Easy way to kill a server

This is rediculous. How can you kill an entire domain from another machine?

It sounds like you misunderstand how your server is supposed to be managed.

The Server Admin tools are designed to manage remote machines. You're supposed to run your servers in one place (a datacenter, a server room, a locked closet) and be able to manage them from somewhere more comfortable (your desk, a couch, the local Starbucks, wherever). To that end it's absolutely right that you should be able to enable and disable services on a remote machine. I do it all the time.

Now, as for killing the entire machine, that comes as a little bit of a stretch. Are you sure you killed the machine, or just deleted your Server Admin's view of that machine? It sounds to me that the server was running just fine "...I could still login and navigate around...', just that you could not see your server in Server Admin. If that's the case just re-add the server to your Server Admin list (via the little + icon at the bottom) and you're back in business (not that you were ever out of business since your server was running quite happily).

A little more reading on Mac OS X Server's remote administration would seem like a good idea.

Servers are not clients, and not intended to be managed like clients.

Why? Servers usually serve muliple users.

Servers are expected to be managed differently than clients.

Servers are more complex than clients, and failures are more costly.

Servers are often maintained remotely. Many (most?) servers often don't have keyboards or displays attached, and it's common not to have a user logged into the server.

As part of typical management practices, servers receive dedicated backups, and servers will generally undergo comparatively fewer changes than client systems, and those server changes and those updates can be performed less often than with client.

Barring specific and critical fixes, it is seldom an advantage to rush the upgrades or changes with a server.

Why? Servers inherently serve multiple users, and often serve multiple functions. While a client system might and often will see more changes than will a typical server, any failures from those upgrades, installations or configuration changes will typically effect just one user with that client system. Failures with servers can effect multiple users (clients) of the server, or can disrupt services that are central to the operations of a business.

If you don't understand or are curious about a feature or setting, that's quite understandable and even admirable. After the question arises, then there's often some research and possibly some discussion questions posted, and quite possibly some direct experimentation. All of this is entirely warranted, typical and reasonable. It's typical to have a test server - or at least a full server backup - before the experiement; where you can test changes and back out changes with impunity.

But deleting stuff? There aren't "blade guards" here. Deleting "system" users, digital certificates, files or directories, or any of many other components? That's not always reversable, or not easily reversable. short of rolling in a backup.

Not all changes are reversable, and not all changes are innocuous, after all. Have a backup.