Customer Reviews

Mac OS X Server v10.6 Snow Leopard - Unlimited Client License

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I would second David Cotter's positive reviews. I only have a mere 20 years of development experience starting with a NeXT cube I bought back in 1990. Today I work for a 200b financial services company that runs twelve 10.4 Intel XServes. We are very cautious to upgrade as they machines are heavily used for production work in the marketing and reporting arm of the company where we heavily use Perl, AppleScript, shell scripts, Python, etc.. There has been perhaps 1-2 anomalies on individual machines that we had to reboot and do some repairs for - in perhaps 6 years of heavy use. We have hundreds of Windows, Solars and Linux servers, VMs, blades, network servers, you name it. Our 10.4 server reliability compares very well with the rest of our environment.

It was based on this experience I evaluated Snow Leopard Server by creating a Parallels 5 virtual machine on my Mac Pro desktop machine at home. I honestly wasn't sure it would work on a VM but I was running a live wiki/blog/calendar with people live connecting from all over for 2 weeks. There was one crash across a week of work - but I put my workstation running the VM to sleep several times and one of them the server didn't seem to wake up from correctly. That's tough environment for a server. I was very impressed with the improvement in management tools and the wiki is actually much better than the average wiki - my technical team that was testing it gave it rave reviews for usability.

I was so impressed that I decided to buy a Mac Mini Snow Leopard Server for my home. We aren't ready to upgrade at work yet - that will require several months of testing with a set of development servers. But based on my initial experience I would expect the testing to go fairly well.

I'm writing this somewhat preliminary review because that first guy was spewing hatred without any concrete facts and that's just rude. The fact is that with running a web server, blogs, e-mail, dns, open directory, file shares, etc. is very complex. Unlike reviews of simple products which might approach objectivity in some sense, complex products like server software can't be reviewed in an objective way. Reviews of OS X Server are going to be about how combining one particular guy with OS X Server for a while worked out. Apparently not very well for that first reviewer. My experience has been overall very good. Could be that the first guy is dumber than David Cotter or I, but it's probably because the kinds of things he was trying to do were not working out for him and the solutions were painful to find, if he could find them at all.

I understand this. Apple does not invest in the enterprise at all. The problems I've had with OS X Server are probably more difficult to resolve than on other platforms because of Apple's lack of interest, and the fact that far fewer people travel the OS X Server path. This results in far fewer hits in Google on your problem than you would expect with a Windows Server problem - tons of people have problems on Windows servers.

So here's my recommendation. If you are a computer novice that barely knows how to click a mouse but for some reason wants to set up a web server or wiki for your little company - OS X Server is DEFINITELY for you. It's actually ridiculously easy to set up most of the server features and if they work, which is likely, you are going to be very happy.

If you're moderately technical: 2-10 years of experience working with server technologies, or have a lot of experience but you just aren't that good, then you probably want to use a Windows server technology. You'll have lots of support, lots of stuff on the web, a broad range of software solutions, and there is a contractor around every corner that can help you out.

If you have a ton of experience and the most daunting technical problems don't really phase you any more (they might take days to fix, but they don't phase you), then I think you will really like OS X Server. You're going to need all that experience because Apple, or the few other OS X Server users out there, are not going to be able to back you up much. If you combine this experience with the right kind of use then OS X Server is a joy to use and is highly recommended. Hope that helps.

Mac OS X 10.6 Server comes pre-configured with file, print, mail, chat, Web, wiki, blog and many other services. Install it on an Intel-based Macintosh, check a few preference panels, and you are up and running. An astonishing amount of power is bundled into that one small cardboard box.

The included documentation is adequate to get you up and running, but nothing more. If you don't know what a wiki is or why you'd want one, you won't find out here. Apple's assumption is that you probably won't read what little documentation is provided (probably true) and will look for books on Apache if you are interested in the Web, books on digital video if you are interested in Podcast Producer, books on SMTP and Internet mail services if you want to use the mail server, etc.

Note that this is not some cut-down "home" edition: Mac OS X 10.6 Server offers unlimited clients. "Unlimited" clients on a comparable Windows server would cost tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention hundreds of hours to configure and fairly constant maintenance. Linux distributions come closest to matching Snow Leopard Server, but in the case of Linux, you tend to get bits and pieces, "some assembly required," and batteries are not included. Just collecting the various services to install on top of Linux and resolving conflicts could take several weeks; installing Mac OS X 10.6 Server takes about an hour, with an additional couple of hours tinkering with configuration settings and tweaking.

While I didn't try it, you can also get Snow Leopard Server pre-installed on a Mac mini. The cost is very low ($999 list), and obviously the installation time is even less.

Installation is easy, tracking down incompatibilities is unnecessary, configuration is simplicity itself. Highly recommended.

Well, i too have been a developer for over 25 years (omg coming up on 30), for a very large company that you've heard of. The above guy spits out a bunch of bile but does not back up his claims with any hard facts, perhaps he's just having a bad day. In my experience, SL fixed several problems and bad designs in Leopard. The upgrade was the most painless ever, it "just worked". This upgrade adds polish and shine to many parts of the system. I have not had one instability. Not even one.

A great server -- I've seen none better that could be used in your home.

I received a copy in French, which I kept and tried to install anyway, as the software itself is multi-language. The serial number came up as invalid and that it was used on another server though, and now I get to deal with the 3rd party seller to try and work things out. Fun. This is why I hate buying things from Amazon that aren't actually from Amazon.

Seller "American Media Soft" shipped French version instead of English, despite this product page saying the product is for US shipment only.

I am unable to write a good review for this product because I received a non-English version of the software. Amazon has instructed me to return the item and reorder due to the fact that the software came from American Media Soft instead of directly from Amazon.

My suggestion is to buy the Mac Mini Server. I bought the software then later bought a Mac Mini without server. Mistake but oh well.

The Push email advertised works with no documented clients. In particular it does NOT work with Apple's own iPhone. I'm not sure why it's even advertised as a feature. You'll need to purchase a third party mail server (like Kerio) to get push email to work.

I've been an apple user and developer for 25 years. I've given keynotes at Apple conferences. Apple were an investor in my last company - my credentials as an Apple evangelist are impeccable. My point? Simply that i've got some vague idea of what I'm talking about when I describe OS X server 10.6 as such a fundamentally flaky and unsound pile of steaming ordure that it should never, ever have been released on an unsuspecting public. Apple have added complexity and unreliability to a platform that was already effectively unusable, without addressing the problems that made it unusable. They have taken a fundamentally sound collection of third-party software sitting atop an industrial-strength unix system and, by providing a set of so-called management tools that must have been knocked up after a liquid lunch by a first year intern, then tested in the gap between beer and pizza on a friday evening, have made a system that is unreliable, inconsistent, unstable and effectively unmanageable. Until such time as Apple get the hang of putting real resource into their management tools and testing them properly (and that's before I get onto the subject of misleading, incomplete and downright inaccurate documentation), I cannot, in all conscience, recommend that anyone purchase this software under any circumstances.