it's about intentionally removed functionality.
I do sincerely hope Apple gets a clue from these articles and realizes that they screwed up. But I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not recommending any more Mac servers for my customers unless they have a specific need. I've always been a big Mac proponent, but I'm getting tired of apologizing. This time, I'm not going to, I'll be installing more Linux servers as it's time to replace the 10.6 servers I've installed, un
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I do sincerely hope Apple gets a clue from these articles and realizes that they screwed up. But I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not recommending any more Mac servers for my customers unless they have a specific need. I've always been a big Mac proponent, but I'm getting tired of apologizing. This time, I'm not going to, I'll be installing more Linux servers as it's time to replace the 10.6 servers I've installed, unless Apple fixes this mess.
I'm sure you had good reasons, but I'm not sure I would ever have chosen an Apple server, as Apple were always a bit lukewarm on enterprise support, even when they tried their hardest it was a bit half-hearted, and were never really competing well with Linux or even Windows servers for performance or available server software, though I guess they did have it all presented in a neat package with a nice admin UI. Linux is a much better choice for servers at this point, and in a few years I would expect Apple
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THANK YOU for not proposing Windows servers as some sort of logical rollover.
Time Machine over a network is broken (Score:2)
Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
I would never have considered using OS X Server at home before but I an now thinking about using my current Mini for a home server after I upgrade to a new machine because it now seems doable and worthwhile to me.
Best of Both Worlds (Score:2)
Honestly, It seems to me that the things that are best done in a windowed environment (user management, policy management, etc) have been kept in a nice GUI, whereas the things that have been traditionally configured in text files or via the command line on *nix servers have been kept that way. Quit moaning about having to actually learn how to administer a server. I don't see how IT guys in a enterprise are really going to see this as a bad thing. If they already know how to administer a *nix box, they ca
Elimination? (Score:2, Interesting)
... the elimination of advanced GUI administration tools...
Incorrect. Lion does indeed include the most awesome GUI administration tool in existence.
It's called Terminal.
Can Terminal do this? (Score:2)
Stop using the GUI... (Score:2)
Honestly, having used OS X Server for years, I long ago stopped using the GUI tools for anything that it wasn't required for. Simply because it was always happy to blast away any advanced changes that might have been made by hand. Nothing like having to restore backups of httpd.conf simply because Server Admin or System Update decided to just write over the existing one. Hell, I've also had System Update simply write a blank virgin setup over our LDAP setup. So if 10.7 looses half the GUI and in return
Another Sad Day For Mac IT (Score:2)
This is truly a major disappointment - right on the heels of the discontinued xServe.
I couldn't be more sad for the direction and the position Jobs & Co. has put Mac IT in. It's like a nightmare. Here we had the best stuff, server and Server OS-wise and they wreck it all within the span of a year.
I'm starting to get pissed off, and I'm a long time FANBOY. I fucking love the Macintosh. There's nowhere to run.
What the hell are they thinking?
They deserve whatever comes their way now, they've demoted us to
As a real Mac sysadmin I will tell you (Score:3)
Beyond basic configuration, real Mac OS X sysadmins don't use the GUI's. The things the author gripes about (QTSS, MySQL, NFS) were never really expansive in the GUI tools beyond "enable networking" or "run # processes" or "set this service to run on port 8000". QTSS has been replaced, not removed and no longer requires server involvement beyond a file share. MySQL is replaced by PostgreSQL and as said before, beyond "enable networking" really had never any GUI admin tools thus we were still going to command line or phpMyAdmin. MySQL is still there by the way, not removed entirely. NFS same thing, shares were never done in the "NFS" tab, they were done in the "Sharing" tab together with AFP and SMB.
SMB as a PDC/BDC is maybe a slight loss in small environments but thanks to the licensing issues it was stuck on 2 and never could've made it bundled in Mac OS X to 3 (and Windows 7 support) as GPLv3 prevents the proprietary ties to the configuration subsystem. There is documentation available however on how to run Samba 3 (and binary packages as well) on Mac OS X Server and run it as a PDC/BDC against LDAP (which Open Directory is), it just won't be integrated.
I like that XSAN is now included for free. Great if you want to build a large mail or Apache or any type of cluster and very simple to set up. Also the Profiles addition will be a boon in many (especially the more mobile) environments. A lot of that could be done already (provisioning) in Open Directory (using MCX) but not many users like to be bothered with locking down their environment.
Mac ? Windows ? Server ? hahahahaha. (Score:2)
just have a look.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ [webhostingtalk.com]
community forum for hosting/it/datacenters. you can find all kinds of people from industry, ranging from (now the biggest dat
Sensible (Score:3)
I think Apple has come to realize it's simply not a player in the server space. Being Unix, it's hard to compete with Linux when your greatest strength - the UI - isn't really important. There's very little that Apple offers - in the server space, anyway - that the other *nixes don't also provide.
That said, this article is silly. The author likes to refer to "those of us in IT", but clearly he's not particularly technically oriented. Unix admins don't just prefer the command line - they DEMAND it. For a Unix admin, the loss of GUI controls is basically irrelevant. And even if you like having a GUI interface (and, btw, please turn in your geek card at the door), the plaintext configuration files for Apache, Samba, OpenLDAP, CUPS, or what have you are not particularly arcane.
I think the author falls into the camp of people that like to play at being a server admin (seriously - Podcast Producer? Lamenting a GUI for MySQL?) as more or less a "fun little hobby". For those people, Mac Server was a viable alternative to Windows. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not a commercially viable market.
Not so bad (Score:3)
This isn't really that bad.
The important stuff (MCX) has been enhanced such that client management---which is where the effort is---is easy, fast and comprehensive. The less important stuff is hidden from small shops who would just muck it up, and at the enterprise is usually provided elsewhere (ie, they'll already have an AD domain, Exchange or suchlike, FTP and web servers, file servers etc, etc). Basically, they deprecated stuff most people don't use, or have better solutions for.
About the only real pain is losing enterprise print services, but even that's not too huge a loss considering that, again, there's better tools out there that enterprises are already using, and small shops wouldn't go anywhere near those features.
It would be nice if Apple provided better hardware and/or allowed you to deploy MacOS X Server VMs for things like MCX or ARD. That, more than any of the author's other complaints, is what keeps OS X out of the enterprise. Other nice touches would be SSO on iOS and some way to extend Time Machine services to non-Apple Filers, or if Home Sync/Mobile Users is somehow no longer a festering pile of suck (which, to be fair, is the case on Windows and UNIX when you get to the gigabytes of files stage and are sync'ing profiles)
Re:Server Admin Tools (Score:5, Informative)
The server admin tool you're talking about is cut down compared to the tools in v10.6. Some key screens are now completely gone and so configuring some aspects will not work.
My favourite feature of the new server.app is how the ssl certs keep resetting to bad configurations.
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Yes. RTFA.
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The share price and earnings of a vendor doesn't help the IT department do their work. IT doesn't care about share price and earnings, as long as they're both positive numbers and not trending downward (meaning the vendor isn't likely to go bankrupt and thus leave them with unsupported product).
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" IT doesn't care about share price and earnings, as long as they're both positive numbers and not trending downward"
You might want to go look at any other vendor's numbers then...
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Re:We get the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
So IT departments may not like apple for various reasons.
Look at the share price and the earnings. Apple, quite rightly, couldn't care less.
I don't think it needs an article a day to say what IT departments think of apple either
Slashdot is not the Wall Street Journal - most people here don't care about Apple's share price and earnings, but many of us do care about what to do with our existing OSX servers, whether or not we should plan an upgrade to Lion, and what impact that will have on us.
In the same boat (Score:3)
I'm also a Mac admin and we're actively looking for replacements for Apple's gear two or three years down the road. We made the mistake, being a mostly Mac company (about 20% Windows) of letting ourselves be convinced into switching over to a Mac server based server infrastructure back in 2006, just around the time Apple killed the XRaid. I suppose the writing was on the wall back then already, but we didn't really want to look too closely. When Apple killed the XServer with two months notice at the end of
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Apple seems to imply that it will work. But there's no way I'd even consider trying it without cloning the drive and thoroughly testing it on the clone first.
And for the foreseeable future, it looks like 10.6 Server is a much better product. I'd keep an eye out for used copies of that, maybe you can find it cheap.
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But you will put all the MCSE's out of work...
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A GUI is not progress. It is the opposite. For any automated/scripted functionality or generally complicated task the CLI will be much faster.
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For any automated/scripted functionality or generally complicated task the CLI will be much faster.
Assuming you already know how to do it. One of the things that GUIs help with is context, on one screen you can see all of the relevant options for what you're doing, there can be links to help or documentation about what you're looking at, etc. For a person going into a complicated task with little knowledge about how to complete the task, a CLI is going to be much slower because of the extra research time needed to figure out what your options even are, let alone how to use everything. A well-designed
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The truth is that many system administrators prefer the command line, because you can come up with a bunch of repeatable commands that can be put into a script file and replayed on lots of machines, and because you can more efficiently work with a command-line over a remote access protocol like SSH (becuase less data needs to be sent across the network). Of course, the GP's attitude doesn't really help people appreciate the power and utility of the command line, and I certainly admit that crippling or remov
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The truth is that many system administrators prefer the command line, because you can come up with a bunch of repeatable commands that can be put into a script file and replayed on lots of machines
The truth is that most real-world system administrators prefer things like Group Policy, that allows you to easily configure which machines or users get which custom configuration without having to write insanely complicated scripts.
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You grow your own food, I just go wandering through the forest buck naked and eat the random berries, nuts, and leaves I find. I also just use rocks and sticks to kill my own food and then chow down no need for fire here, since you know progress is overrated.
In reality just because something is new or shiny doesn't necessarily make it better.
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In reality just because something is new or shiny doesn't necessarily make it better.
I'm pretty sure that's exactly the point of the story with the new version of OSX removing the GUI tools.
Of course, it's very difficult to argue that a GUI is not an improvement over a command line in terms of making it easy for a person to interface with a computer. A GUI obviously has superior capabilities (in fact, your GUI can even have a command line), but like I said above, the GUI is only as good as the designer. There's nothing inherently bad about GUIs, only GUI designers.
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First, this article is about Lion Server and you seem to be talking about Mac OS X Lion Client, but what the heck...
I've installed Lion on my client machine and I got to say, that I love it. It installed on my system with ease and didn't muck up the way I had my Snow Leopard environment setup. Everything is snappier, seriously. My iTunes used to show the little beach ball anytime I tried to move to another library or click on a new song. Mail, same thing.
Your beef with the icons, it doesn't bother me as muc
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