Using Mac OS X Lion Server

Installing Clients

The mail server isn’t going to be very useful unless you configure a client to access the services it hosts. The two main platforms that Lion Server is built to host mail for are iOS-based devices (e.g., iPad and iPhone) and Mac OS X clients (e.g., MacBook Air and MacBook Pro). The protocols that are hosted by the mail server are standards-compliant and are accessible by any platform, provided that platform supports IMAP and POP, both of which are standards compliant mail protocols. In this chapter, we are just looking at Apple devices as clients, but the settings we use for those are also usable on other platforms (and with other mail clients) as well. We will also be looking at using IMAP for both devices. If you will not be keeping mail on the server and wish to use POP instead, then interchanging the IMAP settings for POP settings is a fairly straightforward process.

Setting up iOS Clients

Configuring the mail client in iOS to work with a Mac OS X Server can be done manually or by using a configuration profile. Configuration profiles are covered more fully in Chapter 9, so here we will focus on manually configuring an iOS device to work with a Lion-based mail server. To get started, open the Settings app and then tap on the Mail, Contacts, Calendars setting in the Settings sidebar. From the Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Settings tap on the option to Add Account… (as seen in Figure 6-7).

At the Add Account… screen, you will be shown a number of options. Tap on Other. ...