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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Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
Your Twitter was right, this really is endlessCharonPDX - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
It was that pesky loop that started on page 23 that circled you back to page 8. By the time you'd read page 23, you'd forgotten what was on page 8, so you didn't notice you were in a loop until you were at what you thought was page 157...B3an - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
Very in depth article... but i feel you've wasted time on this. No one in there right mind would use OSX as a server. Apart from Apple fanboys that choose an inferior product over better alternatives because it has an Apple logo, but i emphasize the words "right mind".FATCamaro - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
For enterprise work, or a Windows-only network this is certainly true. For SMB, or even 500 mac/mixed users I think it could work if you can provide some glue to handle fail-over.Windows server is better for Office for sure as is Linux for web & applications.
Spivonious - Wednesday, August 3, 2011 - link
I can run a web server on the client version of Windows. It's just not installed by default.mino - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
Hint: for how many users/connections ....If it was THAT simple there would be no Web Edition, mind you.
AlBanting - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link
Same thing for client version of Mac OS X. I've done this for years.KPOM - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
True, for an enterprise user. However, a small business or tech-savvy home user trying to manage multiple Windows PCs, Macs, and iOS devices might well be tempted by the $50 price tag.If should be obvious by the price drop and the discontinuation of the XServe that Apple no longer intends to compete with Windows Server or Linux in the enterprise market. They are a consumer-oriented company, and released a server OS intended for a consumer market.
zorxd - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
Tech-savvy home user will run a free linux distro for a server. Plus it will work on any hardware, not only on a Mac. Many use older PCs as servers.Also the Mac Pro is too expensive and the Mac Mini can't even have 3.5" drives which mean that it is a bad solution for a file server.
richardr - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - link
Actually, I have a real use case, though it may be a bit specialised for your tastes... non-computing departments of universities are full of people with underused desktops running Word, but also have other people doing analyses that take ages to run on their machines. Making them all Macs (you'll never persuade them to use linux) and wiring them up with xgrid and OSX Server is a pretty pain-free way of running my analyses on their machines without too much disruption to their lives...