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osx server to manage my family??

ok so I have a few questions so please bear with me and hopefully someone could help me out.


1. I was looking at OS X server on a mac mini (in my home) for helping me control my families iOS devices and apple products. As this would be the sole purpose of this mini. So is that really stupid or would it be a good move? First off i don't mind learning and screwing up. things I would like to achieve:


2. running my own email at home, (dynamic maybe using dyndns or similar)


3. controlling my family of iPhones and iPads, (caching updates), but mostly for this I would like to be able to remotely push profiles to my kids phones you know when they get grounded and I want to limit what they can do with it, would like to not have to phyiscally get the phone in my hand. Currently using restrictions in each phone. but it would be nice to set that all up on a desktop then push to it. Sometimes I might forget a setting or something like that.


If I go this route I will use my iPhone and iPad as a lab rat first.


4. would love to have a VPN setup on everyones device so that I don't have to worry about them using hotels, coffee shop wifi etc etc.


everyone has there own apple act and we do use family share which is nice but would I be doubling up on anything here? Im sure someone is in a similar postion with apple becoming more popular.



Don't really need calendar and contacts shared as contacts are separate and calendar is served by iCloud



thank you!

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Apr 25, 2015 6:31 AM

Reply
3 replies

Apr 25, 2015 6:57 AM in response to beansberry

1. Not stupid, but you can achieve much the same thing without Server by using Apple Configurator (free in the App Store.) It only works via USB, not via the network.


2. You don't want to run a public mail server. You could have an internal mail server that you would access via VPN, but you would need a way to get external mail onto it, which is not so easy to set up. A better solution is to use a hosted service with your own domain name, if that's what you want.


3. For that, you do need Server. Be warned, though, that Profile Manager is its least reliable component.


4. Easy to do with Server.

Apr 25, 2015 7:10 AM in response to Linc Davis

but with configurator can there be separate apple accts? I know that is designed for schools and businesses setting up lots of devices.


what hosting service would you recommend? I don't mind paying a lil bit a month but don't wanna spend a ton either. I guess I just don't want emails sitting on google, hotmail, etc etc anymore, or my own isp for that matter.


and I figured profile manager would be better for that. but that ***** if it is its least bit reliable part.


thank you!

osx server to manage my family??

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