Apple is killing OS X Server. Does anyone else care?

I am within a whisker of getting an estimate on moving to Windoze. There are additional admin and other costs in running a business with a Mac network. That used to be paid in less maintenance and training costs. If Apple is taking that away, I need to re-evaluate whether Apple any longer makes sense for me.

I never needed computers to doodle on or publish magazines. Still don't. This from a business Mac user from the early 80's that has purchased dozens and dozens of Macs. Literally.

There is this thread about the subject too.

what about opendirectory ?

We all care. But as I said there. In windows people still run Server2008, so.. If we do not like the deprecation, for some years to come you still can stay where you are.

However it is a pity, that apple does not care about this corporate market anymore.

I think, you can easily wait another couple of years. As I said in another thread. Most Windows environments still run Window 2008 Servers. So.. hold your horses, wait and see. You will be able to run Sierra and Server. 5.3.1 for some years to come, the last version with iOS Filesharing access and all working.

That is at least what I will do.

But.. If you need the newest and latest.. go with MrHoffmanns opinion which is much more well founded since he is a pro in the field. I only try to have my 15 people shop up and running with Websites, OD, Filesharing, DNS, VPN, Caching running on an mini2010 server machine.

I care. But apparently Apple doesn't. Getting rid of macOS server is the final push my organization needed to move away from the Apple ecosystem. iMacs and iOS devices were managed from macOS server. Unfortunately this business decision also means no more business iPhones and moving to Samsung tablets instead of iPads. And I'm really going to miss my iMac at work...

The lost ability to do push notifications on email is biggest lost. Would be cool if Apple open sourced that product. The rest are all a bit rubbish now anyway.

Yes, we also care.

We are a small business and have been using a version of Apple's server software going back to what I think was called ServerIP before the release of OS X. Like others here I am not an IT manager. I run our IT as a "fun" sideline. The press to eliminate services and drive for everyone to have their own device rather than "hot desking" is a real problem for our company due to the nature of our business. This transition is going to force me to become a legitimate server manager and deal with manually installing and managing the services we need. It may force us to go to a more expensive package that will probably force a server OS change too; which will eliminate the hot desking we prefer. Apple used to offer everything we needed in one package. With the decline of services and quality of the Server software product since 10.6.8 our managed systems have been getting more and more troublesome and my job running our IT has been less and less fun. Direct connections from unmangaged devices have remained easy and trouble free.

Through the decades we have been transitioning constantly through various directory methods, networking methods, FileMaker systems, printing systems, file systems, etc. Each of those steps was challenging because of the changes required. This is just another step along the way. It is a shame that at a time when Apple devices are being used more and more in enterprise, (finally catching up with the rest of us!) Apple seems to be removing easily managed services and the easy management of remaining services geared towards those devices.

One of the things that Apple has done over the years is to control ALL things vertically. My company took advantage of that and enjoyed its benefits. Some of these changes are leaving holes in that structure. Let's get our thoughts out there but also plan for our own future. If that future doesn't include Apple server because of their decisions, so be it. Like Apple, we make business decisions too.

-Erich

Tim Harris wrote:

Actually those three are by far the easiest to do out of the box providing you don't need to bind the Macs to OD. Use Ubuntu and Webmin.

Maybe, but is this really helpfully? - I don't wanna setup a new server with a new OS... 😟

I definitely care. It's disgusting! I've used the various iterations of OS X Server since about 10.2 or 10.3. Even had a nice XServeG5 for a while too. I've seen the writing on the wall for a while though, with services slowly disappearing. I have a couple servers set up now at 10.12.x and likely will never migrate past 10.12. Time Machine Server is gone entirely. Yeah, I know the functionality is kinda-sorta still there but not really. Currently I can see a list of the 20-ish machines in the office and if someone's hasn't backed up for a while, I can see it easily, and the server emails me to let me know. In 10.13 that's all gone. As an admin I would have no way at all to know if someone's machine hasn't backed up aside from them coming to tell me which never happens of course.

I used to self-host email but passed that off to a service provider after we got DDOS'd a couple times, but it worked great when we had it hosted on OS X Server. They're getting rid of Netboot/Netinstall too, dangit! That instantly makes it more difficult and time consuming for me to set up a machine for a new employee. I'll probably keep an image at 10.12.6 and then manually upgrade to 10.13.x.

But yeah, it's sickening. Apple *used* to be all about making life easier for their users. Now, it seems they are going the other way. If you're not a teeny-bopper doodling on an iPad in the back yard, or a 20-something millennial Facebooking emojis to Twitter on a $1k iPhone, they don't give a **** about you.

I seriously care. I use every one of the features being axed.

This are the points that I sent to Apple that should be mindful.

1. this is not enough time for something that is so essential to so many users.
2. the solutions provided are no where even in the same solar system of ease of use and understanding.
3. Server is being gutted of every single useful feature that there is. I use every one of the features being removed and finding a unified solution is going to be a nightmare.
4. Apple provides no information about the possibility for those that want to keep using this past the time of official support.
5. macOS High Sierra should maintain support for this and be the last supporting version of the full software package.
6. macOS 10.13 is the version that this should be removed, not 10.12. So that those with implementations that must remain on this system can still get the security software updates they need and have time to migrate elsewhere if Apple still insists on moving forward with this insane and continued abandonment of all of their professional users.

I use MacMini ... will probably stick with them for now.

Unfortunately, the gutting of Server.app goes hand-in-hand with the gutting of the Mac Mini. I’m also on a Mini—a 2012 quad core, and have been waiting and waiting for a viable hardware upgrade. The 2014 dual cores were half the speed and a non-starter.

We don’t know if the expected 2018 updated Minis will be similarly limited, or what the cost/benefit looks like for the promised Mac Pro update.

That’s why Apple is forcing the decision of remaining on their desktop platform for server hardware, or moving to OpenBSD or Linux on a SoC or VM.

Right now, there is no Apple hardware or software support for servers or enterprise. Message received.

If you really look at the statement. They deprecate only non apple software. For example for email, it is KERIOconnect and Courier.

Does that mean, that they still will support and offer an apple way of setting up a mail server?

ABoA,

Thank you for your assessment of Webmin. It is what I thought but now I get a confirmation.

The main reason I will try to stick to my MacOS Server to run my SMTP relay is that all the user databases and the certicates are already there, and postfix can plug into it for authentication purpose (one doesn’t really want to expose a weakly secure postfix smtp relay on the internet : that is a honeypot for spammers). Of course, I could have the Linux Box plug into opendirectory, but then I would have to manage that link.

Regarding Office365, I don’t want to denigrate Microsoft. I use Office365 home for my family and it is good value for a family of 4 considering the Skype minutes and the 1TB per user on OneDrive (works very well for online backup with Arq). This being said, their business offer (which is the only one that offer own domain email) IS expensive. To give you a comparison, OVH will give 10 user emails for 3 euros per month, 100 for 6 euros, and 1000 for 10 euros. Compare the price that 40$, 400$ and 4000$ respectively !

There is one advantage of Office365 for Business though : it gives you IMAP access to your mailbox, so should I have changed your mind and induced you to switch to iCloud, you can just transfer all your emails using imapsync in a breeze...

For a variety of reasons, it would be wise to consider the product at end of life. I personally have no intention of upgrading beyond Sierra. I will keep the product limping along until it is no longer useful, then I will have no reason to have Macs as servers.

Perhaps the message from Apple is "Buy a Windows Server"?... killing off the server product and supporting only Windows SMB for file sharing in the operating system... seems to say something here.

And the open source products they suggest as alternatives... Good luck with that. DavMail, really? Apple is suggesting that we go load Java now after divesting so publicly... And oh boy is DavMail wonky.

"What we got here is a failure to communicate" - Luke

(on many levels)

I've been considering migrating to one of my Ubuntu servers. From what I understand of the under-the-hood workings, the mailserver is simply an install of Postfix/Dovecot. I've got some feelers out on the postfix mailing servers to see if it would even be possible to migrate the configurations.

Moving to non macOS for servers does make things easier.

From an enterprise perspective, Macs are still a pariah in many IT departments where RedHat Linux Enterprise is a more welcome denizen. Where Macs had been winning-out was macOS' ability to run multiple services and manage those services easily and cleanly with a reasonable interface (when it worked right). RedHat Linux Enterprise has all the power but also has so many sharp edges it is painful to deploy as contrasted to the macOS Server experience (or the intended experience). But if you have to have sharp edges and work in a 1970's style terminal, why bother doing it on "Terminal" on the Mac at a premium price with little or no ability to lego-your-own-box together and in general no support from the server product community?

The whole GUI on top of command line approach as been very problematic since OS X began but if you walked a narrow path with Mac OS X Server 10.5, 10.6, 10.7 or 10.8 you could keep it working fairly smoothly. Once that advantage goes away and you relegated to Terminal... then macOS becomes a bit of a problem when you want to take things to the next level in "server land"... like move to Amazon Web Services, Azure, etc. ;-)

VMWare's ability to run macOS virtualized was/is nice... we have a bunch of Mac iron doing just that. I don't plan on downgrading to macOS 10.13; and with VMWare I can keep macOS 10.12 going for as long as I want, even after new Apple "hardware" does not support the old OS.

For me, once the security problems get the better of macOS 10.12, then it's time to shop around.

They could have done so much with macOS server... it just never got the love and attention it deserved. Every time I think about it, I get that "someone ran over my dog" feeling. Goodbye old friend. 😢