Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything
Ghost protocol
Mountain Lion Server isn’t entirely rosy picture though. There’s some consternation online over the lack of explicit support for DHCP in this release. That will catch you out if you’ve used this in the previous version of Server; Apple’s quiet removal of DHCP as a named service in Server is curious. However, this is enabled behind the scenes if you switch on NetInstall in Server or if you enable Internet Sharing in the Mac’s standard System Preferences utility.
Advanced options when you need them
Alas, no GUI-based config control though, so you’ll need to resort to command-line tweaks to customise things. Krypted.com has a useful article on running DHCP on Mountain Lion Server, but no matter how much you love the CLI, it’s clear that DHCP support is not as Mac-like as it used to be.
If I went into all of Server’s features and abilities in detail you’d probably just stop reading, so for those that want every niggly detail you’ll be delighted to know that there’s an in-depth guide and manual for Mountain Lion Server available on-line – perfect bedtime reading for geeks.
Server is so easy that it is a no-brainer for workgroups, and small businesses. Macs aren’t the computer-non-grata that they used to be, and £13.99 is a couple of drinks in a City bar. Yet you buy into something that’s actually pretty studly, with a good pedigree, and can be up and running in a minute or two (as opposed to needing a day’s worth of dedicated massaging) – that’s pretty bloody impressive.
The apparent lack of DHCP could be an issue, certainly for those who want to manage everything from one server. This specific issue isn’t as clear-cut as it may seem, but it is a slightly odd move. Indeed, at this level, is there enough to tempt the ever-skeptical enterprise market? Alas, it’s up against folk with a fondness for the hair-shirt ‘comfort’ of Windows-based servers; it’s what they know, after all. So, by and large I think not, but that’s their (expensive) loss.
Verdict
Mountain Lion Server turns traditional serving on its head: it is almost stupidly cheap, it has no artificial client limits, it is almost sinfully easy to implement, and it instals on any Mac capable of running Mountain Lion. If you need to provide some kind of server services then get this. Even if you need to get a new Mac – the mini is an easy choice – you won’t regret paying that extra £14 for OS X Server. ®
More Apple Reviews |
||||
 Apple
Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion |
 Apple
MacBook Air 11in |
 Apple
15in MacBook Pro with Retina Display |
 Apple
MacBook Pro 13in |
 Apple TV
3rd gen |
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
Apple OS X Server
COMMENTS
Come on people!
Of course the author may be being a bit silly with his enterprise comment, but this is clearly not seriously aimed at anything of the sort. It IS aimed at small business who already have a few Macs on a small LAN who have maybe outgrown a NAS, and want to get in to shared mail and other services. Hence the bargain basement price: it's not about raking in money but about providing a service to existing Mac users that might just steer them away from defecting to other non-Apple alternatives.
Server != Enterprise
Just because it has Server in the name, doesn't mean this is exclusively for Enterprise.
As people have said, it's a very cheap, very easy way to provide server type services for the home user and the small business team. Yes, there's more feature-full ways of doing it, but equally, they require a greater level of knowledge and maintenance attention, possibly a dedicated person. This provides a way to bring server functionality into your home or office without a large cost of hardware, software and hiring someone with server experience.
Okay, and now from someone who knows…
At my 'work' work, we use Windows Server (endless headaches, pain in the arse) and Linux (excellent, if not the easiest to configure) running on DL360, DL380 and BL460 hardware (which is very nice, except for the BL460 which only appears to be nice until you try to use it).
My sister runs her own business with about 40 employees, many of whom are jetting all over the world. I do their IT for them on a part time basis and so, given that I have a day job to contend with and I really don't want to be mucking around with support all the time, I set them up with Macs. Best idea I ever had - I haven't had a support call in about six months (that one took about 5 minutes to resolve, and turned out to the ISP at fault).
As her business grew, we decided that she really needed her own server to handle her company address books (with around 6,000 contacts at the current time), calendar, mail, software updates, FTP server / cloud storage and so forth. Xserve being rather out of budget, and a little too pricey, we settled on a pair on Minis and a UPS. Do you know what? They do the job perfectly. Because they're a pair, we've managed 100% uptime so far (which just goes to show what one person and no bureaucracy can achieve) - when one needs to be upgraded, the other takes the load and vice versa. They're running Leopard Server - no need to be state of the art with this, and they can't run anything much newer anyway (they're early 32bit Intel Core Duo - so SL is the best they can do) - they're getting rather long in the tooth now. Are they scheduled to be replaced? Nope. Not yet. We have a spare unit - and when one fails I'll replace it immediately (with the aforementioned spare) and buy new Mac Minis then. Reckon that'll be years yet though.
So yes, Macs do make sense - even for fairly large small businesses. I get to do my day job, and she gets to run her business without bothering me for support issues. I do understand the head-in-the-sand mentality that Macs can't hack it. A Mac is a little different, and one can never appreciate the benefits of a new system based on a cursory glance. I reckon a months immersion is the minimum requirement before one is qualified to comment on whether a system is worthwhile or not. On this basis, I can comment on Windows, various Linuxes (SLES, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Debian, Arch), OS X and VMS (yes, really - on VAX and Alpha, although the VAXes will be retired next year) - because those are the OSes I use on a daily basis. If you find me pontificating about anything else, please remind me to STFU and I'll eat my words.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
