OS X Server: Ready for Primetime

So there I was in a chat with several Mac enthusiasts having a lively discussion when I commented about the coverage for the Mac OS X and OS X Server in the business community. I still to this day can not believe how lacking the coverage is. In the chat, I decided to provide a quick history lesson which I will repeat here. While we are used to one company dominating the business desktop/server market, it has not always been that way. It comes as a surprise to many non-Mac users, but Apple actually outshines the other players in this market. Even to Mac users, it may be surprising at how much more Apple’s servers outshine the competitors than they do with their desktops.

How We Got Here
Once upon a time in a business far, far, away there was something called Ethernet that was enabling small businesses to tie computers together for sharing resources at a relatively inexpensive cost. There was Artisoft Lantastic, Banyan Vines, Novell Netware and 3Com 3Server network operating systems with their own proprietary methods of connecting machines together, sharing files, and printing; life was good. Novell was the dominant player in the majority of the business space, Banyan Vines in the government and security conscious organizations, and Lantastic for the small workgroups. Back in these days, people had to learn key stroke combinations to make Word Perfect format their documents and yes believe it or not work got done.

In the early 90’s, a Redmond based company you may know released its first draft of its network operating system, Windows NT 3.1 . Initially no one really cared including me as Novell was the standard, Lantastic for the small guys, and Vines for the government folks. As time went by, I looked at NT 3.1 and tore apart the beta certification exam Microsoft was working on (which was inclusive of microkernel architecture concepts and questions) and I got pretty excited that Microsoft had included things like RAS (Remote Access Server). This allowed me to dial in and manage the server remotely and it didn’t even cost me or my clients extra. NT 3.1 also did all management with this neat thing called a GUI (graphical user interface), allowing you to actually use that mouse thing you bought. These features were all built into NT 2.1, but were features you had to pay for (and sometimes pay heavily) in Netware. Along came SNA Server, now just a memory, but at the time an epiphany of technology allowing companies that needed mainframe access, which at the time was most of them, to use pooling and other cool technologies that again saved customers a large amount of money. These Microsoft guys had something compelling, a lot of free features, a cool interface to administrate the system with and a price point we could live with.

Fast forward to 2007 and lets move some pieces on the chess board; Microsoft now sits where Novell sat, fat and happy. Novell has changed its model from proprietary Netware to open-source Linux based software through Suse acquisition. Then there is a company no one thinks of as a business server - OS X Server from Apple - the sleeping giant. Apple’s OS X Server provides businesses with, dare I say it, a better GUI, easier administrative tools and a bunch of included features you have to pay for from the other guys. This sounds like a history lesson, but I digress. Lets dig a little deeper and look at the bang for the buck you get with OS X Server.

The Value Proposition
Well it’s all fine and good that Apple has a great GUI, easy management tools, and a bunch of features, but the bottom line to the small business owner. Let’s take a side by side comparison of Microsoft’s Small Business Server (SBS) and Apple’s OS X Server Software and see how Apple’s server stacks up against the 800lb gorilla’s offering.

*(limited to 75gb mailboxes) **Limited Edition and/or 32 bit version ***Additional Users Require Licensing, Limited to 75 Users Max. ~Can act as File/Print/Authentication Server for Microsoft XP and Vista Client machines.

No I am not trying to sell you OS X Server, I just want to make you aware that OS X Server is a suitable alternative to the “mainstream” choice. There are a couple of other items of note that I should mention here. Apple includes 64 bit versions of Apache, and MySQL as well as web platforms JBOSS, PHP, Ruby to allow a business to leverage open source solutions to fill their application and groupware needs (more on these to come in future articles). Apple OS X Server can be used as the server in a network full of Windows machines providing them with authentication, file/print, and the balance of services listed above (except Patch Management, Xgrid and Netboot), so it’s not just an Apple to Apple solution either.

Wrap Up
This article just scratches the surface of the differences and overall value proposition of OS X Server. We haven’t delved into the redundancy options you have free with OS X Server that you pay for with the other guys, but that isn’t the purpose of this article. My purpose here was to get your attention and provide you with a brief introduction to business computing options in the Apple realm. Based on your feedback we can either dive deeper into this comparison or tackle other Apple in business issues, etc. so please provide some feedback so I can tailor the content of my next articles to suit you, the audience.