In-Depth with Mac OS X Lion Server
by Andrew Cunningham on August 2, 2011 8:00 AM ESTRather than keep interrupting myself throughout the review to talk about using Windows with OS X Server’s services, I thought I’d lump it all together at the end for convenience’s sake. There's not much to say, so I'll be brief.
Open Directory: Past versions of OS X Server were able to serve as Primary Domain Controllers (PDCs) for Windows computers, which is to say they could provide Windows systems with authentication and permissions for users and groups, even though they couldn't manage many Windows settings. Lion's new SMB implementation removes that functionality entirely, which is going to hurt for people who rely on it. Interoperability with Active Directory domains remains as robust as ever, but it just got that much harder to get by with just OS X Server if you have many Windows clients to speak of.
Address Book, iCal, iChat, and Mail: All of these services use open protocols (or, at least, protocols that are supported by several non-Apple programs), so you can access them from many different products across many different platforms: POP and IMAP for Mail, CardDAV for Address Book, Jabber for iChat, and CalDAV for iCal. You may not get quite as polished an experience as with the built-in Apple tools, but you should still be able to interface with your OS X-using colleagues (and, of course, the services that offer web clients will render fine on PC browsers).
Address Book, iCal, iChat, and Mail: All of these services use open protocols (or, at least, protocols that are supported by several non-Apple programs), so you can access them from many different products across many different platforms: POP and IMAP for Mail, CardDAV for Address Book, Jabber for iChat, and CalDAV for iCal. You may not get quite as polished an experience as with the built-in Apple tools, but you should still be able to interface with your OS X-using colleagues (and, of course, the services that offer web clients will render fine on PC browsers).
File Sharing: Lion's new SMB doesn't affect file sharing with Windows XP, Vista, and 7 clients - it all works as intended.
VPN: Properly configured Windows computers should be able to make full use of OS X Server’s VPN service, but check out this Apple support document for some caveats and configuration details.
Web and Wiki: Naturally, as long as you have a Web browser and appropriate permissions, you can access and edit Web and Wiki pages from Windows just as well as any OS X user. Note that you may have the best experience using Safari, but I didn’t have any problems using Chrome or Firefox in my testing.
Other Apple-tailored services - NetBoot, Podcast, Xgrid, Time Machine, Software Update, and others - won't do anything for your Windows clients. If you’ve got a mostly Mac network with a few Windows users, or if you intend to use OS X Server mostly to manage Macs and Windows servers to manage Windows, then OS X Server should work well for you; if you just have Windows clients, though, or if your Mac-to-Windows ratio is high enough, the removal of PDC functionality makes it hard to get by with just an OS X server.
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the_engineer - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
Indeed, and that's the plan, assuming nothing else I like more comes along. I was really sort of tantalized by the possibility of software RAID in OSX, and still haven't been able to get a straight answer on it. Currently it is looking like it's a no go.tff - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
As a home user, I've been frustrated by the inability to have two users edit a shared calendar in OS X/iOS without using 3rd party software.How would it differ using Lion server to accomplish this rather than Lion and iOS 5 clients using iCloud?
Typical Mac home user- iPhones, iPads, Mac laptops.
Omegabet - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
You can install server.app on a client. Just copy the app over from the server. The first time you launch it, choose connect to a server. It will then run server.app from your client. Otherwise it will upgrade lion to the server version. This was recommended in the apple documentation (can't remember where though).qiankun - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
One instance I found frustrating is that non-HSF+ volumes like NTFS and exFat cannot be accessed from other computers using SMB or AFP. You can add the volume to the file sharing list, pick whatever protocol you like, but when you try to access it you'll get an error. Same thing applies to the bootcamp partition.I like to use NTFS or exFat on external drives, for simple fact that whenever needed you can simply disconnect them from the mac server and plug into a PC. I know there are software that allows reading HSF+ partitions on windows, but it's not installed everywhere, very unlikely if you want to use the drive on a random computer you or your friend uses.
damianrobertjones - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
Windows Home Server. That's all I have to add.justinf79 - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
WHS isn't even in the same league...rs2 - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
I've used a number of different wiki solutions, and the one included on OS X Server is a toy compared to most other popular wikis. There's just no comparison between the OS X wiki and something like Confluence or MediaWiki.gamoniac - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
At first glance, this looks impressive, given the price tag and the myriad of features provided. However, the author should note the huge maintenance costs of this at best rudimentary product. Anyone who has used Apache or IIS 7 knows the Lion web server is years away from catching up.What good is a cheap product if you have to to spend, say, 40 hours, trying to get something to work. The TCO is too high even at $10/hour, and even for home users.
gamoniac - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
PS: Good article nonetheless. Thank you AT. Keep them coming!repoman27 - Wednesday, August 3, 2011 - link
What's good about a cheap product with a myriad of features is that if even one or two work as advertised out of the box, it was worth it. If not, you're only out $50. I configured Snow Leopard Client on a MacBook Pro to work as a NetBoot / NetRestore server because I happened to find that functionality useful, and although it was trivial to do so, I'm perfectly inclined to shell out the $50 for Lion Server going forward rather than monkey around with another client version.In general, you're right though, it's stupid to cheap out on a capital expenditure and then spend an order of magnitude more trying to get someone who knows what they're doing to make it work.
Really, though, who doesn't spend at least 40 hours setting up a new server for the first time?