Apple Server Ping!
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Posted on 07/25/2011 11:25:09 AM PDT by Swordmaker
The new Profile Manager is a nice addition, but in almost every other respect, Lion Server is a downgrade that may prompt a move to Windows Server
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Server adds innovative features and a new low price tag, but cuts in services and the elimination of advanced GUI administration tools may force some enterprise departments to think twice about the role of Mac servers on their networks.
Some of the new features will please managers in business and education: The Profile Manager, a slick new Web-front-end tool for providing automatic push configuration and group policy management for Mac Lion and iOS clients, is miles ahead of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server's old Managed Preferences features. Then there's built-in support for Microsoft's distributed file system (DFS) and Apple's Xsan file system, the latter for accessing storage-attached networking (SAN) over Fibre Channel.
But once the initial excitement subsides and you start looking more deeply inside Lion Server, it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that Lion Server is not built for those of us in IT.
(Excerpt) Read more at infoworld.com ...
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In my experience, there are very few enterprises that run Mac OSX servers as their primary platform. So I don’t see this as having any major impact in the IT market.
Agreed.
It’s almost as if Apple is trying to gracefully bow out of the server market, since it’s not a core competency.
As I understand it, the new Mac OS is designed to turn IT jobs from the kind of jobs that pays 100 grand a year to one of those jobs that Americans won’t take and, therefore, business must hire illegal immigranyts. :)
It does boggle the mind a bit that a BSD-based OS has a core competency of desktop experience and not so much as a server platform.
I just don’t see how they could compete head-to-head with the more established Linux Server market.
Don’t know a lot about servers or IT, but I downloaded Lion onto my laptop and twice had interactive websites freeze while I was typing into them. Don’t know if its a bug or something else.
That said, I note that a lot of the objections in the article have to do with "there used to be a GUI for this, but now you have to use command line". Real IT pros use command line anyway, because they can run batch scripts.
I don't want to discount some of the more reasonable items, though, such as not being able to move the user profiles database off of the server's boot drive. That should be fixed.
That's more or less the argument that "H1B visa" proponents have been making for the last several years.
Me neither.
And besides I doubt the average IT guy will bemoan the lack of gui tools noted in the article. All they care about is the command line and scripting anyway.
Apple’s selling point is still it’s “the computer for the rest of us” ie non-computer experts.
The people running servers at IT companies ARE computer experts. These are the guys that install Linux servers without the GUI interface, because they think typing at the command line is so much easier than navagating all those screens with a mouse.
Apple’s design philosophy is 180 degrees opposite of what these guys are looking for.
Apple’s other selling point is, while they may charge you more it’s worth it because of the extra support they provide. If you have any problem with an Apple product, just call support and they’ll have someone there to help you.
Companies that run servers are already paying staff to support their servers (staff that is usually several levels above the Apple support staff in computer expertise), they don’t want to pay extra for Apple support they’ll never use. So they go with generic hardware and a free OS (Linux), which is why Linux is dominating the server market at the moment.
There simply is no market for Apple servers.
Because Apple's marketing plan is to sell computers to people that will pay extra for a support security-blanket.
HP has to sell 7 PCs to make as much as Apple does on one Mac. The reason is Apple bundles the cost of support into the base price of their computers. Apple sells a computer with bundled Cadillac level support, but charges Roll Royce prices for it. Consequently their profit margins are huge.
I've been in IT for a long time.For the most part, the people I've worked with are concerned with 3 things:
1. Is there a cheaper alternative?
2. Will it work reliably?
3. If you get hit by a bus, WBill, how hard are you to replace?
*Good* Apple people are hard to find. They exist, but they're not a-dime-a-dozen, either. So #3 is pretty well out.
Apples (from my limited knowledge) are totally reliable, but given their proprietary nature, will fail the first question every single time.
So, Apple will never get out of the box on a corporate wide scale. Not so long as there's a feasible alternative at a significant fraction of the cost.
And Heck, why would Apple want to? They're making a mint and have achieved a cult-like status among end users. They're the "Cadillac" of computing, as in "A Ford would get me from place to place reliably, but I paid twice as much so that I could own a Caddy that does exactly the same thing.". There's just no room for a mentality like that in a bottom-line drive corporate environment.
My $0.02 only.
I’d phrase it a bit differently, but I don’t have any criticisms about what you wrote.
What I essentially say about Apple compared to other vendors is that other vendors look at the technology as the product, whereas Apple uses the technology to make a product. This is why their consumer devices are so highly rated and sought after — they look at the total computing experience (or equivalent function for devices like iPods) and design devices for that using the technology.
But on the corporate server side, the technology IS the product. The server is going to be heavily customized to the enterprise’s environment, and so any advantage of controlling the overall experience goes out the window in a hurry.
You hit the nail on the head. There is no market for a server with enhanced gui and less congfiguration options.
It is my understanding that even though they might have taken some things out of the GUI administration tools; they are still available via command line.
I think Apple is positioning the server to deal with iDevices. More and more of which are showing up in the enterprise, whether they are company owned or, being brought in by the employees.
I did notice that they took out MS domain controller, and backup domain controller functionality. They do support OpenDirectory, so it should still work with Linux based servers.
I got a copy for myself. Just got it installed last night, so I’m not up to speed on it yet.
I wouldn’t count them out of the enterprise market by any means. They’re thinking several moves ahead. And things are a changing.
My users never compliment me on the "Overall Experience" of serving up an IP address to them, or "How Fluidly" they get their files off a file share. They only complain when what they want is not available. LOL!
In that article, the second by New York Times technology writer David Pogue, he parrots the responses by a shell-shocked Apple as it tries to respond to the outpouring of rage by professionals. And in the comments (399 and counting), Pogue is b*tch-slapped repeatedly because he simply doesn't understand. Perhaps because he interviewed Apple about the problems and not professional video editors.
Even Conan O'Brien's staff took a two-minute shot at Final Cut Pro X.
I'd write more, but my blood pressure is already peaking.
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