Worth upgrading to Lion Server?

Ugg...trying to migrate today. Went miserably. Now I will have to FRESH INSTALL snow leopard, set up, then migrate up.

What a hassle. OD, all relavent bindings...gone.

This was to 10.7.3

Wish me luck

We've upgraded to 10.7 from 10.4 server - I did try an upgrade but that didn't really work so I started from scratch and used the e-mail clients to move the imap e-mail from 10.4 to 10.7 server. Running on a MacMini server.

So far so good we've been on it for a week its runnig DB server software, AFP, SMB - not used this a lot, VPN, Time Machine Server, Mail Server, DNS haven't quite got firewall there yet.

It also works as our fax machine with a Zoom USB modem - old school but converts our faxes to e-mail.

Like many have mentioned dislike the 3 server admin apps and it is dumbed down but it does work (so far). Using carbon copy cloner to make a bootable backup each day on a schedule. Having a minor issue on L2TP VPN but that was the same as on 10.4 - we were usng PPTP VPN before.

Also sharing 2x DYMO label printers I much prefer the way Lion Server shares printers - just like OSX client. For those that want to go a bit deeper point your server browser to http://localhost:631/printers/

Also sharing a firewre scanner.

Webmail looks good.

Seem to have a slight issue with the software update server it has yet to download the 10.7.3 updates and it would be nice to schedule when it downloads updates i.e when our office is closed.

Not sure if were lucky or if its just under used but pretty happy so far - faster than our 10.4 server. Can't decide whether to update the 10.7.3 update (currently running 10.7.2) I'm downloading the combo update but reading all these posts has made me nervous - never thought about updates on 10.4 just did them.

As for the criticism of documentaion non of Apple Server versions I have used have ever had any decent documnetation also so far I haven't had to use terminal which I did have to use on 10.4 - mainly to run mailbfr as in 10.4 Apple never provided any mail tools that actually worked.

I would like to put in a word for Lion Server. I read this forum and decided not to upgrade but my SL server had a disk crash and refused to re-install. So I bit the bullet and added Lion Server to an ordinary Mac mini. I find it superior to SL for a small business. I am using all the features except Podcast producer so far and they all work just fine - BUT ONLY BECAUSE I installed it by following carefully step by step the video tutorial of Sean Colins at Lynda.com. He made sure I avoided all the multitude of errors I would have made if I had tried to install any other way.

Lion Server installed per Sean Colins is a treat!

Full disclosure. I have no connection with either Sean Colins or Lynda.com except being a paying customer :-)

Glad to hear that - I also subscribe and have viewed his tutorials - very well done. My only concern is what to do with Mountain Lion coming out this summer. I haven't upgraded to LION because it came out too close to the end of last summer. I had planned to upgrade to LION this summer, but don't quite know what to do.

I don't have a problem upgrading laptops, but I would PREFER to do a clean install on the server. I have two new MacMini servers with LION installed. MAYBE there will be an easy upgrade. We'll see.

Ummm, it's really bad that to properly install a product you paid for, you have to pay again to buy another install guide from a third party.

Instead of bad, I used terrible in my original post but Apple doesn't let me use that word unless I edit the submission and put it in.

I contacted Apple and had them send me a replacement version of my Snow Leopard Server, rather than waste more time on Lion Server.

So, you mention that you use all features besides the podcast producer, but this doesn't tell us much. What are you using?

Message was edited by: Alex Zavatone added the word terrible

Message was edited by: Alex Zavatone

Well, you can look at it that way, Alex but I think that $50 for the software plus $25 for a month of Lynda.com is pretty good value. compare that with windows Server ....

But I must correct "everything but Podcast Server". I'm using FileSharing, iCal, Mail, Time Machine for server and clients, Web, Wiki and Active Directory. I can't make the VPN work yet but I think that is because I am using a self-signed SSL certificate. I'm not ready to pay for a UCC cert for this server yet. I can connect to the server's address book but I can't find any way to add contacts to it from a client! When I click the + sign, Address Book drops back to "All users" on my local machine.

I'm also having trouble with Profile Manager, I think again because of the self-signed cert. So it's not as rosy as I indicated but I'm still pretty happy with it overall - including with the $75 price.

It all comes down to time. You waste a lot of time finding out the product doesn't work properly once you've downloaded and installed it. Then you have to find some 3rd party source to show you how to do it the right way. In that, it ends up costing more than Windows Server or the previous version of Apple's Snow Leopard server.

The software isn't worth the 50 bucks if it can't provide what it advertises AND you have to spend loads more time to try to get it to work.

That's not a solution, that's a liability.

Yeah, that's why I'm moving to GMail and Calendar and, perhaps, InMotionHosting for "internal" websites and wikis - although I think Google can do that as well. I'm just not crazy about the server going down and school having to stop as well as worrying all the time about making sure everything is backed up properly. The only thing I want to run on Server is DNS and DHCP (and I really think I can run DHCP off my router and I can use my ISP's DNS. Still have to figure all that out before this summer. But I've gotten rid of 8 servers and only have three more to go. Another piece I'm still unsure about is whether I can live without Open Directory.

We are in blank fear. Still stuck to our 10.6.x server, I'd love to give the Lion server a try ... but:

We need MySQL - gone in Lion

We need Mobile Clients with synced configs - rumors are around, this might be gone with Mountain Lion

We need a simple GUI with reliable editing - gone in Lion

The only improvement I can see is push-mail. If this really works. Any experiences? And how to work with Lion server by not beeing able to use Terminal command lines?

The big issues we have had with Lion Server are unreliable Active Directory authentication issues. AFP works better than SMB with AD accounts, but we recently lost the ability to use AD groups to assign share permissions, leading me to have to recreate all groups in OD and add the AD users to them. Sometimes, if we reboot the server, the AD bind breaks and no AD accounts can authenticate.

Assigning permissions to share using the Server application is very clumbsy. We really miss the Server Admin of 10.6. Splitting management into three applications was a terrible idea.

We have a client that hosts multiple sites on their Xserve, and I still don't know that virtual hosts have a way to be managed through any of the applications provided. I know there is a way to edit files to make it work, but this isn't what we expect from Apple.

In all 10.7 server doesn't feel like a replacement for 10.6 server at all. It's more like they discontinued the server software and now sell you a baby app that lets you do some of what the server did on a regular workstation. At this time, I still cannot feel good offering 10.7 server as an upgrade to 10.6 server.

It only tells me Apple's long term goal does not include enterprise level server integration, and will focus on end user products. They have revamped SMB to work better with Windows servers, so that is what you should work with. They actually will do better if they wash their hands completely of 10.X server products, and focus solely on end user devices. However, it would be nice if they just said this, rather than stringing us along with a lousy server application.

I have to agree that Apple does appear to have "gone consumer" in a way that is very disappointing given the promise that was apparent in Server 10.6. A similar trend is apparent in abandoning features of OS X - particularly control of where and when to save files, in favour of the iOS model.

I hope they soon wake up to the fact that, as more and more enterprises are moving to Mac, they should cater to their professioinal needs too.

I don't think this comes as any surprise?

The "shot across the bow" (hmmm...actually, maybe, INTO the bow) came when Apple discontinued XServers. Now, with the introduction of iCloud, Apple is proposing to decentralize and outsource the entire IT operation.

I know a lot of folks aren't going to like this but it makes sense to me. Admittedly I'm not running a shop with hundreds of users and thousands of devices, but I don't think Apple was ever positioned to get into that business...although I'm sure some University folks would disagree with me.

I can't believe there is any profit in that business - it's got to be cut-throat, low margin stuff that just isn't Apple's cup of tea. And I don't find that necessarily a bad thing.

Apple's always been, "If you don't want to play by my rules, I'm going to take my ball and go home." I used to think that was a terrible thing until I got so fed up with my PC not working (and my users complaining that THEIR PCs weren't working) that I finally switched back to Apple. I haven't looked back.

I'm still struggling to make sense of all this, but I can see, down the road, that my job is going to be easier, and my time will be spent working more with my end-users helping them use the technology, rather than riding the metal beasts in the server room like some kind of mechanical bull.