Is Mac Server DEAD (no, not 57,005)?

[jscooper22]

Hi,

Serious question. Now that they've moved even basic File Sharing out of any kind of professional administrator's UI (or so I've heard), not to mention no new hardware useable as a real server for years, is it dead and we should just give up and buy a windows box? Too much money to be made in phones maybe and forcing everyone to use their "cloud" for storage? Wonder why they don't just spin off a separate "Apple Computer" company; shame as it's best darn UI on top of *nix I've ever seen.

Anyone else even trying or am I all that's left.

Thanks,

Jeff
(not so slowly turning into a grumpy old computer guy) 🙁

 

[hobowankenobi]

Maybe. Kinda.

Have not moved to the latest, but Server 5 on 10.12 is (was) still pretty "servery". Running a maxed out Mini with SSD and in a Sonnet xMac case plus an Areca RAID card and a 12 bay rack-mounted array still works pretty darn well as of 10.12 to Share 14TB of space. It also runs a second VM on the same hardware.

Looking at a good overview, although it is different, file serving is still there, and in the OS, vs. in the Server app. Which is actually pretty cool (assuming it works satisfactorily.) And to be fair, Server has been broken many times in the past, going way back more than a decade. I never even consider using server until there have been several patches/updates. Factor more time for bigger changes....so I may sit out 10.13 for another 6 months or more.

Windows is not the only other option though. Why not NAS...for file sharing? That will likely be the replacement for me...if/when the Mini gets retired.

Apple decided not to just copy Windows server more than 10 years ago. Once they were sure there was no requirement for Mac servers so Mac workstations could thrive in enterprise....they began to back out. I too wish they had not, but I understand there is little to no need now. So many other options, besides just Win Server.

 

[DJLC]

For most intents and purposes, yes. It's dead.

I still run a 2009 Xserve with Server 4. But I've migrated most of the mission-critical stuff to Windows or Linux. All it does now is share printers and run iOS caching, and if it dies, I can just replace it with a Mini running macOS without Server.app (Caching is now part of the base OS). Reliability and usability has gone downhill in Server since 10.6, and at this point I have little to no faith in it at all.