Q: Is the Mountain Lion Server stable

Be smart.  Wait.  Watch sites like AFP548 and others.  Let then break their servers.  Just becuase Apple released some software does not mean you need it on your hardware.  Test it first.  Have good backup,  Have a regression plan.

The server software is stable once it is up and running with a normal site, works great for serving a text file based site. The configuration is going to be a hassle because you can't just transfer all your .conf files, instead Apple has decided we are all using a GUI app to config. There are some challenges with custom webapps and modules, which should only concern advanced users. Great for installing on your devbox but stick with the old server for a while on your rackspace machine.

You can optionally run Apache in its original location and forgo the Server.app entirely. It's all there and for a simple non-GUI user should be adequate. You just miss out on all the massive new features of Server.app.

Gnarlodious wrote:

 

You just miss out on all the massive new features of Server.app.

LOL.  That is a joke right?  Does that include the loss of DHCP, RADIUS, Xgrid, Podcast Server, Firewall, and MCX?

RADIUS is still a part of OS X Server: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5415

So is DHCP but a UI with a giant on off switch would make it much easier to configure.  Plus, during testing I don't think this shows up if your Airport is in bridge mode.  I will test this today.  Plus, what if you want to intergrate a Firewall or other non-apple device?

Looks like a fun day in the lab.

I'd love to know what you find with regards to RADIUS in ML Server.

I've got to deploy at a school in a few weeks and haven't tested this yet.

So I see this http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5415 and basically the same when searching Server.app for Radius.  I tried Friday afternoon to get a new Airport Express to show up in the Server.app sidebar but was not successful.  I am digging into this fully next week so I will let you know what I find.

My perception is that Mountain will facilitate configuring an Airport but doing anything outside will require serveradmin or manual edit of conf files.

I tried Friday afternoon to get a new Airport Express to show up in the Server.app sidebar but was not successful.

I had a similar experience in Lion. I had two AEBSs (one on the first floor and one on the second), both in bridge mode. Neither of them would ever show up in the sidebar in Server.app.

I went into RADIUS in Server Admin and was able to add them no problem. So that is a concern. I feel like they expect that your Base Station will always be THE router (so not in bridge mode) for your network and your server will be directly connected to it. Anything outside of this and it won't show up in Server.app.

No, it definitely is not stable, nor working as it should. I tried to upgrade my Mac Mini server with the latest Lion release to Mountain Lion only to face several problems.

1. After installing the Mountain Lion basic package and then the OS-X Server one, all my user home directories were not accessible, they resided on an external disk and there was no connection to them, even though Server.app showed the home directories of each user correctly. There is a problem when the /Network/Servers folder is created, there should be to links in there pointing to the root directory of the server, they never get created. I created the links manually, but then I faced the second large issue.    

2. The smtp server was not working, or at least the server wouldn't accept connections from my clients. I do not know if it was a mail server issue, or if it was a firewall issue, the old firewall is not deprecated in favor of a new one (why can't Apple use iptables like everyone else??) but whatever it was the server didn't accept connections from mail clients. I didn't have time, nor the energy to investigate, so I restored my Lion server backup and call it a day. Maybe I'll experiment some more in a few days, but these days are kind of difficult for me, so I prefer a working server to experimentation.

If your server has anything different than what is typical of an Apple Lion server installation (like using external disks for your user home directories) do not upgrade yet. It's a pain.

As for down-grading, it's easy if you have a USB stick with Lion software installed on it and a recent backup of your server. Thank God I had both. I booted from the USB stick and then run disk utility, to clean up the disk on which the Mountain Lion installation was done. Then I used the option to restore from a Time Machine backup and everything worked fine. I am now back in Lion and happy with it.