[Doc HM]

Been playing with it. Not the most intuitive set up in places. Seems very much like a "lite" version of 10.6.

I guess apple are pushing it at the home server user, setting up a central server in the home to handle all household data needs. You could run your own mail server from home (sort of thing).

I suspect this is the point of Lion Server, hence the small price tag.

I suspect there will not be a server version of the MacPro as some predict as I can't see Lion Server working in a biggish environment.

[Waragainstsleep]

I've not got my hands on it yet but I believe they have move all the stuff that looks like its missing back to the command line while implementing some very cool and useful device management systems and making them easy to set up. Seems like an odd package on the whole. I guess they wanted to bring MDM to the masses.

[besson3c]

I think what they've done is pretty smart. Server software is not Apple's forté, nor their focus. By pulling back in their offerings and targeting them at the more forgiving home consumer they are creating better PR for themselves in the eyes of the large enterprise computing world that might be a little weary about iPhone and iPad adoption if their server product leaves such a bad taste in their mouth (as well it should).

I used to include small business in the crowd of users Apple would be targeting in OS X Server, but I think this crowd is a rapidly dying breed given all of the much cheaper cloud based services out there.

[besson3c]

Another factor here might be Apple's policy of eating their own dog food, and looking at the massive amount of work that would be necessary for OS X Server machines to drive iCloud.

[angelmb]

Have you found any software incompatibility ?

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I think what they've done is pretty smart. Server software is not Apple's forté, nor their focus. By pulling back in their offerings and targeting them at the more forgiving home consumer they are creating better PR for themselves in the eyes of the large enterprise computing world that might be a little weary about iPhone and iPad adoption if their server product leaves such a bad taste in their mouth (as well it should).

I used to include small business in the crowd of users Apple would be targeting in OS X Server, but I think this crowd is a rapidly dying breed given all of the much cheaper cloud based services out there.

Small business is definitely still included. Apple are trying to give small business the same Enterprise class features that you would get with Exchange and iOS but without necessarily needing to pay someone to install or maintain it all like you'd need with Exchange. They are trying to extend the consumer Mac experience to SMBs.

They have realised their business model doesn't scale to Enterprise customers who rarely look beyond the bottom line. Apple makes its money from hardware, Enterprise money is all in software.

[Art Vandelay]

Originally Posted by Doc HM 

Been playing with it. Not the most intuitive set up in places. Seems very much like a "lite" version of 10.6.

I guess apple are pushing it at the home server user, setting up a central server in the home to handle all household data needs. You could run your own mail server from home (sort of thing).

I suspect this is the point of Lion Server, hence the small price tag.

I suspect there will not be a server version of the MacPro as some predict as I can't see Lion Server working in a biggish environment.

Have you installed the Server Admin Tools? I've yet to see anything that's missing for running my large network.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Small business is definitely still included. Apple are trying to give small business the same Enterprise class features that you would get with Exchange and iOS but without necessarily needing to pay someone to install or maintain it all like you'd need with Exchange. They are trying to extend the consumer Mac experience to SMBs.

They have realised their business model doesn't scale to Enterprise customers who rarely look beyond the bottom line. Apple makes its money from hardware, Enterprise money is all in software.

What MS Exchange features does OS X Server offer?

[besson3c]

Bump

[Waragainstsleep]

OS X Server offers IMAP mail, shared calendars, shared address books, push notifications and you can also set it up as an iOS MDM server which lets you push configuration changes to your iOS devices remotely.

You also have the Wiki server and Lion provides file sharing to iOS devices too.

Its a great pity you can't run it as a Windows PDC anymore though. Lots of us were hoping Apple would extend this feature to Vista and 7 clients rather than ditch it altogether.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

OS X Server offers IMAP mail, shared calendars, shared address books, push notifications and you can also set it up as an iOS MDM server which lets you push configuration changes to your iOS devices remotely.

You also have the Wiki server and Lion provides file sharing to iOS devices too.

Its a great pity you can't run it as a Windows PDC anymore though. Lots of us were hoping Apple would extend this feature to Vista and 7 clients rather than ditch it altogether.

Well, as cool as those features are, Exchange will do a heck of a lot more.

Shared Address Books are usually handled via a main company LDAP/Active Directory and personal address books stored on the Exchange server, AFAIK. I don't know if OS X Server does both, but in addition to this sort of stuff in Exchange you can do stuff like reserve rooms, track free/busy time for scheduling groups of people, delegation, shared mailboxes, web access, instant messaging, live meeting, sharepoint stuff, voicemail integration, it's designed for very large organizations/clusters, etc.

Going back to what you wrote:

Small business is definitely still included. Apple are trying to give small business the same Enterprise class features that you would get with Exchange and iOS but without necessarily needing to pay someone to install or maintain it all like you'd need with Exchange. They are trying to extend the consumer Mac experience to SMBs.

First of all, I think any smart small business would have somebody maintaining something as vital as their email systems. If not, they will surely eventually burn themselves from relying on Joe-know-how-to-click-on-shiny-GUI-buttons (e.g. dealing with hardware failures and lost mail/backup retrieval). What is the point of Apple's product? Most small businesses would probably rather outsource their email and have somebody else take the responsibility for something like this rather than run their own servers, which means that Apple's profit margins come from a subset of these small businesses that need this sort of technology, and for everybody else MS Exchange is quite dominant.


So, Apple has neither succeeded in matching Exchange, nor is it particularly smart to. I think Apple recognizes this now, which is why they are getting out of the whole server thing. This is just not their forté, and the market is getting tougher and tougher every day as cloud apps provide more and more.

Besides, I've heard from some people who would argue that the whole OS X Server experience is not terribly Mac-like as far is it "just working"

[Waragainstsleep]

Its certainly not as robust as Mac OS X client, no.

I'd like to hope that Apple is going back to basics with its Server with Lion. There is certainly no reason a lot of the more popular things that people use servers for can't be a whole lot simpler than they are. To date Server has in some ways been the worst of both worlds. While its simpler and more elegant than Windows Server, its not simple enough for a layperson to setup or administer on their own and its not really been robust enough compared Windows offerings. It also doesn't scale as far.

As I mentioned, Apple has spent the last decade or so learning that there is more money in consumer markets than business markets for a hardware company. The death of the Xserve is a prime example of how Apple's business model of adding value to its hardware through software was just not suited to Enterprise. The PPC chips gave them a USP but running Intel on servers meant they stood no chance of competing on price since enterprise hardware margins are shaved to the bone and all the money is in the software which Apple has traditionally given away cheaply.

This does leave a gap though. There are lots of small businesses. Seriously lots. These are more like consumers in many ways than they are like enterprise customers. This makes them a much better target for Apple.

The vast majority of small companies use a server for one thing: Sharing files. This is so much easier and more versatile on OS X than on any version of Windows. Its also arguably more robust.
There are a great many small companies who have been pushed into purchasing Exchange servers by their IT guys when they don't really need or use all the features that come with them.
I'd like to hope Apple is turning OS X Server into a base to grow from so they can extend upwards towards medium sized business but even if they aren't they are certainly tapping into a poorly served market who are often oversold and overcharged on equipment and services they don't really need and will never use.

[exca1ibur]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Well, as cool as those features are, Exchange will do a heck of a lot more.

Shared Address Books are usually handled via a main company LDAP/Active Directory and personal address books stored on the Exchange server, AFAIK. I don't know if OS X Server does both, but in addition to this sort of stuff in Exchange you can do stuff like reserve rooms, track free/busy time for scheduling groups of people, delegation, shared mailboxes, web access, instant messaging, live meeting, sharepoint stuff, voicemail integration, it's designed for very large organizations/clusters, etc.

It can do all of that as well.

Apple - OS X Lion Server - Features

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Its certainly not as robust as Mac OS X client, no.

I'd like to hope that Apple is going back to basics with its Server with Lion. There is certainly no reason a lot of the more popular things that people use servers for can't be a whole lot simpler than they are. To date Server has in some ways been the worst of both worlds. While its simpler and more elegant than Windows Server, its not simple enough for a layperson to setup or administer on their own and its not really been robust enough compared Windows offerings. It also doesn't scale as far.

Maybe Apple is thinking of OS X Server sort of like AppleTV - just a little something to add value for hobbyists and this population of users you talk about, but not something that is supposed to send signals of a serious effort that could be compared directly to their competition?

As I mentioned, Apple has spent the last decade or so learning that there is more money in consumer markets than business markets for a hardware company. The death of the Xserve is a prime example of how Apple's business model of adding value to its hardware through software was just not suited to Enterprise. The PPC chips gave them a USP but running Intel on servers meant they stood no chance of competing on price since enterprise hardware margins are shaved to the bone and all the money is in the software which Apple has traditionally given away cheaply.

I hate how the word "Enterprise" is used in general. The XServe was never terribly Enterprise-ish hardware. It was a great 1U server, but I think few Enterprises were into clustering a bunch of 1Us together ala Google, as it has probably been cheaper to consolidate on a smaller quantity of beefier machines in terms of machine room space and electricity/cooling/maintenance and stuff. I could be wrong about this, but... Additionally, larger companies were probable skittish about Apple's support services, and OS X could not be virtualized on non-Mac hardware (and with its crazy footprint it probably ran poorly on Mac hardware anyway). In terms of cost you get more bang for your buck with an OS that was built around running headless.

All of this in my mind makes me kind of shudder when I think of Apple being sold to large business.

The vast majority of small companies use a server for one thing: Sharing files. This is so much easier and more versatile on OS X than on any version of Windows. Its also arguably more robust.
There are a great many small companies who have been pushed into purchasing Exchange servers by their IT guys when they don't really need or use all the features that come with them.
I'd like to hope Apple is turning OS X Server into a base to grow from so they can extend upwards towards medium sized business but even if they aren't they are certainly tapping into a poorly served market who are often oversold and overcharged on equipment and services they don't really need and will never use.

So Apple's competition is MS Sharepoint? I agree that file sharing is low dangling fruit, and maybe Apple figures that a machine that helps with file sharing doesn't need to be rackable, which is probably a reasonable assumption.

As far as being pushed into Exchange servers, if you want an IMAP server, why not just pick one of the 3029820934 hosts that offers IMAP, or Google?

I think Apple will be going after the hobbyist market primarily, adding value for geeks like us, but not really worrying too much about their marketshare and competition in the small business world.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by exca1ibur 

It can do all of that as well.

Apple - OS X Lion Server - Features

No it can't. Where do you read that?

[Waragainstsleep]

Plenty of users are used to hosting their own email servers because of Exchange. There is also the issue of security when you trust someone else to host your mail and cost which is usually per user for hosted mail and goes up quite sharply if you want anything better than POP which you should.

PPC Xserves were enterprise class hardware because they offered different kinds of processing power that were not really available with anything else. The Intel Xserve was always going to be doomed in the enterprise markets because firstly they were offering the same kit as everyone else and secondly they weren't updating it anywhere near as often. So you had a usually out of date and underpowered server with a big margin slapped on it competing with state of the art servers with little or no profit on them. It never really stood a chance.
The Mac Mini Server in particular is great for small business because it will happily serve email and files to a few dozen people without breaking a sweat and not only does it save you email hosting fees, maybe web hosting fees but it saves you on your electricity bill. That Exchange server you replaced was sitting there running 24/7 and probably had a 6 bay RAID in the front and dual CPUs on a 600W PSU. Your Mini Server will idle on ~10W when everyone goes home. It will pay for itself in most markets on the electricity savings alone well before the end of its useful life in most cases.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Plenty of users are used to hosting their own email servers because of Exchange.

Really? Around here there are tons of little local companies that will be happy to do this for you.

There is also the issue of security when you trust someone else to host your mail and cost which is usually per user for hosted mail and goes up quite sharply if you want anything better than POP which you should.

Security is true in the case of very sensitive info, but otherwise your garden variety hosting provider will allow as many IMAP accounts associated with your domain as you want, pretty much

PPC Xserves were enterprise class hardware because they offered different kinds of processing power that were not really available with anything else.

I guess, but how many small businesses really specifically needed PPC hardware, with the exception of needing it to run OS X when this was the case?

The Intel Xserve was always going to be doomed in the enterprise markets because firstly they were offering the same kit as everyone else and secondly they weren't updating it anywhere near as often. So you had a usually out of date and underpowered server with a big margin slapped on it competing with state of the art servers with little or no profit on them. It never really stood a chance.

That, and managers probably felt a little more assured about the support contracts and services offered by other vendors (HP, Dell, etc.), rightly or wrongly.

The Mac Mini Server in particular is great for small business because it will happily serve email and files to a few dozen people without breaking a sweat and not only does it save you email hosting fees, maybe web hosting fees but it saves you on your electricity bill. That Exchange server you replaced was sitting there running 24/7 and probably had a 6 bay RAID in the front and dual CPUs on a 600W PSU. Your Mini Server will idle on ~10W when everyone goes home. It will pay for itself in most markets on the electricity savings alone well before the end of its useful life in most cases.

If your Exchange server needed a 6 bay RAID, you probably can't really replace this with a single SATA drive (and nor should you, unless you don't care about data redundancy).

I still don't see the whole email thing your way. There are some people that need to do email in house for legal reasons, but for everybody else they have the following options:

- general hosting provider
- free email service like GMail
- many outside companies if the above will not suffice

I just don't see why for these users the allure of easy to setup and manage email is all that attractive when it means running your own servers, nor do I see it as particularly smart. When the prostitute hits the fan and email is not flowing or hardware fails, you need somebody there that knows what he/she is doing. I would never recommend that a company run their own email servers unless they had a person on call that could manage day-to-day stuff, emergencies, backups, etc. and could get things up and running again in a short timespan. In many cases downtimes equates to lost business.

This is a tall order for most companies when they can just pay <$10/month to have their email hosted on a general hosting provider, or nothing to have Google do it.

[Waragainstsleep]

Thats just it, not all the people running Exchange Servers NEED to host their own email. They just got used to it because an IT guy once told them they did.

I have one customer running a 6-bay RAID with a grand total of 120GB storage on it. This is far from unusual.

You might also factor in that many of them do not pay for their MS software. The Mini Sever means they can go legal.

Exchange hosting is typically more than that in my experience but even if it isn't, it starts to add up as a monthly fee and there are many small businesses who seem to resent paying monthly fees for anything they don't absolutely have to. Especially at the moment.
Again, they don't need Exchange, but they either have it already or someone told them they needed it either from their IT department or on the golf course.
There is every chance that some of this is culturally specific to the UK or Europe but I doubt it.

I can't believe I forgot to mention that Microsoft certified IT staff whether on your books or outsourced will pretty much always try to sell you an Exchange server regardless of your needs.
Microsoft have built a clever little ecosystem where you ask one of their certified guys what kit you should buy and having to pay for his certification exams he will then sell you a whole bunch of stuff that you don't need. There is nothing a Windows sysadmin loves more than getting new features they can turn off or deny you access to. They have to have them in place, but you can't possibly use them.

Seriously a lot of Exchange servers I have replaced or taken support over for don't even allow email access outside the building. Not even via OWA. Completely defeats the object.

[exca1ibur]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

No it can't. Where do you read that?

...reserve rooms, track free/busy time for scheduling groups of people, delegation, shared mailboxes, web access, instant messaging, live meeting, sharepoint stuff, voicemail integration..

ICal Server
iCal Server is a full-featured, standards-based calendaring solution designed to make your life simpler by allowing people to easily share calendars, schedule meetings, book conference rooms, and coordinate events.

Address Book Server
Address Book Server keeps your business productive by sharing contacts and keeping them in sync on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. You can set up shared accounts allowing contacts — such as a list of customers, suppliers, or employees — to be accessed and updated by multiple people in your organization.

iChat Server
iChat Server brings the collaborative power of instant messaging to your organization. Now workgroups can transfer files securely, share a persistent chat room, conduct audio conferences, or with the iChat Theater feature in OS X, even broadcast a presentation, movie, or photo slideshow to other iChat users.

Mail Server
Lion Server is the ideal solution for small businesses and companies without an existing mail server. It allows you to bring email in-house, using your own domain name rather than relying on your ISP to host your email. Based entirely on open Internet standards, the Mail Server in Lion Server works with email clients on the Mac, iPad, iPhone and PC, and it supports push notifications for immediately notifying users when new mail messages arrive.

I was just looking at the page which names pretty much everything there.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by exca1ibur 

...reserve rooms, track free/busy time for scheduling groups of people, delegation, shared mailboxes, web access, instant messaging, live meeting, sharepoint stuff, voicemail integration..

ICal Server
iCal Server is a full-featured, standards-based calendaring solution designed to make your life simpler by allowing people to easily share calendars, schedule meetings, book conference rooms, and coordinate events.

Address Book Server
Address Book Server keeps your business productive by sharing contacts and keeping them in sync on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. You can set up shared accounts allowing contacts — such as a list of customers, suppliers, or employees — to be accessed and updated by multiple people in your organization.

iChat Server
iChat Server brings the collaborative power of instant messaging to your organization. Now workgroups can transfer files securely, share a persistent chat room, conduct audio conferences, or with the iChat Theater feature in OS X, even broadcast a presentation, movie, or photo slideshow to other iChat users.

Mail Server
Lion Server is the ideal solution for small businesses and companies without an existing mail server. It allows you to bring email in-house, using your own domain name rather than relying on your ISP to host your email. Based entirely on open Internet standards, the Mail Server in Lion Server works with email clients on the Mac, iPad, iPhone and PC, and it supports push notifications for immediately notifying users when new mail messages arrive.

I was just looking at the page which names pretty much everything there.

So then, it can't do "all of that", it can do "some of that", and since I understand it iCal Server is very buggy you'd even have to be generous to say that when compared to the more seasoned Exchange.

On the Mac side you cannot do the following:

- delegation of mail access/shared folders

- web based email access (by installing Roundcube or Squirrelmail or whatever you only get access to a subset of the above features)

- voicemail stuff

- MS sharepoint stuff

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Thats just it, not all the people running Exchange Servers NEED to host their own email. They just got used to it because an IT guy once told them they did.

I have one customer running a 6-bay RAID with a grand total of 120GB storage on it. This is far from typical.

You might also factor in that many of them do not pay for their MS software. The Mini Sever means they can go legal.

Exchange hosting is typically more than that in my experience but even if it isn't, it starts to add up as a monthly fee and there are many small businesses who seem to resent paying monthly fees for anything they don't absolutely have to. Especially at the moment.
Again, they don't need Exchange, but they either have it already or someone told them they needed it either from their IT department or on the golf course.
There is every chance that some of this is culturally specific to the UK or Europe but I doubt it.

I can't believe I forgot to mention that Microsoft certified IT staff whether on your books or outsourced will pretty much always try to sell you an Exchange server regardless of your needs.
Microsoft have built a clever little ecosystem where you ask one of their certified guys what kit you should buy and having to pay for his certification exams he will then sell you a whole bunch of stuff that you don't need. There is nothing a Windows sysadmin loves more than getting new features they can turn off or deny you access to. They have to have them in place, but you can't possibly use them.

Seriously a lot of Exchange servers I have replaced or taken support over for don't even allow email access outside the building. Not even via OWA. Completely defeats the object.

I feel your pain, I realize that Exchange brings with it a whole host of problems and I've sensed that guys on golf courses are very eager to use it, but I would still say that replacing a bad idea (running Exchange servers) with an idea that is possibly less bad but still bad (running OS X server) in a company without the proper staffing and resources to be taking on mail ownership is still not a terribly winning strategy on Apple's end.

[exca1ibur]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

So then, it can't do "all of that", it can do "some of that", and since I understand it iCal Server is very buggy you'd even have to be generous to say that when compared to the more seasoned Exchange.

On the Mac side you cannot do the following:

Lion Preview: Server Overview

- delegation of mail access/shared folders

Wouldn't this be controlled based on your users account? If so, then the profile manager handles shared points for everything. Mail, File Sharing, iCal prefs, etc.

- web based email access (by installing Roundcube or Squirrelmail or whatever you only get access to a subset of the above features)

Yeah, I know Server has shipped with Squirrel Mail since 10.5 Server (not set to default then). Looks like they use roundcube now. https://help.apple.com/advancedserve...C-EDA5B997D4BC. As far as how good that is now, I have no idea. I'm just saying something is there, so no need to bite my head off.

- voicemail stuff

Nothing I can see for this. 100% of the people and businesses I've worked with have standard or IP phone systems, for that.

- MS sharepoint stuff

iCal Server 3 does do sharing and collaboration, as far as how stable it is, I have no idea because Lion Server has been out a little more than a week.

Either way, everyone has different needs, no such thing as a catch all.

After a tons of searching here is a more complete list of the administration features of OSX Lion Server.

https://help.apple.com/advancedserveradmin/mac/10.7/

[besson3c]

Wouldn't this be controlled based on your users account? If so, then the profile manager handles shared points for everything. Mail, File Sharing, iCal prefs, etc.

No. Mail delegation/shared folders/mailboxes allows users to create a folder filled with email messages and share this folder with other users on the same mail system so that these users see this folder in their account.

Yeah, I know Server has shipped with Squirrel Mail since 10.5 Server (not set to default then). Looks like they use roundcube now. https://help.apple.com/advancedserve...C-EDA5B997D4BC. As far as how good that is now, I have no idea. I'm just saying something is there, so no need to bite my head off.

I'm not trying to bite, but simply correcting you in saying that you can replace an Exchange server with OS X Server which you said without qualifications. I'm not a Microsoft guy at all, but this is just quite far from the truth, and this doesn't take into account the maturity of the Exchange environment.

Roundcube is beta software. Basically a more AJAXey IMAP-based web app without all of the plugins, and no support for calendaring or all of the other stuff you get with OWA which is effectively a complete or mostly complete web-based GUI to Exchange.

Nothing I can see for this. 100% of the people and businesses I've worked with have standard or IP phone systems, for that.

Yes, and that is what the Exchange stuff works with, AFAIK.

iCal Server 3 does do sharing and collaboration, as far as how stable it is, I have no idea because Lion Server has been out a little more than a week.

As a replacement for Sharepoint? Sharepoint does a porn load of stuff, and it has little to do with calendaring, so I'm not sure I understand the connection here?

Sorry, and again, I'm not a Microsoft fan really, but to say that OS X Server is a worthy Exchange competitor is kind of a joke. I think Apple themselves acknowledge this which is why their products support Exchange. I don't think these decisions were based solely on the popularity of Exchange, because if this were so perhaps they'd try to support Flash on iOS as well?

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If not, they will surely eventually burn themselves from relying on Joe-know-how-to-click-on-shiny-GUI-buttons (e.g. dealing with hardware failures and lost mail/backup retrieval). What is the point of Apple's product?

There are plenty of small companies doing just that. Even worse, sometimes the person who has set up the system is no longer with the company and nobody knows how it is configured and how it works. So they're all afraid to touch it

[Waragainstsleep]

You still aren't getting it. Full Exchange is for big companies. Big companies who have lots of Exchange servers, lots of stuff, lots of sites etc etc.

There are a whole lot of small companies running Exchange too but they don't use the features it gives them. (Because they don't need them all).
I moved an Exchanged 2003 Server that has been in use by its current owners since it was new and only because I told them they could do it the other day have they now got shared calendars set up.

To compete in small business, Apple doesn't have to match all the features, scalability and robustness of Exchange (you still have to reboot them reasonably often), they only have to compete with the features people are using.
Give it a couple more updates and tweaks and Lion Server might be just that. With the bonus of simplicity.

This has been core to Apple for years now. How often have you seen an iPod or iPhone 'killer' so called because it has AM radio and the iDevice doesn't, or it comes in brown or you get a sticker on the front. PC laptops have TV tuners and remote controls and mdeia center software and volume buttons on the trackpad and 67 USB ports and all manner of other features that Apple don't bother with. Where other companies allow feature sets to be dictated by accountants and marketing people Apple has learned to look at what people use and therefore need. They are even smart enough not to ask them what they want most of the time. Its not enough to include a feature, you have to make it easy and worthwhile to use. Otherwise, by definition its worthless.

Its not quite there yet, but I think Apple have brought it back to a good starting point to head in this direction.

[besson3c]

So, OS X Server aims to be Exchange Lite?

What incentive is there for a company to either run their own Exchange Lite or pay somebody to do this for them, when they can pay somebody to provide them actual Exchange servers? You'll have an easier time finding both Windows IT guys or a company to provide Exchange servers.

Also, how is it a winning strategy for Apple to provide a lite version of anything their competitor offers?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

There are plenty of small companies doing just that. Even worse, sometimes the person who has set up the system is no longer with the company and nobody knows how it is configured and how it works. So they're all afraid to touch it

Exactly, and I think Apple is smart enough to want to keep a safe distance away from all of these sorts of bad situations that paint their company in an unfavorable light, especially now that they have iOS offerings that have far more potential to change perceptions and lead the way so that they don't have to offer Lite versions of products their competitors offer. They would much rather lead and maintain their perception of Apple = upmost quality/the best.

[Waragainstsleep]

If Apple gets it right you won't need the IT guys, you can do it yourself. Or maybe at worst you can do a course in the Apple store when you buy it.

Thus saving you either a full time staff member or a monthly IT contract.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

If Apple gets it right you won't need the IT guys, you can do it yourself. Or maybe at worst you can do a course in the Apple store when you buy it.

Thus saving you either a full time staff member or a monthly IT contract.

Not in this universe.

In this universe hard drives die, users accidentally delete email that hasn't yet been backed up, there are problems with the IMAP or SMTP server (both of which Apple did not write), backups stop working, partitions fill up, daemons crash, OS upgrades fail, there are power outages that result in data loss, HFS+ is HFS+ and has no concept of data integrity, cooling fails, problem notifications fail, networks fail, etc.

It is not in Apple's power to prevent all of these sorts of problems. Yes, many of these are not terribly likely to happen, but like I said, when the paint hits the fan and email is not flowing, this is lost business for many companies.

Companies running their own mail servers without the appropriate staffing/resources is just a flat out terrible idea, no matter the mail system/OS.

[Waragainstsleep]

With Time Machine you can get a Mac server up and running in a couple of hours. This is rarely true of Exchange boxes.
Windows servers are a nightmare for this. I had an HP that didn't even come with drivers for its built in RAID. I once had to make a custom disc using some ridiculous process and basically a hack in order to make a copy of Windows that could see the drive to install itself onto. From the discs that shipped with it. Utter lunacy. It took hours to rebuild that f*****g thing.

If it comes to it, you can go to the Apple store and buy another Mac Mini and restore from your TM. It probably won't even cost that much more than an emergency call out would and if you've been saving on monthly fees then its still cheaper and arguably even more effective. And then you have a spare server if it happens again.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

With Time Machine you can get a Mac server up and running in a couple of hours. This is rarely true of Exchange boxes.
Windows servers are a nightmare for this. I had an HP that didn't even come with drivers for its built in RAID. I once had to make a custom disc using some ridiculous process and basically a hack in order to make a copy of Windows that could see the drive to install itself onto. From the discs that shipped with it. Utter lunacy. It took hours to rebuild that f*****g thing.

If it comes to it, you can go to the Apple store and buy another Mac Mini and restore from your TM. It probably won't even cost that much more than an emergency call out would and if you've been saving on monthly fees then its still cheaper and arguably even more effective. And then you have a spare server if it happens again.

Time Machine is not a solution Apple recommends for servers though, unless this has changed in Lion. For starters, unless it has changed in Lion or possibly Snow Leopard it doesn't backup traditional Unix directories. I worked with a user who didn't realize that they weren't backing up their Cyrus mail spool at all.

Also, unless this has changed, Time Machine also doesn't work particularly well with network backups from client to server unless you can find a way to leave an AFP share mounted all the time, and there are problems if the disk name changes too.

As great as Time Machine is, I wouldn't use it to backup a Unix-based server.

[besson3c]

Also, being able to restore from backup alone reliably would still not result in me recommending that companies without the proper sources/staffing/skill sets to run their own servers that do important things like run their email given the above list of potential problems I came up with just off the top of my head that has not been fully accounted for. This doesn't even get into all of the software-specific mail issues that can arise (learning how to analyze log files to trace delivery, dealing with block/blacklisting, security, determining whether spam is originating from your network, etc.)

Yes this is not impossible to deal with/work around, but for the clueless manager on the golf course you alluded to? I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that...

[olePigeon]

Unless they turn it around in 10.8, our all-Mac district won't be all-Mac anymore. We've already moved our mail server to Exchange which I'm already hating. I can't do inline attachments anymore.

[turtle777]

I always wanted to have OS X server. So I bought it. Don't know what I'm gonna do with it yet

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

Unless they turn it around in 10.8, our all-Mac district won't be all-Mac anymore. We've already moved our mail server to Exchange which I'm already hating. I can't do inline attachments anymore.

Entourage? Typo?

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Yes this is not impossible to deal with/work around, but for the clueless manager on the golf course you alluded to? I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that...

The golf course guys don't do much of anything themselves. They'd have a minion do it.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

Unless they turn it around in 10.8, our all-Mac district won't be all-Mac anymore. We've already moved our mail server to Exchange which I'm already hating. I can't do inline attachments anymore.

Did you look at Kerio Connect at all?