“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,” John Rizzo reports for Infoworld.
“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,” Rizzo reports. “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,” Rizzo reports. “The $50 price tag — down from $500 — is the first clue that Lion Server trying to be a server for the consumer. Apple’s slogan is “servers made easy.” To that end, a new administration tool, called Server, is more logical and easier to use than the old Server Preferences that it replaced. And Server can do more than Server Preferences could.”
Rizzo reports, “But the ironic part for IT administrators is that Lion Server actually requires a greater degree of technical knowledge than its predecessors. Many routine tasks that were formerly a mouse click away now can be accomplished only via the Unix shell command line. Worse yet, some routine tasks are no long possible at all… When you consider Lion Server’s truncated capabilities along with the discontinuation of the Apple Xserve rack-mount hardware, the signal from Apple seems to be it’s not that interested in keeping businesses on Mac OS X Server.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The profits from the many outweigh the profits from the few. At Apple, unlike many other companies, businesses that are going nowhere fast are ruthlessly refocused. We vastly prefer this approach to stagnation and inevitable decline. As long as the server does its job, who cares what it is and what it’s running? It’s what the end users are using that’s important and they come in far greater numbers, too. Apple makes computers for people, not machines.
Related articles:
Why Apple had to kill Xserve – June 7, 2011
70% of Xserve customers say Apple’s discontinuation will have no impact on decision to buy new Macs – December 07, 2010
Why Steve Jobs pulled the plug on Xserve, and how Apple can reenter the server market – November 09, 2010
Steve Jobs on Xserve cancellation: ‘Hardly anybody was buying them’ – November 08, 2010
Apple offers new $2999 Mac Pro Server to replace Xserve – November 05, 2010
Apple discontinues Xserve as of January 31; will continue to fully support existing units – November 05, 2010