"The only thing constant is change." "Timing is everything." These two sayings would become so very true to me and Arek Dreyer as we were wrapping up the last edits and corrections to the materials for "Apple Pro Training Series: OS X Server Essentials: Using and Supporting OS X Server on Mountain Lion," published by Peachpit Press.
If you've moved away from an OS X-based infrastructure and towards Linux, you may be familiar with NetSUS, which is a linux-based appliance that can be used to NetBoot Macs. This is a great solution if you are trying to move towards virtualized and/or non-OS X servers.
Hardware filtering has been around for a while with the NetBoot service, but until recently you could get away one or perhaps two NetBoot sets to cover a whole range of models. With Lion and Mountain Lion, the compatibility breakdown became a lot more complicated where some Intel Macs were supported but not others.
On the newest version of Server.app (2.2) there is a new service called Caching. Clearly it is for caching things, but what exactly and how? Get a first look at this new service over at Noel Alonso's blog.
With the release of OS X 10.8 Server came an updated version of Profile Manager. If you did not dive into Profile Manager on 10.7 Server, then now is the time to get going with some form of MDM. Having a MDM solution will be necessary going forward.
Charles Edge has been doing a series of post on OS X Mountain Lion Server and one of today's topics was of interest for those of us that do image deployments. The NetBoot service has been around for quite a while and hadn't changed a whole lot in appearance.
Even though Server.app on 10.8 Server seems more simplified than prior versions of OS X server, there are features which have been expanded upon and made better. Alerts is one such feature. In the past, what you could get alerts on was somewhat limited, but in 10.8 Server this has been expanded.
Now that OS X and OS X Server both use the same base OS, many people have been asking what the upgrade path looks like to go from 10.6.x or 10.7.x to 10.8.x Server. Charles Edge has a guide on exactly how to do so. His guide very thorough and I would highly suggest following it if you plan on upgrading to 10.8 Server.
Starting with OS X 10.7 (Lion), there has been a shift from managing via Workgroup Manager and Managed Profiles (“MCX”) to managing via Profile Manager and Configuration Profiles (.mobileconfig). Configuration Profiles can be managed in a variety of ways, but OS X Server 10.7 provides a simple and efficient tool to help centralize the management.
Apple released their new Lion Server Advanced Administration documentation. Has anyone yet analyzed what's new?I filed an enhancement request asking for them to flag the differences.
