Upgrading OS X Lion Server to Mountain Lion

Yes, it requires both.

But have you researched all the problems with 10.8 & 10.8 Server yet???

I'd say hold off, no hurry to go backwards, & if you do, make sure you have a bootable clone of what you have now so you can go back to work. 🙂

Installing 10.8 over 10.7 Server removes the server components, but archives the server data. When you install the 10.8 Server application, it tries to import your server data, but don't stake too much on success. Thoroughly research how you would migrate your data manually before you upgrade. The suggestion to wait until OS X Server is more mature is a good one.

I upgraded all our late 2011 Mac Minis that were running Lion to Mointain Lion and upgraded our late 2011 Lion Server to Mountain Lion with the server App and it has been a pain in the ***. User profiles don't work properly, have to keep deleting .ds files, repairing permissins etc. iTunes, Google Chrome and Spotify don't open! Wish I had waited, I just had so much faith in Apple/Mac making upgrades so painless that I didn't think anything could go wrong.

Support *****! I can't take all of my network to the genius bar to fix this.

As Linc stated, "don't stake too much on success." Upgrading from Lion Server to Mountain Lion was easy enough, but as already pointed out, renders your server components inoperable. So you'd better be ready with OSX Server Mountain Lion or you'll be down between upgrades.

ML Server does indeed try to upgrade your server components, but I've not had it work at all in the three times I've tried (twice on production installs and once on dev install). I've a very simple web site and mailstore with only 5 users. The upgrade process couldn't even convert that, leaving my web root empty, and my mailstore freshly initialized. The web was surprising as it's only files, but that is also the easiest. Mail, on the other hand, is not something one should have to go through a series of steps to migrate.

I'm going to see what happens if I attempt to manually copy mailstore components over just for the interest of science. 🙂 Also note that your DHCP service control applet is removed from Server Manager in Mountain Lion Server. However, the service itself is still available for manual control. There are some hacks around getting it to start up via the configuration of Internet Sharing, but I wouldn't mess with that. Just manually launch it. It too is supposed to perform an in-place upgrade - I actually never got as far as to check if the DHCP service migrated (and you can't tell without going manual which I just didn't feel like doing) but I wouldn't expect too much. Now, why did Apple remove DHCP? NFI. Seemed like a really odd and a negative-impact feature removal. I mean, they had to go through the trouble of removing it rather than just leaving it be. Bad move if you asked me.

Anyway, good luck.

t

I just upgraded my Lion Server to ML, but have not had a chance to review all the impacts. I did notice that it was not consistent on how it handled my mobile users. One was left as a network users and one was changed to a local user on the server. Did not have time yet to attempt a login of the one changed to local, to see if the mobile sync feature is still working. I have anticipate I will have to remove the user and add it again to force it back to a network mobile user with the account sync capability.

It also looks like ML server forces you over to using profile manager. Since I wasn't able to get my mobile users to work correctly in Lion Server with the profile manager, I am concerned about adding more or managing the ones I have without the Server Admin tools that I had been so dependent on in Lion.

Hey dahelms - did it successfully upgrade your Postfix database? Users were able to connect up and get their old mail, calendar, etc?

t