I even bought 'Mac OS X Server Essentials 2nd Edition for 10.5 - a
very expensive book which is 'Apple Certified', to help me but on
inspection its written for children. 2 pages on mailman for example
which just boil down to saying 'click this and press ok'. I couldnt
recommend it at all.
I purchased this as a last resort and I agree that the book is at a
very intro level. Not only that, but the DNS setup given will not
actually work in practice, even though it will be good for the
learning sessions. Since DNS is one of the things that Enterprise
Support will not give you help with, this is a serious oversight.
However, the Book is better than the Server PDFs, in that it gives at
least a bit more than point-and-click type of instructions. It is
limited to the graphical interface, which simply doesn't do it, if
anything goes wrong - and we know it will.
I have also had massive problems with 10.5 and the 'up and running
support' from Apple Enterprise Support is a bad joke. The people there
don't know what a Full Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) is and if you
direct them to the appropriate RFC, they don't have the background to
understand it or just don't care. Since DNS is crucial to OS X
function, this means you must contract with someone to set it up for
you, if you don't have the time to learn it yourself. And the weird
config files in 10.5 don't make it easy for you, even if you know DNS
from Linux or some other Unix. To top it off, the need for the DNS to
be functioning is not clearly specified, if you want to do a Standard/
Workgroup Configuration. If you scan the boards, you can see plenty of
people have been burned by this. For example, see:
And you don't avoid this by getting DNS from your ISP. The 10.5 DNS is
very picky about what it will accept and some correct configurations
have not worked, even a correctly configured ISP DNS wasn't giving
reliable performance. I can confirm that even on an all Apple test
network with a OS X server supplying DNS, the Standard Configuration
only picks up the server FQDN name correctly about one out of twenty
times.
Then on top of this, the lack of clear docs and incompetent Support,
with a Standard Configuration that makes a mess impossible to clean up
(in my case). It either totally failed to do the the DNS or actually
made a mess impossible to fix. The security was also not set up. These
are two areas which simply are beyond the scope of what a naive user
can hope to do or even learn to do in short order. Then if that does
not destroy your sanity, how about the DNS tool in Server Admin, which
fails silently. Silent failure was also true for the Standard
Configurations, every time.
So, what does this all add up to? This is my impression from contact
with Euro Enterprise Support:
:Breach of Contract - no up and running support (and this went all the
way up to Steve)
:Deceit as a customer management strategy. From at least three levels
in the Support Structure.
:Bait and Switch marketing tactics. If you need help, Enterprise
Support will give it a try, but if it is DNS or they can't figure out
what to do, or if they did 'enough' for you, then you are advised to
sign up for their $6,000/yr. Server Support Contract. Given that your
chances of succeeding in getting a running server are close to nil
with the supplied software, documentation, and support, this or a
contracted consultant is really the only realistic choice for the
smaller user. But you can always follow the Engineering Teams advice,
if the Standard Configuration doesn't work - just do the Advanced
Configuration ;-).
This doesn't sound like the server for "The rest of us" anymore. Apple
Computer has ceased to exist in name, and in fact, as far as the small
dealers, who made it possible for Apple to grow and survive its bad
periods, are concerned. Now, they aren't "profitable enough", so they
have been axed. The turn has now come to the small server user. If you
aren't ready to hand over $6,000 a year to Apple, then you aren't
"profitable enough". Apple is now one of the ten largest mobil phone
producers and growing fast in this area. It is also completing its
move into consumer electronics/media with Apple TV. I don't see where
a server line fits into this phone/consumer electronics/media
business. We have already seen that Apple dropped the Xserver RAID,
replacing it with a product at twice the price, on which it can make a
handy profit. How long before the entire server line is seen as not
"profitable enough"?
dss
David Stodolsky email@hidden Skype: davidstodolsky
