Q: About Server Admin Tools for mountain lion

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1822

Marcell, like you, my server admin tools disappeared when I upgraded to Mountain Lion (ML) on my iMac. In another group here, I learned the easiest way to get back to managing -- in my case, a Mac Mini running OS X Lion Server -- was to connect to it with VNC.

On your ML client, open Finder/Go/Connect to Server and enter the name (or IP) of your server as:

vnc://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Or

vnc://hostname.foo.bar

That will at least reconnect you with your server, from which you can run its native Server.app.

Hope this helps!  --michael

This is so frustrating. Obviously the software will work in ML; it was a concious decision by someone at Apple to disable the apps, which makes no sense really. Admins are always going to have legacy servers running, and having to VNC to each is really a PITA.

and having to VNC to each is really a PITA

If you're an admin, you shouldn't be using VNC in the first place. Like you said, it's a pain.

You should be using Remote Desktop. I manage multiple OS X Servers (different versions) from Remote Desktop and it works just fine.

http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

Of course... ARD/VNC...same difference. Both are not a substitute for the Server Admin app, which could manage multiple servers at a time. At least Workgroup Manager is still available.

Hey there - that link addresses Workgroup Manager, but not the Server Admin app that shipped with Lion Server.  Do you (or anyone else) know where I can get that?  It's not on the downloads and it's not in the store.  If I try to connect to a ML Server from a Lion server, I can connect but not get a list of services to configure. 

In Lion, there was a bit of convolution regarding service management.  Some things you could only do in Server, some only in Workgroup Admin, and some only in Server Admin.  Some things you could do in combinations of the above.  Server Admin is the only place in the GUI where you can drill into the SMTP filtering options such as what to do with spam (delete, mark, etc) and viruses.  You've only got spam level and on/off for AV and spam in ML Server app.

However, even in the 10.8 version of the "Advanced Administration" guide (which is about as advanced as an abicus) refers to Server Admin in the mail section.  To have these options will I have to use all command-line?

t

Yup!  I was frustrated at first too. Then I learned to use ServerAdmin and realized that the GUI is a simplified front end that provides a system that works, and works quite well.  All the complexity was removed to make it easier for administration. The kicker is that for those of us that want more control it does not appear to be there until you learn how to use the command line version of the tool. Then it really makes sense that if you are going to perform advanced tweaking of the services that you should learn the cli version as it is so much more powerful and actually protects ape from the onslaught of support calls because some new admin modified a setting that they did not understand the impact of. This forces them to learn what the features do since they have to learn more about the features than just glance at a GUI.

Just me opinion of course.

Yup. If you don't have a choise, choise makes you. it would be frustrated for first two weeks.
For instance Robinson Crusoe was very happy without women because he had a goat and Friday