Fast-forward to 2012 and the XServe was long-dead, OS X Server was a $20 add-on to OS X, and the powerful-but-complex tools used to manage and configure the server software had been thrown out in favor of a greatly simplified application primarily controlled via big on/off switches.
When Apple released OS X 10.6 in 2009, Server was an expensive and entirely separate version of OS X that only shipped on Apple's rack-mountable XServe systems and cost $1,000 if you wanted to run it on any of your other Macs. This one renders my new and very expensive hardware useless.The Mountain Lion version of OS X Server marked the end of a transition for Apple's server software. I’m tired of paying top dollar for what is increasingly substandard products. If Apple doesn’t fix this soon, we’ll be turning the corner on that, and that will translate to what we use at home, what we make our phone calls on, and all the rest of our products. My office is a 100% Apple shop, and so is my home.
I never thought I’d say it, but at least Windows works. Almost forgot to mention - home directories and network logins don’t work either. Databases? Damaged the moment you have more than one user. You either get locked out when you shouldn’t get locked out, or if you’re “lucky” enough to get to your files, they get corrupted if there are other users on the network. Permissions don’t inherit properly and are randomly and incorrectly followed. It won’t work properly and there is no fix because it will break itself again. Please put that troubleshooting time into your cost analysis when you buy a $20 server.ĭon’t do it. These are big problems that can sometimes requires hours, or even days of troubleshooting & re-configuration, to get this app working after a patch. Because the features change so much, documentation is often sketchy & outdated. If you base your services offered by this product, beware, because it seems as if Apple may not do much vetting in business environments - or they have a hard time ensuring all the open source components are compatible with their OS.
Examples in the past, that have required Apple enterprise support have been: disruption of email for days, email logs no longer available (intentionally by Development), firewall troubleshooting because an update broke connectivity, anti-virus & junkmail filters failing to update, etc. This has led to catastrophies for our organization. However, the problems I have experienced over the last 4 years is that the updates sometimes break functionality, take away features, or make previous implementations unfeasible.
It provides a GUI front-end to many of the open source underpinnings already found on your Mac OS. On the surface this seems to be a great buy. What a sad state of affairs for a company that used to care more about users than hardware profits. Funny, because they keep pumping money into the old (horrid) Web Objects for their own purposes, but totally ignore the needs of their customers. It saved me a couple times over the past decade when hardware failed and I could run out and get a new machine and have it up and running in no time with all the old accounts, port settings, etc, etc., but I think Apple got tired of expending energy keeping their UIs up to date as the underlying open source projects changed. This used to be a great way to incorporate the OS backup capability (one of the main reasons for using a mac) for your servers. So if you happen across this application and want to torture yourself trying to get it to do something useful, you’ll have to downgrade your OS to get a version old enough to include the “real server” applications. Version 5.6 still has the ability to configure the mail and web server, but only if they were previously configured (at least that’s how I interpreted the release notes). It only exists now to see how many suckers they can get to pay for it (in case you didn’t know, all the server functionality came included in the OS to begin with). 100% not worth paying for or using/upgrading after Apple removed all the server functionality of this “server” product.