I can recommend a Synology as a server. Does everything.
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Apple Discontinues macOS Server
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It is interesting that Apple -- one of the big three with Microsoft and Linux -- never really made a big effort in this space. Seems like a very big missed opportunity, but the ship sailed a long time ago, and it's tough to get a foot in the door now.
I'm still running Server on a Mac Mini and I'm considering a migration of CALDAV and CARDDAV services to a Synology NAS I use currently just as a media file server. Without APNS on the Synology, however, does that mean any change I make to a calendar on my MBP would not show up automatically on my iPhone unless I manually refresh it? If so, that's quite a convenient feature to lose.
No, that was part of Profile Manager in Server. There are plenty of more robust tools that’ll manage iOS/iPadOS/Macs, though.
If you’re going to produce a server offering, you shouldn’t really be running code that is aimed at the desktop (macOS). I guess Apple see it as unviable to produce a version of macOS that is stripped down and optimised for server applications. Which is fair enough. But who knows, one day we might see vast server farms of Apple hardware running macOS Server as a dedicated OS.
This was bound to happen eventually. Watching macOS Server.app lose functionality over the years was sad to see, but made sense, as things moved into the client macOS and other services replaced them (such as iCloud).
That said, I am using a G4 Mac Mini running 10.5 Server for my older machines still, and it serves up files to modern Macs just fine, so I wouldn't worry about losing functionality of the last Server if it still suits your needs any time soon.
That said, I am using a G4 Mac Mini running 10.5 Server for my older machines still, and it serves up files to modern Macs just fine, so I wouldn't worry about losing functionality of the last Server if it still suits your needs any time soon.
Do you know of any free tools? I remember looking into Jamf, but it was like $10 / user / month
I would go out on a limb and say that the successor for the Time Capsule and macOS Server would be a Synology appliance, preferably a "+" model which has btrfs and better file error checking. I also recommend at least a two drive model, with RAID 1, so if one hard drive fails, your data is still intact. In fact, I have an older Synology model where the HDD failed today... and there was zero loss of data.
Everything that macOS Server can do, a Synology can do, be it a LDAP or even Active Directory server, a Web server, a wiki server, and many other things. I have used Synologies with Macs in production environments, and properly configured, they work well, and are very secure.
I use the caveat "properly configured", just to remind people to set an admin user separate from the file sharing users, enable two factor authentication, enable firewalling, enable the security advisor and AV, and have backups. You can use an external HDD for backups, a cloud provider, or both.
Even though I really, really wish Apple could make a successor to the Time Capsule, I would say that a Synology NAS is the next best thing, and they are fairly reasonably priced.
My small music related business used to run a Mac Pro 1,1 on Snow Leopard Server as the major file server. It was easily the most stable piece of hardware + OS that I have ever used. I set it up initially with the intention of just test running it, ended up getting the SMB server running and imported the list of users in like half an hour, actually deployed it right afterwards, never even needed to reboot once for the following 3 years or so. Mind you I got no IT background, just a business owner with some Macs experience. It got other server functions pre-cloud that were really handy, like the CardDAV and CalDAV servers, of course Time Machine, and your standard stuff like Apache / FTP etc. Granted many of these are "easy" to be done via commandline or some 3rd party app, but having everything in a single OS with a single pane of glass, with human-readable interface was really helpful. Not to mention being a server OS it cut the fat compared to a client OS, Snow Leopard client was already extremely stable, and the server variant made it even more so.
I really miss the days when Apple was visibly competent as a tech company. Nowdays we moved on to Synology for servers, and Ubiquiti for network appliances (mourning AirPort Extremes...)
I really miss the days when Apple was visibly competent as a tech company. Nowdays we moved on to Synology for servers, and Ubiquiti for network appliances (mourning AirPort Extremes...)
When more than half of your trillion dollar company's revenue come from selling phones, you would probably also drop your server business. Enterprise business takes effort in long term support, cost-effective hardware, and reliability. With the way current Apple releases buggy software on premium devices, they are no longer fit in the enterprise market.
It's because of the hot-cake iPhone.
Do remember that the iPhone is generating more than half of Apple's current revenue.
It’s a shame that it’s not possible anymore to use a Mac as a DHCP server. It used to be. But no more. At least as far as I can tell.
It feels like Apple has this amazingly powerful OS that they’ve locked down so much that a lot of its power has been lost. For some users that power really is what is needed.
An Mac mini server was a pretty cool little bit of kit.
It feels like Apple has this amazingly powerful OS that they’ve locked down so much that a lot of its power has been lost. For some users that power really is what is needed.
An Mac mini server was a pretty cool little bit of kit.
The article is wrong. Apple have been deprecating Server for years. It used to be a really powerful thing with loads of features that have been lost completely.
This happens with Windows too, I work daily with Windows no sense, memory leaks in clients, broken hardware drivers.
10.12.6 was the last real version of OSX server.
Looks like I will be forced to use Linux as my servers, so RPis for some systems and intel NUCs for others.
This will mean moving away from Apples services too, although these have become less useable over time too, always pushing towards Apples Paid services.
I tried Server once but couldn’t achieve what I needed from it.
I have several Macs but I do the same work on all of them and am tired of having to install/update the same apps on each, migrate versions of my files, etc. I just wanted a way to log into any of my Macs and my home folder would be there - always the latest version. I thought macOS Server was capable of doing this (effectively it would store your home folder, apps and preferences and smartly download it all to the Mac you’re working on). Couldn’t get it working but would love this to be a thing.
At the minute I just keep my work stuff on an external drive but it’s not ideal because not all my work can be put on the drive. For example: MySQL databases which typically live in ~/Library/Application Support/ somewhere. You also can’t keep apps on it because like above, their supplementary files are stored in Library.
If anyone has a better idea, I’m listening. iCloud Drive is not suitable either. I tried once and despite it not being terribly big in total size, there were so many files that it actually broke my iCloud Drive and I was on the phone to Apple for weeks trying to resolve it. Syncing just stopped. Refused to work.
I have several Macs but I do the same work on all of them and am tired of having to install/update the same apps on each, migrate versions of my files, etc. I just wanted a way to log into any of my Macs and my home folder would be there - always the latest version. I thought macOS Server was capable of doing this (effectively it would store your home folder, apps and preferences and smartly download it all to the Mac you’re working on). Couldn’t get it working but would love this to be a thing.
At the minute I just keep my work stuff on an external drive but it’s not ideal because not all my work can be put on the drive. For example: MySQL databases which typically live in ~/Library/Application Support/ somewhere. You also can’t keep apps on it because like above, their supplementary files are stored in Library.
If anyone has a better idea, I’m listening. iCloud Drive is not suitable either. I tried once and despite it not being terribly big in total size, there were so many files that it actually broke my iCloud Drive and I was on the phone to Apple for weeks trying to resolve it. Syncing just stopped. Refused to work.
It is 2022. Most people have high speed internet. Apple´s main objective has always been home and small office. They are perfectly served with cloudservices and/or a local NAS. And they should be. For a consumer and small office, this will be enough. You should not serve servers exposed to the internet. Bots are scanning all the time your home or small office network, trying to find a vulnerability (e.g. less secured IOT things like security camera) Leave servers to the big guys (MS/Google/Amazon). They have far more redundancy than you at home if everything goes wrong.
I have a 2012 Quad Core i7 mac mini running Catalina + Server which runs Profile Manager so I can remote support and push configs to my families phones + laptops.... they dont' even have a proper migration guide - i've moved all other server functions to a supermicro server but there's no good replacement to profile manager apart from paid MDM solutions.