I go to a lot of conferences and meetings for web developers (eg, Ruby on Rails). I see mostly Mac laptops there and my impression is that Macs are the desktop of choice for this community. However, virtually no deployment is done on Macs. This seems a bit ironic, not to mention inefficient of the developers' time. I wonder whether there is anything that Apple could offer to web sites that would convince them to move off commodity Intel boxes running Linux.
Count me in as one of those developers. I find Mac OS X the ultimate web development platform. At work, I have an XServe that is finally gaining traction in the minds of admins who have no Mac OS X experience but nevertheless feel it's not a viable server platform.
Apple does a poor job (IMHO) of demonstrating the fundamental power of the UNIX and opensource underpinnings of the server offering. It is truly a killer platform to develop for, particularly for media encoding and distribution, etc.
I think Apple show in teh page Minis and iMacs as clients to OS X Server.
I think Apple should ship configuration widgets that let you install and configure Mac OS X Server as a NAS/media storage platform. Imagine open directory providing accounts on NAS, centralized iTunes library, centralized iPhoto library. Mmmmm yummy. Until then, QNAP and others like it will bridge the (wide) gap.
Apple's problem in the server space is credibility. The problem is that they have changed their server strategy so many times, nobody is willing to risk going Apple for fear that the hardware/software they rely on will be discontinued.
Unlike the ever changing consumer gadget/desktop market, corporations don't like changes to the engine that drives the entire business. It's just too risky.
Apple was starting to rebuild some credibility with the XServe, but then they foolishly discontinued the XServe RAID overnight and instantly lost all the confidence they had started to rebuild in their server products in that single bone-headed move. Who cares if it was or wasn't wildly profitable? It was confidence building, and in the server space that long term cred is worth more than gold.
If Apple wants to be taken seriously in the server market, they need to reintroduce the RAID array, and create a 2U server product to go along with the 1U XServe. XSan needs to be tuned to support other platforms without relying on a 3rd party file system format. In addition to all this, they need to release a *gasp* ROAD MAP, and do some basic marketing in the server space, and stick to the plan. Never, ever discontinue any of these three core server products! Improve them, sure, but never ever drop/restructure the server strategy ever again!
I think Apple should ship configuration widgets that let you install and configure Mac OS X Server as a NAS/media storage platform. Imagine open directory providing accounts on NAS, centralized iTunes library, centralized iPhoto library. Mmmmm yummy. Until then, QNAP and others like it will bridge the (wide) gap.
I think someone will bash me for this but I have changed the ReadyNAS and the Mini I was using for and old computer with a C2D with Windows Home Server as centralized storage and an Atom/ION nettop as my HD Digital TV PVR.
apple's big problem is that their server hardware is crap compared to HP and Dell. the big issue for datacenters is density and with apple's hardware there is no way to efficiently deploy thousands of servers. there is no blade offering and the 1U servers don't support the level of hardware that HP supports. and compared to HP there doesn't seem to be any 4 hour onsite response time support option
and for really big iron applications OS X doesn't seem to have support from EMC or Emulex or the support is very poor. and then of course is apple's idiotic license that you can't run OS X inside VMWare
when i got my iphone 3GS the first thing i did after setting up VPN is test the ability to remotely push the power button on one of our HP servers via my iphone
for OS X vs Windows Server, UNIX is a lot better in a lot of installations. but WIndows Server is very good and we get close to five 9's on our installations of Windows 2003. I think wer're at 99.9% or 99.99% uptime. Windows 2008 R2 is even better. the key to Microsoft's success is Active Directory. it's just LDAP, but the work that MS put into customizing the schema makes it the clear choice in almost every corporate server datacenter and in the last 10 years no one has come close to matching it's ease of use, scalability and upgradability.
I think that Apple-hosted OS X virtualization would address some of the problems with OS X Server adoption. Amazon's EC2 came about when they had the idea to resell their infrastructure.
Nobody is selling large-scale VPS (Virtual Private Server) cloud services for OS X Server. I don't think anybody other than Apple could pull it off. MediaTemple just canned their "Xserve-Virtual" private beta.
I think an Apple "OS X Cloud" would be interesting. Clearly, it wouldn't be useful for all applications, but it would be viable for hosting stuff like mail/iCal Server/blogs/static web content, and server-side development for all those iPhone apps that need back-end stuff.
An exceptionally thoughtful post. You've hit the nail on the head there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mytdave
Apple's problem in the server space is credibility. The problem is that they have changed their server strategy so many times, nobody is willing to risk going Apple for fear that the hardware/software they rely on will be discontinued.
Unlike the ever changing consumer gadget/desktop market, corporations don't like changes to the engine that drives the entire business. It's just too risky.
Apple was starting to rebuild some credibility with the XServe, but then they foolishly discontinued the XServe RAID overnight and instantly lost all the confidence they had started to rebuild in their server products in that single bone-headed move. Who cares if it was or wasn't wildly profitable? It was confidence building, and in the server space that long term cred is worth more than gold.
If Apple wants to be taken seriously in the server market, they need to reintroduce the RAID array, and create a 2U server product to go along with the 1U XServe. XSan needs to be tuned to support other platforms without relying on a 3rd party file system format. In addition to all this, they need to release a *gasp* ROAD MAP, and do some basic marketing in the server space, and stick to the plan. Never, ever discontinue any of these three core server products! Improve them, sure, but never ever drop/restructure the server strategy ever again!
I think Apple show in teh page Minis and iMacs as clients to OS X Server.
I don't think that's correct. From the page:
"Best of all, you don?t need expensive hardware to run it ? you can use an Xserve, of course, but you can also use a Mac Pro, an iMac, or even a Mac mini. With Mac OS X Server, you can deploy the server that?s right for you."
"Best of all, you don?t need expensive hardware to run it ? you can use an Xserve, of course, but you can also use a Mac Pro, an iMac, or even a Mac mini. With Mac OS X Server, you can deploy the server that?s right for you."
As a small business owner using OS X Server since Tiger I can make a few first hand observations about Apple's server strategy. BTW, IT guys, please be gentle on me, I'm not an IT guru. I'm just a semi-technically proficient user.
Observation 1 - Apple's server market is small business, not enterprise
The cost and complexity of implementing and maintaining a Windows or Linux server scares the hell out of many small business owners. A server that looks like a Mac and allows a small business owner to do most simple server tasks themselves will be in even higher demand as Mac market share increases in small business. In contrast, the enterprise market has more intense needs that, I agree, OS X server cannot yet address.
Observation 2 - OS Server is not as simple as it looks
I set up OS X Server 10.4 on my own, thinking that, since it looked like the Mac interface, a neophyte like me could do it. Well, I got it to work, but just barely. For 10.5, I hired a Mac server guy for $1000 to set it up so I could operate it. This was money well spent. Therefore, for all you non-IT small business owners out there: hire an expert to set up OS X Server, then you can operate the server yourself without getting into too much trouble.
Observation 3 - A Phone PBX Server App would be the killer app on OS X server
The ability to integrate your office phones with your office's email, iChat, and Address Book would be nirvana. Plus, if you could sever your connection with the phone company by using VoIP for connecting your phones to the outside world, the cost savings would be huge for a small business. As an added benefit, with a PBX server app, telephony consultants would be dragging OS X Servers into small businesses and Apple would not have to do all the heavy lifting.
Observation 4 - OS X Server is improving
Every version of OS X Server gets better. Old bugs are addressed and new capabilities are added. In Snow Leopard I especially like the creation of an Outlook replacement with iCal and Address Book on the server.
In conclusion, Apple has never made much of an effort to sell Macs to big businesses so why would they try to sell the enterprise on OS X Server. Actually, Apple has not made much of an effort to sell Macs to small businesses either. But small business is where OS X Server fits best and, if Apple gets its act together for business, small business could be a gold mine for Apple's server products.
I've always thought OS X Server would be an excellent candidate for a limited form of licensing to companies like HP or IBM. Unlike their desktop, Apple doesn't garner a significant amount of their revenue from server hardware, and they could take advantage of these companies "in" with data center customers and experience with server support to build a market for Apple server products.
Also, I agree with other posters who have pointed out that OS X Server isn't the easiest server to administer. The GUI is nice, but for server systems the command line is king, especially when providing support from a remote location. Performing a routine task like creating a userid from the command line is a daunting task. They should provide a decent menu based administration tool, something like SMIT on IBM's AIX, or at least provide scripts for performing repetitive routine tasks like creating userid's. Ever tried using a GUI to add several hundred userid's to a server? Not fun! I think Apple needs to provide a command line admin environment more consistent with other vendor's UNIX or Linux offerings, such as Solaris or HP-UX.
However, Apple's XRAID was the best RAID system I've ever used, but Apple replaced it with the worst RAID system ever, the Promise. Stay clear from Promise, it is an overpriced complex system that is missing some of the most basic features such as a Shutdown that actually shuts down your RAID. The web interface is nothing short of an eyesore and a disaster, I updated a firmware and lost all my data (I had backup though).
Agreed. The XRAID was solid and reliable.
Apple dropping XRAID left a bad taste in my mouth.
It just reinforced my doubts about Apple's commitment to the server market.
The "Server App Store" idea floated in this article is a great one.
The iPhone App Store was successful because there were already millions of customers who could take advantage of it.
Mac OS X Server doesn't have a large base to attract developers.
A "Server App Store" will flop without a larger potential market.
Apple needs to take some steps toward expanding their server client base.
They have already taken some steps like lowering the price of Snow Leopard Server.
They should offer a Mac mini server configuration(2 hard drives, no optical & Snow Leopard server) starting at $999.
iRAID = Same footprint as TimeCapsule, contains 3 desktop drives, user swappable.
As a small business owner using OS X Server since Tiger I can make a few first hand observations about Apple's server strategy. BTW, IT guys, please be gentle on me, I'm not an IT guru. I'm just a semi-technically proficient user.
Observation 1 - Apple's server market is small business, not enterprise
The cost and complexity of implementing and maintaining a Windows or Linux server scares the hell out of many small business owners. A server that looks like a Mac and allows a small business owner to do most simple server tasks themselves will be in even higher demand as Mac market share increases in small business. In contrast, the enterprise market has more intense needs that, I agree, OS X server cannot yet address.
Observation 2 - OS Server is not as simple as it looks
I set up OS X Server 10.4 on my own, thinking that, since it looked like the Mac interface, a neophyte like me could do it. Well, I got it to work, but just barely. For 10.5, I hired a Mac server guy for $1000 to set it up so I could operate it. This was money well spent. Therefore, for all you non-IT small business owners out there: hire an expert to set up OS X Server, then you can operate the server yourself without getting into too much trouble.
Observation 3 - A Phone PBX Server App would be the killer app on OS X server
The ability to integrate your office phones with your office's email, iChat, and Address Book would be nirvana. Plus, if you could sever your connection with the phone company by using VoIP for connecting your phones to the outside world, the cost savings would be huge for a small business. As an added benefit, with a PBX server app, telephony consultants would be dragging OS X Servers into small businesses and Apple would not have to do all the heavy lifting.
Observation 4 - OS X Server is improving
Every version of OS X Server gets better. Old bugs are addressed and new capabilities are added. In Snow Leopard I especially like the creation of an Outlook replacement with iCal and Address Book on the server.
In conclusion, Apple has never made much of an effort to sell Macs to big businesses so why would they try to sell the enterprise on OS X Server. Actually, Apple has not made much of an effort to sell Macs to small businesses either. But small business is where OS X Server fits best and, if Apple gets its act together for business, small business could be a gold mine for Apple's server products.
as a small business owner you are probably better off using VMWare or Amazon's EC2 cloud service. almost every ISP will let you set up virtual machines on their network. if you want MS then Microsoft is in the process of setting up cloud services for Exchange and SQL. no need to buy any physical servers
the biggest problem with any cloud service is backups. last week i had to restore a few databases from July 2008. once in a while i have to restore data from 5 years ago. when i supported exchange i would always get requests to restore someone's mailbox for a few months from say 6 months ago or a few years ago. if you get sued and have to go through discovery you can expect a request like this. i haven't read anything about Google where they will support something like this
i helped set up a few windows servers a few years ago for a small doctor's office and i agree it's way too much power and too expensive for a small business.
if you want PBX and email in one package then the only choice is MS Exchange. I forgot if it's part of Exchange 2007 or if you have to buy the Communicator server
Apple continues to sell Mac OS X Server, primarily to its education users, but has never managed to make much of an impact with its server operating system despite its being relatively easy to set up and use. In 2002, Apple debuted the Xserve as its return to selling dedicated server hardware. The new model made some impact in high performance computing but has never been a major part of Apple's hardware revenues.
Given that Apple is now a major player in serving its own media store with iTunes, the world's leading mobile software outlet in its App Store, manages a leading HD movie trailers video service, and serves up push messaging and cloud sync services to millions of paying customers, one might wonder why Apple's own server products haven't caught on better in the general market for server software.
If only there was a resource that could make developing for OS X Server easier!
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
Daniel Eran Dilger is the author of "Snow Leopard Server (Developer Reference)," a new book from Wiley available now for pre-order at a special price from Amazon.
Sadly, Apple has recently marginalized it's server offerings by breaking 100% of all video transcoded by Podcast Producer and posted to Wiki/Blog server on Windows computers running the latest QuickTime 7.6.4 update. Makes it hard to recommend the system when Apple breaks the core functionality of those services for 90% of our audience.
I was frustrated by this as well, but eventually found a way to make the videos posted by Podcast Producer 2 work with Windows. It ain't pretty, but I describe my workaround on my blog at drthompsen.com. I've also made numerous bug reports and inquiries with Apple representatives, but still no word on when a fix is in the works. But I do believe it's on Apple's radar, and an effort will be made to release a fix in a future Snow Leopard Server update. At least, that's my hope.
We switched over from a hybrid Linux/Irix environment a few years ago to Mac OSX Server and we've had mixed results, some of which have been bad enough to be real show stoppers.
Some parts of the server system that have worked well have been the file server and the Wiki, other parts have been either merely acceptable, such as the mail server, or unusable in a mixed environment, which is the case for the calender server.
The reality of the world is that 90% of it uses Windows and Apple has not supported Microsoft Outlook at all with its calender server. We have tried numerous workarounds and plug-ins but none of them work properly. In addition to this Apple's Web based calendaring is not available to individual users, only groups, and Apple's delegation of calendars is poor at best and simply unworkable at worst.
A compounding problem to this is the very tight integration of Apple's Open Directory with all services. This means that you are only as flexible as Open Directory is, which means that Groups cannot be members of other groups (in theory they can, in practice not).
Additionally, Apple Mail has no way of restoring from backup if Mails are lost. This can be done form the command line, but it's a terrible hack and means that dates etc can be lost.
Apple's Mail provides no way of setting out of office replies and this can only be done with a plug-in to the webmail, which has such a poor interface that it is only usable in emergencies.
The net result of this has been that we are switching to Kerio Mail and Calendaring server where all of the above works well.
I also find that comparing Exchange and Sharepoint to Apple's server offerings is a bit of a joke considering all the features that Exchange and Sharepoint support but which Apple's do not.
In my experience with Apple's server offerings, I have found that Apple has dropped the ball badly in terms of enterprise support. Mac OSX Server is fine for small Mac only workgroups or schools annd Universities, but the fact that Mac OSX 10.6 client now supports Exchange out of the box shows to me that Apple has realised that no one will switch to or use Mac OSX server in large companies in a large way. The utter lack of third party software also shows how poorly Apple's server software is doing there.
In short, Apple needs to make massive and major changes to its server offerings for anyone to take it seriously in those environments.
I'm a new Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server admin and, to put it mildly, supporting clients on non-Mac OS platforms has been very problematic.
This is particularly true for calendaring and address book sharing. I look at tools like Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook and turn green with envy.
I wish Apple would offer improved support for non-Mac clients with standard configurations and software like Google is. That would make life so much easier for mixed-platform offices.
The current movement is away from proprietary hardware to complete virtualization. People don't want to be tied to specific hardware. This alone would prevent them from making any head road into serious business environments.
Before Apple ventures into Wonderland, they first need to get right the services Mac OS X Server currently provides. In this regard, IMHO Apple blew it with the Snow Leopard Server upgrade. One of the primary uses for a server is to handle e-mail. As the forums indicate, many "upgraders" were plagued afterwards with messages all dated November 20, 2060, which were a huge PIA to correct. And without warning, sieveshell support was basically removed by the upgrade. A few people in the forums are lauding Apple for providing a Squirrelmail interface to vacation and sieveshell, but the sieveshell rules that can be configured in this manner are absolutely rinky dink. The true power of sieveshell is now gone.
Comments
I go to a lot of conferences and meetings for web developers (eg, Ruby on Rails). I see mostly Mac laptops there and my impression is that Macs are the desktop of choice for this community. However, virtually no deployment is done on Macs. This seems a bit ironic, not to mention inefficient of the developers' time. I wonder whether there is anything that Apple could offer to web sites that would convince them to move off commodity Intel boxes running Linux.
Count me in as one of those developers. I find Mac OS X the ultimate web development platform. At work, I have an XServe that is finally gaining traction in the minds of admins who have no Mac OS X experience but nevertheless feel it's not a viable server platform.
Apple does a poor job (IMHO) of demonstrating the fundamental power of the UNIX and opensource underpinnings of the server offering. It is truly a killer platform to develop for, particularly for media encoding and distribution, etc.
I think Apple show in teh page Minis and iMacs as clients to OS X Server.
I think Apple should ship configuration widgets that let you install and configure Mac OS X Server as a NAS/media storage platform. Imagine open directory providing accounts on NAS, centralized iTunes library, centralized iPhoto library. Mmmmm yummy. Until then, QNAP and others like it will bridge the (wide) gap.
Unlike the ever changing consumer gadget/desktop market, corporations don't like changes to the engine that drives the entire business. It's just too risky.
Apple was starting to rebuild some credibility with the XServe, but then they foolishly discontinued the XServe RAID overnight and instantly lost all the confidence they had started to rebuild in their server products in that single bone-headed move. Who cares if it was or wasn't wildly profitable? It was confidence building, and in the server space that long term cred is worth more than gold.
If Apple wants to be taken seriously in the server market, they need to reintroduce the RAID array, and create a 2U server product to go along with the 1U XServe. XSan needs to be tuned to support other platforms without relying on a 3rd party file system format. In addition to all this, they need to release a *gasp* ROAD MAP, and do some basic marketing in the server space, and stick to the plan. Never, ever discontinue any of these three core server products! Improve them, sure, but never ever drop/restructure the server strategy ever again!
I think Apple should ship configuration widgets that let you install and configure Mac OS X Server as a NAS/media storage platform. Imagine open directory providing accounts on NAS, centralized iTunes library, centralized iPhoto library. Mmmmm yummy. Until then, QNAP and others like it will bridge the (wide) gap.
I think someone will bash me for this but I have changed the ReadyNAS and the Mini I was using for and old computer with a C2D with Windows Home Server as centralized storage and an Atom/ION nettop as my HD Digital TV PVR.
Gasp
and for really big iron applications OS X doesn't seem to have support from EMC or Emulex or the support is very poor. and then of course is apple's idiotic license that you can't run OS X inside VMWare
when i got my iphone 3GS the first thing i did after setting up VPN is test the ability to remotely push the power button on one of our HP servers via my iphone
for OS X vs Windows Server, UNIX is a lot better in a lot of installations. but WIndows Server is very good and we get close to five 9's on our installations of Windows 2003. I think wer're at 99.9% or 99.99% uptime. Windows 2008 R2 is even better. the key to Microsoft's success is Active Directory. it's just LDAP, but the work that MS put into customizing the schema makes it the clear choice in almost every corporate server datacenter and in the last 10 years no one has come close to matching it's ease of use, scalability and upgradability.
Nobody is selling large-scale VPS (Virtual Private Server) cloud services for OS X Server. I don't think anybody other than Apple could pull it off. MediaTemple just canned their "Xserve-Virtual" private beta.
I think an Apple "OS X Cloud" would be interesting. Clearly, it wouldn't be useful for all applications, but it would be viable for hosting stuff like mail/iCal Server/blogs/static web content, and server-side development for all those iPhone apps that need back-end stuff.
Apple's problem in the server space is credibility. The problem is that they have changed their server strategy so many times, nobody is willing to risk going Apple for fear that the hardware/software they rely on will be discontinued.
Unlike the ever changing consumer gadget/desktop market, corporations don't like changes to the engine that drives the entire business. It's just too risky.
Apple was starting to rebuild some credibility with the XServe, but then they foolishly discontinued the XServe RAID overnight and instantly lost all the confidence they had started to rebuild in their server products in that single bone-headed move. Who cares if it was or wasn't wildly profitable? It was confidence building, and in the server space that long term cred is worth more than gold.
If Apple wants to be taken seriously in the server market, they need to reintroduce the RAID array, and create a 2U server product to go along with the 1U XServe. XSan needs to be tuned to support other platforms without relying on a 3rd party file system format. In addition to all this, they need to release a *gasp* ROAD MAP, and do some basic marketing in the server space, and stick to the plan. Never, ever discontinue any of these three core server products! Improve them, sure, but never ever drop/restructure the server strategy ever again!
I think Apple show in teh page Minis and iMacs as clients to OS X Server.
I don't think that's correct. From the page:
"Best of all, you don?t need expensive hardware to run it ? you can use an Xserve, of course, but you can also use a Mac Pro, an iMac, or even a Mac mini. With Mac OS X Server, you can deploy the server that?s right for you."
I don't think that's correct. From the page:
"Best of all, you don?t need expensive hardware to run it ? you can use an Xserve, of course, but you can also use a Mac Pro, an iMac, or even a Mac mini. With Mac OS X Server, you can deploy the server that?s right for you."
Right, I haven't read that
Observation 1 - Apple's server market is small business, not enterprise
The cost and complexity of implementing and maintaining a Windows or Linux server scares the hell out of many small business owners. A server that looks like a Mac and allows a small business owner to do most simple server tasks themselves will be in even higher demand as Mac market share increases in small business. In contrast, the enterprise market has more intense needs that, I agree, OS X server cannot yet address.
Observation 2 - OS Server is not as simple as it looks
I set up OS X Server 10.4 on my own, thinking that, since it looked like the Mac interface, a neophyte like me could do it. Well, I got it to work, but just barely. For 10.5, I hired a Mac server guy for $1000 to set it up so I could operate it. This was money well spent. Therefore, for all you non-IT small business owners out there: hire an expert to set up OS X Server, then you can operate the server yourself without getting into too much trouble.
Observation 3 - A Phone PBX Server App would be the killer app on OS X server
The ability to integrate your office phones with your office's email, iChat, and Address Book would be nirvana. Plus, if you could sever your connection with the phone company by using VoIP for connecting your phones to the outside world, the cost savings would be huge for a small business. As an added benefit, with a PBX server app, telephony consultants would be dragging OS X Servers into small businesses and Apple would not have to do all the heavy lifting.
Observation 4 - OS X Server is improving
Every version of OS X Server gets better. Old bugs are addressed and new capabilities are added. In Snow Leopard I especially like the creation of an Outlook replacement with iCal and Address Book on the server.
In conclusion, Apple has never made much of an effort to sell Macs to big businesses so why would they try to sell the enterprise on OS X Server. Actually, Apple has not made much of an effort to sell Macs to small businesses either. But small business is where OS X Server fits best and, if Apple gets its act together for business, small business could be a gold mine for Apple's server products.
Also, I agree with other posters who have pointed out that OS X Server isn't the easiest server to administer. The GUI is nice, but for server systems the command line is king, especially when providing support from a remote location. Performing a routine task like creating a userid from the command line is a daunting task. They should provide a decent menu based administration tool, something like SMIT on IBM's AIX, or at least provide scripts for performing repetitive routine tasks like creating userid's. Ever tried using a GUI to add several hundred userid's to a server? Not fun! I think Apple needs to provide a command line admin environment more consistent with other vendor's UNIX or Linux offerings, such as Solaris or HP-UX.
However, Apple's XRAID was the best RAID system I've ever used, but Apple replaced it with the worst RAID system ever, the Promise. Stay clear from Promise, it is an overpriced complex system that is missing some of the most basic features such as a Shutdown that actually shuts down your RAID. The web interface is nothing short of an eyesore and a disaster, I updated a firmware and lost all my data (I had backup though).
Agreed. The XRAID was solid and reliable.
Apple dropping XRAID left a bad taste in my mouth.
It just reinforced my doubts about Apple's commitment to the server market.
The "Server App Store" idea floated in this article is a great one.
The iPhone App Store was successful because there were already millions of customers who could take advantage of it.
Mac OS X Server doesn't have a large base to attract developers.
A "Server App Store" will flop without a larger potential market.
Apple needs to take some steps toward expanding their server client base.
They have already taken some steps like lowering the price of Snow Leopard Server.
They should offer a Mac mini server configuration(2 hard drives, no optical & Snow Leopard server) starting at $999.
iRAID = Same footprint as TimeCapsule, contains 3 desktop drives, user swappable.
As a small business owner using OS X Server since Tiger I can make a few first hand observations about Apple's server strategy. BTW, IT guys, please be gentle on me, I'm not an IT guru. I'm just a semi-technically proficient user.
Observation 1 - Apple's server market is small business, not enterprise
The cost and complexity of implementing and maintaining a Windows or Linux server scares the hell out of many small business owners. A server that looks like a Mac and allows a small business owner to do most simple server tasks themselves will be in even higher demand as Mac market share increases in small business. In contrast, the enterprise market has more intense needs that, I agree, OS X server cannot yet address.
Observation 2 - OS Server is not as simple as it looks
I set up OS X Server 10.4 on my own, thinking that, since it looked like the Mac interface, a neophyte like me could do it. Well, I got it to work, but just barely. For 10.5, I hired a Mac server guy for $1000 to set it up so I could operate it. This was money well spent. Therefore, for all you non-IT small business owners out there: hire an expert to set up OS X Server, then you can operate the server yourself without getting into too much trouble.
Observation 3 - A Phone PBX Server App would be the killer app on OS X server
The ability to integrate your office phones with your office's email, iChat, and Address Book would be nirvana. Plus, if you could sever your connection with the phone company by using VoIP for connecting your phones to the outside world, the cost savings would be huge for a small business. As an added benefit, with a PBX server app, telephony consultants would be dragging OS X Servers into small businesses and Apple would not have to do all the heavy lifting.
Observation 4 - OS X Server is improving
Every version of OS X Server gets better. Old bugs are addressed and new capabilities are added. In Snow Leopard I especially like the creation of an Outlook replacement with iCal and Address Book on the server.
In conclusion, Apple has never made much of an effort to sell Macs to big businesses so why would they try to sell the enterprise on OS X Server. Actually, Apple has not made much of an effort to sell Macs to small businesses either. But small business is where OS X Server fits best and, if Apple gets its act together for business, small business could be a gold mine for Apple's server products.
as a small business owner you are probably better off using VMWare or Amazon's EC2 cloud service. almost every ISP will let you set up virtual machines on their network. if you want MS then Microsoft is in the process of setting up cloud services for Exchange and SQL. no need to buy any physical servers
the biggest problem with any cloud service is backups. last week i had to restore a few databases from July 2008. once in a while i have to restore data from 5 years ago. when i supported exchange i would always get requests to restore someone's mailbox for a few months from say 6 months ago or a few years ago. if you get sued and have to go through discovery you can expect a request like this. i haven't read anything about Google where they will support something like this
i helped set up a few windows servers a few years ago for a small doctor's office and i agree it's way too much power and too expensive for a small business.
if you want PBX and email in one package then the only choice is MS Exchange. I forgot if it's part of Exchange 2007 or if you have to buy the Communicator server
Apple continues to sell Mac OS X Server, primarily to its education users, but has never managed to make much of an impact with its server operating system despite its being relatively easy to set up and use. In 2002, Apple debuted the Xserve as its return to selling dedicated server hardware. The new model made some impact in high performance computing but has never been a major part of Apple's hardware revenues.
Given that Apple is now a major player in serving its own media store with iTunes, the world's leading mobile software outlet in its App Store, manages a leading HD movie trailers video service, and serves up push messaging and cloud sync services to millions of paying customers, one might wonder why Apple's own server products haven't caught on better in the general market for server software.
If only there was a resource that could make developing for OS X Server easier!
Daniel Eran Dilger is the author of "Snow Leopard Server (Developer Reference)," a new book from Wiley available now for pre-order at a special price from Amazon.
Sadly, Apple has recently marginalized it's server offerings by breaking 100% of all video transcoded by Podcast Producer and posted to Wiki/Blog server on Windows computers running the latest QuickTime 7.6.4 update. Makes it hard to recommend the system when Apple breaks the core functionality of those services for 90% of our audience.
I was frustrated by this as well, but eventually found a way to make the videos posted by Podcast Producer 2 work with Windows. It ain't pretty, but I describe my workaround on my blog at drthompsen.com. I've also made numerous bug reports and inquiries with Apple representatives, but still no word on when a fix is in the works. But I do believe it's on Apple's radar, and an effort will be made to release a fix in a future Snow Leopard Server update. At least, that's my hope.
Some parts of the server system that have worked well have been the file server and the Wiki, other parts have been either merely acceptable, such as the mail server, or unusable in a mixed environment, which is the case for the calender server.
The reality of the world is that 90% of it uses Windows and Apple has not supported Microsoft Outlook at all with its calender server. We have tried numerous workarounds and plug-ins but none of them work properly. In addition to this Apple's Web based calendaring is not available to individual users, only groups, and Apple's delegation of calendars is poor at best and simply unworkable at worst.
A compounding problem to this is the very tight integration of Apple's Open Directory with all services. This means that you are only as flexible as Open Directory is, which means that Groups cannot be members of other groups (in theory they can, in practice not).
Additionally, Apple Mail has no way of restoring from backup if Mails are lost. This can be done form the command line, but it's a terrible hack and means that dates etc can be lost.
Apple's Mail provides no way of setting out of office replies and this can only be done with a plug-in to the webmail, which has such a poor interface that it is only usable in emergencies.
The net result of this has been that we are switching to Kerio Mail and Calendaring server where all of the above works well.
I also find that comparing Exchange and Sharepoint to Apple's server offerings is a bit of a joke considering all the features that Exchange and Sharepoint support but which Apple's do not.
In my experience with Apple's server offerings, I have found that Apple has dropped the ball badly in terms of enterprise support. Mac OSX Server is fine for small Mac only workgroups or schools annd Universities, but the fact that Mac OSX 10.6 client now supports Exchange out of the box shows to me that Apple has realised that no one will switch to or use Mac OSX server in large companies in a large way. The utter lack of third party software also shows how poorly Apple's server software is doing there.
In short, Apple needs to make massive and major changes to its server offerings for anyone to take it seriously in those environments.
Same here. Nothing but excellent performance.
Once you wrap your mind around the workflow - it's a blessing to manage.
This is particularly true for calendaring and address book sharing. I look at tools like Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook and turn green with envy.
I wish Apple would offer improved support for non-Mac clients with standard configurations and software like Google is. That would make life so much easier for mixed-platform offices.
The current movement is away from proprietary hardware to complete virtualization. People don't want to be tied to specific hardware. This alone would prevent them from making any head road into serious business environments.