What is the recommended number of clients per Mac server? Also what are some recommended specs when purchasing an Apple machine that will have Mac OS X server installed?

Hello cpreasbeck,

Thank you for contacting Apple Support Communities.

I was able to find the following transition guide for Xserve that provides some workload guidance to determine performance when planning a server deployment.

Transition Guide Xserve

http://images.apple.com/xserve/pdf/L422277A_Xserve_Guide.pdf

On page 9, Performance there is a chart that provides maximum numbers of connected users for various activities such as file sharing, mail, web, calendar, directory services and Time Machine and the CPU used as a server (Xserve, Mac Pro, Mac Mini). This information is a bit dated as the referenced software is Snow Leopard Server (OS X 10.6), and the hardware is older also, but it should give you a general idea of what you might need to look for.

Regards,

Jeff D.

If you're referring to iOS and Mac OS X clients and particularly to the use of Profile Manager 2 (and not to file share services and such, as referenced in the information linked by jeffd55), then 300 clients is quite manageable with OS X Server on a Mac Mini Server, assuming you have a decent network connection. Here is the Apple note on this topic: Profile Manager 2: Scalability