Worth upgrading to Lion Server?

Great points, and I agree completely with your approach. Can you let me know when you find an online storage/file server provider?

Just remember that with "the cloud" it's great, until it goes down.

With your own equipment, you can step over to it and fix it. People running services in the cloud, don't have as much of a vested interest to make sure that the system runs properly.

Remember, when control is out of your hands, it's pretty much competely out of your hands.

Just a reality check so you are aware of what you are getting in to.

Our company is so swaddled in legislation and confidentiality assumptions that the cloud is for us no option. And I'm sure we're not the only one. Some companies can not have any data persisting outside their domain.

So now we run on Lion Server + some homebrew solutions to keep things going. If they ever shoot off MCX (of which I read rumblings and of which Device Management seems to be a 1.0 attempt) as client management option then I'm going to have a hard time managing those Macs + issues defending them to management as a viable workstation option.

Lion Server offers less options to services, has three seperate management tools between you have to switch. the docs are just plain underfed and I've encountered so far nothing but woes with LDAP implementations on both server and client.

I'm not familier with the AD integration side of Lion Server but wee already have two platforms (Mac for office + UNIX for everything else) to maintain; introducing Windows AD just to fill the client management gap is not an option for us as a small business.

Yeah, MCX is on the way out. Still supported in Lion, but you know how that is. Device management is the wave of the future.

I'm aware of the issue of the Cloud "going down" - or, more realistically, my internet connection, going down. But at least I only have to manage one thing. Like a guy told me once, "Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket like a hawk."

Knock on wood, the longest my internet connection has been down has been, maybe, 20 minutes. And in the last 12 months I doubt we have been offline more than 2 or 3 times.

Trust me, I feel for folks that can't move to the Cloud but IT is going to get so expensive that either you cough up the big bucks (which we don't have) or let your technology infrastructure rot to death. Plus you need a degree in astro-physics to keep up with it all.

I realize I'm not the brightest candle on the birthday cake. The Cloud is just a way for me to cope with all this change.

Well, I'm not the brightest candle in the ocean, I understand where you're coming from.

Oh, while I was at Verizon Telecom, NOTHING could be stored outside of the corporate network. If you did store anything outside to transfer material to your home machine or use any service (drop box, .Mac) that could get you fired.

VZ is #16 on the Fortune 50. I was one of the monkeys in charge of coming up with Mac policy for the whole company while creating FiOS TV. Companies of that size have policies that matter with respect to the services that must or must be prohibited in your OS.

Here's fuel to the fire.

40 or so people on here have said that it *****. It's not enough.

It's plain that Apple is no longer making money on their server product, if they ever did at all... ...and therefore are no longer planning on long term server solutions. (oh, I hope I'm wrong about that thought)

If it's more complicated than the needs of your living room computer, then it's plain that Apple's Server product is not for you.

It's quite sad, but the fact is that if it doesn't make the company money, then it's dragging the company down!
If you have an employee that's working for you that makes you less money than you're paying him, then you fire him! Plain and simple. It's bad business to do ANYTHING BUT.

Sorry to see it happen, but I'm afraid that poor server systems designed to support client computers in any environment drags down the client computers too. I'm a huge fan of Apple but, financially for them, the server business isn't paying for itself.

The mistake happened years ago. Apple should have poured MUCH more money into development of the server system, and marketed the heck out of it. Now that there's far fewer of us, and no money in it....

The solution? I'm going to have to purchase a new Windows box to take over as the directory server, re input all my users there, rebind all the computers on my network, and then cry a little as I reflect on the pride that I had when I eliminated my last Windows server 2003 6 years ago. Where I go from there... I hope to keep a mac server around to play with, but I'm afraid that that's all it'll end up being... A play thing.

Lion Server is, and I hope I'm terribly wrong, probably going to be one of the last server products we see from Apple.

gracoat wrote:

It's plain that Apple is no longer making money on their server product, if they ever did at all...

The fundamental problem with Apple and servers, or the business world in general, is that Apple's product, marketing and support cycles are too short. Companies like Microsoft and Red Hat Linux build legacy support into OS upgrades and maintain stability over a much longer period of time. Apple's product release and support cycles seem almost impulsive by comparison. If Apple has never made any money on the server side of the business it's because they are an unreliable business partner.

I don't doubt that Apple wasn't making as much money on the server end as, say, the iPhone or iPod, but I have to disagree with you about Apple being an "unreliable business partner".

Apple has been nothing but supportive to us and stepped in when we were really in a bind and helped us above and beyond the normal call of duty.

Their Tech Support (particularly on the server side), IMHO, is second to none! Have you ever tried to contact Microsoft Tech Support? On the phone? Yeah, right. As a network administrator coming over from a Windows background, they helped us immensely! I have been able to not only simplify my network over the last 2 1/2 years, but have been able to make my end-users (both students and faculty) more productive not only in the quantity of their output, but the quality as well.

OK...so we're not a Verizon or Exxon; but, those outfits have budgets and IT staffs that are larger than our whole school payroll. The cost of an Enterprise operation is just getting obscene. Apple is not, nor ever was, positioned to compete in that marketplace. Besides, it's a low margin high maintenance type of operation - not at all suited to Apple's business philosophy (not that I'm privy to their philosophy - let's just say, it seems apparent from their actions).

Am I sorry to see the XServe go away? It's hard to say. I can tell you I was happy as **** to see my Microsoft SQL Server go away and the other 7 servers we used to run around here. I'd like to think I can run this network with no servers at all, but that MAY not be possible. But I can tell you this, I CAN run what I'm running now on two XServers on ONE Mac Mini. That's supporting 300 users and nearly 200 devices. And Apple Care gets me support for three years as well.

I realize we're "small potatoes" in the grand scheme of things, but we were not to Apple. Making the switch to Apple was the best thing, and continues to be, this school has done!

admin@countryschool.org wrote:

Apple has been nothing but supportive to us and stepped in when we were really in a bind and helped us above and beyond the normal call of duty.

By unreliable I mean that corporate Apple can't stick with a product long enough to make it cost-effective for a business. I don't dispute the quality of Apple's tech support when it is needed.

I was so impressed with SL Server two years ago that I replaced some leased Linux servers with Mac mini servers running it. In the time since, the Mac mini has gone through two significant hardware design changes and SL Server has been replaced by a dumbed down Lion Server. There is no way I am going to use Lion Server in its present form, so I will be forced to return to Linux servers when it's time to retire these minis, unless Apple has an epiphany in relation to servers by that time.

Uhhh, we didn't have the budget you think we had.

I was running OS X Tiger server on a G4 for about 3 years.

Finally, 5 years after I started, I got Snow Leopard Server and twin 12 core boxes but it's not like we had any budget for servers for years at a time and had to recycle older macs.

Our SVN server was on a G5 with one core.

This was on the FiOS TV team.

Thank You everyone for the details and for saving me and my client (with working SL xserve) the trouble...

As for a cloud storage solution, egnyte has my (and some much bigger companies) seal of approval for what it's worth. They have a hybrid cloud solution where you can buy a compatible physical storage device or downlad a virtual appliance from them that stores shares locally and keeps them sync'd them with the cloud. Remote users can just access the cloud and office users can rely on the appliance. If you need to keep it simple and get it going quickly, spend a little dough and buy the physical storage appliance.

There is straight-forward security where you can get pretty granular or just keep it simple.

I don't work for them 🙂

Anyone who is thinking about "upgrading" from SL Server to Lion Server but hasn't yet done so should read this:

http://www.macworld.com/article/162381/2011/09/mac_os_x_lion_server.html

Indeed, Lion Serverhas many drawbacks... App Store & iTunes is tne word... I 'm finding XP & 7 far more useful these days. 😟

The interesting thing about the article is the comparison between the different admin tools. It appears that a great deal of work was put into Profile Manager, the primary purpose of which is to keep a Lion Server in sync with registered iOS devices. That seems to be a good clue as to where Apple is headed with OS X Server, a closed system for Apple devices and services. That's pretty much the opposite of what I need in a server.