As they used to say, "nobody has ever been fired for buying IBM." I think its safer to buy from a company that has a name and decent reputation in the server business is safer than Apple who has a recent history of pulling out of the business and never offered the variety of hardware and services of any of the major players. Even ignoring the high end players, I'd say that, for instance, a Dell server with Red Hat Linux would be a safer investment than who knows what from Apple these days. Ignoring the small choices available for Apple servers today, what happens if they discontinue the Mac Pro altogether? What if Lion Server is "defeatured" to make it easier for home server setups?
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Lion Server!
- Thread starter talmy
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As they used to say, "nobody has ever been fired for buying IBM." I think its safer to buy from a company that has a name and decent reputation in the server business is safer than Apple who has a recent history of pulling out of the business and never offered the variety of hardware and services of any of the major players. Even ignoring the high end players, I'd say that, for instance, a Dell server with Red Hat Linux would be a safer investment than who knows what from Apple these days. Ignoring the small choices available for Apple servers today, what happens if they discontinue the Mac Pro altogether? What if Lion Server is "defeatured" to make it easier for home server setups?
There's a big difference between "many single machines can fail and the cloud survives" and "individual machines are stable". Most businesses can't afford the mass cloud redundancy of Google, and most can't afford to have machines go down regularly.
The point of "big iron" is that you buy one large expensive machine that just sits there doing its work quietly for years on end, with little active administration needed.
Lion server
Having installed lion, then re-ran the installer to change to lion server, it seems to re-install the os, although lion server seems to be more of an add-on (applications/services) rather than a a difference in OS.
With lion server i don't see apple releasing new server hardware other than utilising the mac mini / pro. all the services including the new profile tool look to be aimed at soho business for file-sharing/back-up or larger business utilising lion server as an add-on to current services/server to simply manage the profiling for idevices/computers, and maybe some file-sharing/podcasting/wiki or ichat.
It might just be me but allot of services such as web/mail seem to be simplified as in the mail services has only one domain option to serve mail from, there might be a alias option somewhere but i couldn't find it, the same goes for web, you can create more than one domain but there do-sent seem to be an option for alias.
Mail although failing to run seems to still run squirrel mail but am unable to login and see if there are any changes.
there seems to be set-up/references for setting up idivices for use with MS Exchange/push mail which lion server still do sent seem to support for iphones/ipads.
After the install of lion server on top of lion desktop, allot of the system preferences/names/users/passwords/files were still there.
Lion server crashed at the completion of the install so i rebooted and was logged strait into the system with the user i created when i initially installed lion desktop, i did not go through any set-up as you normally do and carnt seem to find anything for dns set-up.
Having installed lion, then re-ran the installer to change to lion server, it seems to re-install the os, although lion server seems to be more of an add-on (applications/services) rather than a a difference in OS.
With lion server i don't see apple releasing new server hardware other than utilising the mac mini / pro. all the services including the new profile tool look to be aimed at soho business for file-sharing/back-up or larger business utilising lion server as an add-on to current services/server to simply manage the profiling for idevices/computers, and maybe some file-sharing/podcasting/wiki or ichat.
It might just be me but allot of services such as web/mail seem to be simplified as in the mail services has only one domain option to serve mail from, there might be a alias option somewhere but i couldn't find it, the same goes for web, you can create more than one domain but there do-sent seem to be an option for alias.
Mail although failing to run seems to still run squirrel mail but am unable to login and see if there are any changes.
there seems to be set-up/references for setting up idivices for use with MS Exchange/push mail which lion server still do sent seem to support for iphones/ipads.
After the install of lion server on top of lion desktop, allot of the system preferences/names/users/passwords/files were still there.
Lion server crashed at the completion of the install so i rebooted and was logged strait into the system with the user i created when i initially installed lion desktop, i did not go through any set-up as you normally do and carnt seem to find anything for dns set-up.
Are there options to enable Open Directory Services, NFS, Software Update Server, XGRID? Also, are the Server Admin and Workgroup Manager tools included or replaced with something else?
I'm reading mixed things all over the web on what's gone and what isn't.
Thanks.
Il get some screen shot up for you in the hour.
There are options for software update server, (im sure but might be wrong that there are some improvements on this for server and clients). theres the xgrid manager (haven't got it set-up)
Didn't notice NFS and believe it or not but am totally confused with the OD Service, I carnt find an option/setting for it but it has to be there.
I guess each situation is different. I'm more interested personally in the SOHO scenarios, where dedicated servers and an exclusive IT staff are slowly losing relevance.
(Although the news of Gmail losing emails gives me pause.)
Photo Dump
Photos of lion server launchpad, podcast composer and one of server admin.
Podcast composer seems to be a vast improvement and offers many more options.
Server Admin seem really limited in my opinion but then again it docent work for me, for showing services so maybe theres more to come.
Photos of lion server launchpad, podcast composer and one of server admin.
Podcast composer seems to be a vast improvement and offers many more options.
Server Admin seem really limited in my opinion but then again it docent work for me, for showing services so maybe theres more to come.
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I love lion
Hows great, lion just froze up, i did a hard restart and everything is there ready to carry on. with all the crashes/blue screen of death ms had years ago, you would of thought they would of done something like this.
More server admin and one from server monitor, some reason it do sent work on my mac book pro.
Hows great, lion just froze up, i did a hard restart and everything is there ready to carry on. with all the crashes/blue screen of death ms had years ago, you would of thought they would of done something like this.
More server admin and one from server monitor, some reason it do sent work on my mac book pro.
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Thanks for the pics kingdonk. It looks like the Open Directory service is there in the pictures, although maybe it's unconfigurable at the moment. I do not see NFS which is surprising.
Overall, with the killing of the Xserve and Apple catering OS X Server more to the SOHO, it will be a tough sell since a lot of 2-10 person shops that don't require more than 500GB can probably have most of their infrastructure on the cloud.
If they need massive amounts of storage and not a lot of physical space then an XServe would fit better with a RAID attached and backup unit.
Overall, with the killing of the Xserve and Apple catering OS X Server more to the SOHO, it will be a tough sell since a lot of 2-10 person shops that don't require more than 500GB can probably have most of their infrastructure on the cloud.
If they need massive amounts of storage and not a lot of physical space then an XServe would fit better with a RAID attached and backup unit.
The screenshots follow in order so if you unsure what a smaller shot is of, go back until you see a full screen shot and you will understand what it belongs too.
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NFS is there, just keep your eyes peeled and you will see it some where in the screen shots along with samba and ipad file sharing.
Randome shots after they have all somehow gotten mixed up, if you want to know what one it belongs to just hover your mouse over the image and find another image with the same name/time.
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being a network admin for a medium business that is 100% Macs, i am extremely concerned by Lion and its lack of server ability. looking at Lion over the last few days has depressed me somewhat. there are ZERO changes to WGM and Server Admin - and the new Server thing is just a joke to admins in a professional environment.
so overall, i am rather dissapointed
so overall, i am rather dissapointed
currently its all in the one bundle, but i believe they will charge extra for server essentials once they release it.
it kind of did! but it doesnt seem very apple :/
With the Xserve getting canned, it's likely that Apple will shift Lion server hard towards SOHO needs and further away from the needs of larger enterprise environments.
