OS X Mountain Lion Server For Dummies

The Servers in Mountain Lion Server

Mountain Lion Server is not one server but more than two dozen servers and tools for managing Mac clients. Figure 1-1 lists the services available to you, as you see them in the Server utility. Other services not displayed in the figure are also available. Many of them can be turned on and off with a few mouse clicks.

Figure 1-1: Lion Server is actually a set of servers.

Next is a quick look at what services you get, and what you can do with them. After this, we take a look at the management tools.

File server

The bread and butter of a server, the file server may be all that some people need from Mountain Lion Server. File servers provide folders that everyone on the network can see. You can also limit access so that some people can’t get into certain folders. OS X Server provides file sharing via the Mac-native Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), which is Mac only, and Microsoft’s Server Message Block (SMB), which Windows and Linux clients use. Mountain Lion Server also provides the WebDAV protocol for iPad devices and, optionally, for backing up Macs using Time Machine. You can also set up FTP, used for uploading and downloading big files over the Internet. If you’re adept in the Unix command line, you have access to Network Files System (NFS) for Unix and Linux.

The file server also has a robust set of access controls, both the simpler Unix file ...