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Apple Discontinues macOS Server
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It's not all that common to have dedicated server appliances in 2022. It's all about virtualization and containers at this point. And this is what my Mac Studio is going to be as well. It's pretty much going to act as my secondary computer running macOS, but at the same time be my new home server replacing my 16-core Windows Server by replicating everything my current server is doing via Parallels.
My current server is acting as a file server, time machine backup server, torrent server, plex media server, DHCP server, DNS server, firewall, HomeBridge server and UniFi Application/Controller. To achieve this is the most efficient manner Plex is running natively on Windows Server to get hardware-accelerated video transcoding (can't get that via Hyper-V or containers), torrents are also running natively because of my 1Gbps internet speeds requires a local SSD cache for qBittorrent to not get in trouble when random writes to the HDD array is getting too slow causing disk overload, moving the torrenting into a VM would just add additional overhead and I obviously have Windows File Sharing natively on the Windows Server. Time Machine Backup and Apple File Sharing is running via its own Ubuntu Server VM, DHCP and DNS is running on another Ubuntu Server VM with pi-hole deployed, Homebridge is running on a third Ubuntu Server VM and the UniFi Application is running on a fourth Ubuntu Server VM. The firewall is running on yet another VM with Check Point VEN installation which is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
There are several reasons why you want to do it like this. Separating each function into its own virtual environment is great for stability. If a Ubuntu Server update or whatever breaks something related to HomeBridge, I don't have to affect all the other functions when trying to troubleshoot and fix it. Having everything in VMs makes backups and recovery extremely easy as a result of being able to utilise snapshots of the entire VM. And it becomes really easy to transition your server to new hardware.
I can basically transfer everything I've got from my X86 server to the M1 Ultra Mac Studio without any issues as I will have no trouble getting all the same things running in Ubuntu Server for ARM via Parallels on macOS. The only thing I won't be able to transition is the Check Point firewall but I've gotten myself a dedicated Palo Alto PA-440 appliance that is going to replace the firewall portion of setup.
The reason why I'm moving everything, as my current server is more than capable of keeping on for years to come is because of efficiency. My current server isn't very efficient and my wife wants us to try lowering both heat output and noise, and the Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra is a perfect virtualization server considering you get blazing fast 16 high-performance cores that are crazy efficient. It will be faster while using like 1/8 of the power compared to my current server. No to mention how tiny it is so it can replace my M1 Mac mini as my secondary computer in the office as well, no longer any need to have the server located in the shed.
My current server is acting as a file server, time machine backup server, torrent server, plex media server, DHCP server, DNS server, firewall, HomeBridge server and UniFi Application/Controller. To achieve this is the most efficient manner Plex is running natively on Windows Server to get hardware-accelerated video transcoding (can't get that via Hyper-V or containers), torrents are also running natively because of my 1Gbps internet speeds requires a local SSD cache for qBittorrent to not get in trouble when random writes to the HDD array is getting too slow causing disk overload, moving the torrenting into a VM would just add additional overhead and I obviously have Windows File Sharing natively on the Windows Server. Time Machine Backup and Apple File Sharing is running via its own Ubuntu Server VM, DHCP and DNS is running on another Ubuntu Server VM with pi-hole deployed, Homebridge is running on a third Ubuntu Server VM and the UniFi Application is running on a fourth Ubuntu Server VM. The firewall is running on yet another VM with Check Point VEN installation which is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
There are several reasons why you want to do it like this. Separating each function into its own virtual environment is great for stability. If a Ubuntu Server update or whatever breaks something related to HomeBridge, I don't have to affect all the other functions when trying to troubleshoot and fix it. Having everything in VMs makes backups and recovery extremely easy as a result of being able to utilise snapshots of the entire VM. And it becomes really easy to transition your server to new hardware.
I can basically transfer everything I've got from my X86 server to the M1 Ultra Mac Studio without any issues as I will have no trouble getting all the same things running in Ubuntu Server for ARM via Parallels on macOS. The only thing I won't be able to transition is the Check Point firewall but I've gotten myself a dedicated Palo Alto PA-440 appliance that is going to replace the firewall portion of setup.
The reason why I'm moving everything, as my current server is more than capable of keeping on for years to come is because of efficiency. My current server isn't very efficient and my wife wants us to try lowering both heat output and noise, and the Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra is a perfect virtualization server considering you get blazing fast 16 high-performance cores that are crazy efficient. It will be faster while using like 1/8 of the power compared to my current server. No to mention how tiny it is so it can replace my M1 Mac mini as my secondary computer in the office as well, no longer any need to have the server located in the shed.
True. That´s why we still have a MP3,1 running Sierra with the suitable old Server.App.
Nice side effect is that while APFS remained "beta" on that macOS, you can use/make Time Machine backups from modern macOS clients on dedicated APFS volumes in Sierra. The server app also handles/shows them in the right way.
Hint for folks interested to go that route: The only thing that turns "sour" and reboots the machine from time to time is when a mix of HFS+ and APFS time machine accesses is attempted. We sorted everything out to only use APFS on destination volumes and it works seamlessly from Monterey clients... Hope it stays that way for a couple of months! ;-)
Apple Computer Inc. was a great computer manufacturer that also happened to make great small consumer devices.
Apple Inc. is a consumer device manufacturer that happens to also make computers.
I've been using ZeroTier on all my devices and have found it works really well. It's basically a VPN that functions more like SD-WAN. All the computers you have joined to the virtual network behave like they are on a local LAN together. mDNS/bonjour just works between all the devices you add to your network and I use that to access the built in screen sharing and other services on several Macs. Works 100x better than Back to My Mac ever did and has been more reliable than VPN server on macOS Server ever was.
The App TinkerTool has a UI for setting up Permissions, ACLs and Inheritance that is very similar to the way the macOS Server app used to handle them and it has worked 100% as expected for me. Unfortunately it is a $17 3rd party purchase, but I find it combined with the built-in SMB file sharing makes a pretty decent file server.
Sure you can. The features were removed from the OS in part because it's pretty rare for people to run any sort of web environment directly in the OS. Most use containers/virtualization packages that make it easy to deploy and scale all kinds of services and environments. Search YouTube for a video on setting up Docker and Docker Desktop.
JumpCloud offers their platform 100% free forever for up to 10 devices/users. Mosyle, offers theirs free for up to 30 devices and is probably the most similar fro Jamf.
Apple is clearly not interested in the server marker, so it's a moot point.
But otherwise, no, the characteristics of M1 are different from what is required for server farms. Server chips usually have more, slower-clocked cores, and need to be able to support things like ECC (self-correcting) memory.
You will own nothing and you'll be happy and safe?
If you really need to safeguard critical company data, there are other specialized appliances. But that wasn´t the objective of Apple server either.
Otherwise you will be fine with the cloud and/or NAS (or anything hybrid). Just remember the rule of 3 in backup you data.
...And what computers they are, though. You don't spend R&D on stuff like the M1 Ultra because you don't care much about your computer line.
To be fair, their services are top notch as long as you comply with their agendas. I'm not a fan of abolishing ownership (even with its own risks). The internet is so dependent on a few mega corporations and that's bad.
Practically and realistically speaking you are correct. It's impossible to reach the quality of infrastructure that these companies provide. Too bad they don't stay at their lane (technology) and meddle with other things that they aren't supposed to.
This. There is plenty of interest in ARM-based servers because of their low power consumption (and hence low heat output - air conditioning is a big issue in data centres) and several companies (including Amazon) have produced ARM chips specifically designed for the server market.
Apple Silicon is designed for laptops (Apple's big money spinner) and workstations with a strong emphasis on smooth user interactions and media production - a lot of the M1's power comes not from some ARM magic, but from the combination of it's on-chip GPUs, unified RAM, hardware codecs and software optimised for those. It's certainly not ideal for the sort of "server" applications that MacOS Server targetted - file serving, email, web servers.
I think it's possible that the new Mac Pro will turn out to have some nod towards "render farm"-type applications for video/3D that do use the GPU/media engine features of Apple Silicon - but I suspect that would be very specific to certain software packages from Apple-friendly publishers, and not quite the same as general server use.
The question is, how could Apple excel in the server market when most of the Mac's "unique selling points" are to do with the interactive, single-user experience? Since it's actually Unix, MacOS is potentially perfectly capable as a server OS - and back when the XServe was launched that was a big thing, with commercial Unixes, Windows NT server, Netware etc. having expensive per-user licensing. Since then, Linux has become widely accepted as an enterpise-class server OS - for free, just pay for as much or as little tech support as you need. There's also been a drift towards open protocols for everything (and even things like SMB have been effectively opened up) - including amongst desktop Macs (bye bye Appletalk/AFP etc.) Under the surface, Mac OS server was becoming just a point-and-click front end to the same standard server software that you'd be running under Linux... and, frankly, if I'm configuring a complex web or file server setup I'd rather have a text-based config file that can be copied, annotated, have chunks commented out, cut, pasted, stored in a version control system etc.
It saddens me to think the Mac public is so uninformed that comments like this will fly by and nobody notices. Small Office? Competition from Synology? LOL. The OSX you're running on your MBA has the same UNIX (like) underpinnings as the highest end servers in the world. Go to a terminal and pull up man-pages and see all the references to FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc. This is why they're dropping a "server" version, it's not needed and is silly it even or ever exists/existed. You have a full unix server at your fingertips, you just have to do it from a terminal, like it's meant to be. Apple has spent decades dabbling in crappy front-end tools to compete in the corporate world. The reality is they became a first class enterprise platform the day they introduced OSX, and has had this platform ever since. There downfall has been continuing to update the server hardware. For instance, I'm a big Apple fan, but manage a mixed Windows and Ubuntu (and some FreeBSD) environment. I could replace all my Ubuntu servers tomorrow with OSX, but I can't load it on anything but Apple hardware, which limits me greatly. The software will do it, the hardware just creates a barrier, particularly since everything these days is virtualized.
No, you spend R&D on stuff like the M1 Ultra because your engineering team has shifted focus to mobile CPU technology and it is easier to differentiate your product from the rest of the industry when you don't use commodity components.
There is a reason why the Mac Pro has always been a Xeon workstation. It isn't because most people doing video or photo editing actually benefit from that technology (in almost all cases, they don't). It is because Apple would have hard time justifying a $5000 price tag on a computer built with the same components as a $1200 PC.
This is about per user per device. What about devices like Macs that can be multi-user? Anyway, for now US only and probably it is best to move away from Apple for this kind of stuff completely. Apple is just not reliable as a vendor.
That’s it right there. macOS is based on Unix. It’s very easy for Mac power users to pick up Linux because both operating systems share so many of the same console commands (ls, mkdir, cp, mv, etc. etc.)
Now with Swift available as an option for creating Linux server apps it doesn’t really make sense to have dedicated macOS servers. Let each OS handle what it does best and we can use established conventions like RESTful web services to handle the sharing of resources over a network.
Off topic, but a big reason is over-reliance on contractors. The contractors have no motivation for QA. They focus on getting projects completed to minimum requirements as quickly as possible. For the bean counters at Apple this is a great way to save money.
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There's MicroMDM but it's not really a turnkey product that you can just start using like you can with a proper commercial MDM.
Apache has been included in the base macOS for many years. Managing a web server hasn't been a part of the Server app since around macOS 10.12 Sierra, so you aren't missing anything with this discontinuation.
Server has never had any functionality for web development; in general Server was just a GUI front end to standard Unix tools.
Yes. The older macOS Server had mail server, calendar server, web server, file sharing server, Wiki, and much more. which were all maintained (e.g. LCM, security patches) by Apple. The current version still has device management (MDM — manage your devices) and LDAP (Open Directory). Some stuff has moved from macOS Server to ordinary macOS. But with caveats, see below. And definitely not all stuff. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208312.
I used to run macOS X Server from the early days. I still use macOS Server for MDM and OD, but am using MacPorts for my other server-side services (postfix/dovecot mail server with DMARC, RSpamd (superior anti spam), MinIO object storage behind nginx which also handles the web server).
Monterey by the way has some deep bugs/flaws apparently having to do with Apple tightening the security screws fanatically, making stuff really fail (e.g. the application firewall may hose the kernel by leaking sockets it seems, so using the application firewall (socketfilterfw) in combination with a mail server that gets a lot of connections will trip you up).
The current situation with Open Directory is that if you use OD on a Mac, you cannot share files from it (kerberos issues when you have macOS clients bound to macOS server's OD) — it just doesn't work. Apple is not going to solve that bug, they are going to leave the LDAP business, apparently.
Their tightening of the screws seems to break all kind of things they are not interested in. E.g. using /etc/fstab to mount disks at boot time still works for now, but services started from launchd do not have write access to mounted disks.
You want to know something funny? Apple still maintains postfix (Mail Transfer Agent (MTA), part of a mail server) and others. See https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/postfix/commit/02669db738e742be8e56f5e5444fd07831e05884 where it seems they prepared postfix for the removal of python in Monterey 12.3. They're apparently still using this stuff internally. They're just not supporting it for the SoHo crowd.
Apple is a company that combines 'insane levels of attention' to some things with 'insane levels of neglect' to others. This was also the case for NeXT.
macOS remains a 'Unix' compatible system in the core. As long as that is the case, it will be possible to run a lot of open source solutions (including server stuff) on it. But at the same time they are not paying attention to breaking stuff that is required for running server-like stuff that is not their own (like running stuff at boot time or when there is no user logged in)
Simple. Maintaining multiple operating systems means a doubling of your efforts to keep its secure, patched, etc. So, as long as I can run my server stuff on macOS, I have only one OS type to worry about, have know how about, etc.
Agree. But there were some interesting integrations. Think for instance being able to send push notifications to your devices. E.g., you run your own mail server and you can send push notifications to your iPhones.
I stay away from Homebrew these days and have moved to MacPorts (which has some (fundamental) advantages). Until today, brew still doesn't have postfix for instance, while MacPorts does. And Homebrew's security model used to be questionable (no idea how it is today), e.g. making /usr/local/bin writable for an ordinary user which is a huge risk in my book.
Yes. Those who started out with macOS server that contained an APNS certificate can still (until today) get it renewed and keep using it (for mail: MacPorts has a dovecot port that includes APNS so if you still have a cert it works). For how long, nobody knows. How to get APNS working after that for your mail server etc, no idea.
I’d add that it ran on Apple hardware seamlessly. I had plenty of small clients that were running OSX Server on older G4 or G5 systems that they already had on hand which made the cost of entry very appealing.