OS X as a school server.

How many students do you have? How many staff? Exactly what services are you planning to implement?

While Mavericks Server is capable of many functions, you should be aware of its scaling limitations. Additionally, depending on which country you are in, you may be eligible for free or greatly discounted cloud based services, allowing you to move many services outside the organization and avoid points of failure and management costs.

I have nothing but positive things to say about OS X Server. But you must be aware of the products limits. Running a system in a lab environment is one thing. Running it under load is a whole other animal.

And finally, reach out to your regional Apple Education SE. They should be able to give you examples in your geographic areas that you may even be able to visit.

R-

Apple Consultants Network

Apple Professional Services

Author "Mavericks Server – Foundation Services" :: Exclusively available in Apple's iBooks Store

Good approach. Us in technology can sometimes lose sight of the value of these devices in the educational workflow. At times, we get caught up in the perfection of the solution but this can disrupt the use of the product in the hands of the student and teacher.

Based on those numbers, you are not a one to one shop. So device sharing will need to be investigated. For the iPads, you could start as simple as Apple Configurator and supervision mode. However, you may not have enough time between classes to checkin and checkout all the devices. Once again, understanding the educational needs and use case is vital.

For the MacBooks, you can look at network homes to support the entire audience. But, you need to analyze your wireless network and core network to make sure you have the bandwidth to server the load. Likewise, a capacity study and I/O throughput analysis needs to be done to ensure that you can serve the load.

You are in a good position as spring is approaching. You should be taking the next few months to define and test your implementation on a small scale. Then once clarified, you will have the summer to implement and load test.

Sounds like a great project to sink your teeth into.

Depending on where you are located, you should be talking directly to your Apple Education Rep. In most cases, you will be assigned a sales rep and a tech resource. While they are not always as responsive or able to provide in depth support like an integrator, they are often helpful enough to get you to understand the big picture. In the US, every school has access to the sales rep and a technical contact. While they will try to get you to buy an AppleCare agreement, you are not required to and most tech reps I've crossed path with have been helpful.

And don't feel bad. The way you handled iPads with 10.7/iOS 6 is way different than the way to do it in 10.9/iOS 7. So you would have been reinventing the wheel anyway.