Product Reviews

Although it still carries the 'Mac' tag, Apple's latest OS offering is a far cry from its usual system software. Mac OS X Server (the 'X' stands for 'ten') is not, inherently, a Mac OS. In fact, it's a fully-fledged Unix-based operating system with a Mac-style interface and a 'Blue Box' Mac emulator grafted on. Aimed squarely at the server market (specifically at the Web server market), it's also intended to ease the woes of the average network administrator.

So is it a replacement for AppleShare IP 6? Is it as easy to use? Is it better than a Windows NT-based Web server or file server? What about other types of Web server? MacUser has had a copy of the software for about a month, and in that time we've configured and used the server, examining it from the perspective of both a Mac user and a system administrator familiar with Unix.

Setting up

Although you can buy the server software as a standalone product, most users will get hold of it as part of a G3 server bundle - especially since the software requires a G3 Mac to run. Apple admits the software will run on certain older Power Macs for now, but make sure it will work with your machine before you buy - OSes are rather more picky about hardware than applications.

We ran OS X Server on a well-configured Apple G3 server with two 9Gb SCSI hard disks, 128Mb of RAM and a decent video card (although, for a server, the video card is pretty irrelevant). The machine was also fitted with a four-port PCI Ethernet card, and a built-in 10/100Base-T network connection.

Installation should take under half an hour. Anyone who's worked with Unix systems will be amazed at the ease of configuration - but then Apple knows exactly what sort of hardware is going to be present. A step-by-step process, aided by the installation manual (the only printed manual included with Mac OS X Server), means it's hard to get it wrong.

The hard disk or partition you'll be using as your startup volume needs to be reformatted, and for the sake of security and performance, Apple recommends you format all hard disks in the server's UFS format, unless you're going to run standard Mac OS 8.5 on the machine.

We set up the server using just the built-in Ethernet port, although the installer also asked us whether we wanted to configure the other four Ethernet ports and, if so, what network addresses they should have. All in all, it's a refreshingly simple installation, and as easy as for a normal piece of Mac software, although you do need to know some details of network configuration.

Once installation is complete, you're presented with the Mac OS X Server log-in screen, which asks you to either log in or shut down the machine. Hitting the power key on the keyboard results in an 'Are you sure you want to shut down?' dialog box - very Mac-like.

Logging in

Type in your user name and password, and a couple of seconds later the Workspace Manager appears. This is a graphical front end for the server, and will be welcomed by users who aren't familiar with the intricacies of Unix. It looks a lot like a standard Mac display - at least until you try to view the contents of the hard disk by clicking on its icon. As soon as you've done this, you'll see the machine's NeXTSTEP roots show through, as a very NeXT-like browser appears to be navigating you through the disk.

It's at this point you start to realise you're not in Kansas anymore. The multi-user file hierarchy is very different under Unix to what you've come to expect on the Mac (the server is based on the BSD variant of Unix with a high-powered Mach kernel), and unless you know what you're doing, you could spend a lot of time searching for fundamentals like the documentation for the system. Apple's online documentation for Mac OS X Server does state that using the server will be easier if you've some experience of Unix. In fact, unless you know Unix, you'll want to avoid the command-line interface altogether, and instead rely on the machine's graphical interfaces. (Of course, if you're intending to use the machine as a file server or Web server, you'll probably never need to resort to the command-line interface anyway - the graphical tools do it all for you.)

Graphical geekery

To make life as easy as possible, Mac OS X Server comes with several graphical interfaces for common tasks, including monitoring processes on the machine, the addition of users, network configuration, and so on. These make life easier for the non-geek, and even Unix gurus will like the fact that it's easy to perform the basic administration tasks - for real Unix-heads, a command-line terminal can be found under the Apple menu.

You can administer the machine from its own display, or remotely via a Telnet log-in or a Web browser-based interface. Because of the way the server handles user information and the like, it's better to sit in front of the machine, or to use the Web-based interface. The Web interface allows you to add users and groups, view the server status, and control file sharing, but not many of the other features supported by the graphics tools are available via the Web interface.

This raises a negative aspect of Mac OS X Server, especially from a Unix administrator's perspective. As an administrator, you may not want to be in front of the machine to make changes and edit settings - you may want to do it remotely from somewhere else on the network. However, many of the tools you need are graphics-based, although most can be emulated using the command-line interface. On a standard Unix platform, if graphical tools were required, the administrator would typically run a remote X Windows session, giving a fully-windowed environment. But Mac OS X Server is not based on X Windows but on NeXTSTEP, which is great when you're in front of the machine but not so accessible when you're elsewhere on the network.

As far as most Unix applications are concerned, this is an 'unknown' box. We had some success compiling relatively simple programs, but anything which required detailed knowledge of the machine's internal structure can be problematic. For those experienced with a Unix system such as Solaris or Linux, this could be an issue, as they'd have to battle

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to compile some of their favourite utilities. (And, of course, anything which relies on X Windows or a graphical toolkit such as Tk won't work.)

That said, a number of the tools you might need to install, such as Perl, have been included as part of the standard operating system install, so unless you're a hardened Unix hacker, you might never need to compile anything else anyway. If you do need the C compiler, incidentally, you'll have to install WebObjects, at least temporarily; the compiler isn't included as part of the standard install, but is put in place when you configure WebObjects.

Major server tools aside, the only bundled application (not counting the graphical configuration and administration utilities) is OmniWeb, a Web browser. Although only in beta, it seems powerful and fast, although we'd like to see something more familiar, such as Netscape Communicator, ported to the server, simply because that's what people expect.

For those who want the 'real' Mac experience, Mac OS X Server comes with the 'Blue Box', a Mac OS 8.5 environment which runs as a separate Mac OS X Server process. Launch this and you're presented with a boot screen, after which Mac OS 8.5 appears. It works, and it's fast, but it's not really what you should be using the server for. If there's the occasional Mac application you need to use, fine; otherwise, use the server for what it's intended.

Apache

There are a number of additional built-in pieces of software which dramatically improve OS X Server as a package. First and foremost is Apache, the world's most popular Web server.

Apache is robust, strong, and extensible (it's used on more than 50% of the world's Web servers), and not to include it with Mac OS X would have been a strange omission. It's supplied pre-compiled and installed, although the installation location may seem strange to people used to other flavours of Unix. Again, this suggests you do need some familiarity with Unix, as otherwise you'll struggle to configure Mac OS X Server correctly for your Web site.

Once you've got the hang of the directory structure, Apache really flies. Tests performed by Ziff-Davis suggest it's far faster than a high-end Pentium-based PC running Linux, and even outruns the more expensive Sun Ultra. Although such tests aren't completely fail-safe, they do suggest that for high-performance Web and file serving, Mac OS X Server can't be beaten by anything in its price range - and when multiprocessor Macs equipped with G4 CPUs appear, it'll be even harder to catch.

The server supports AppleShare file sharing, as does the Mac OS 8-based AppleShare IP 6. However, you get much better performance with the new server, including support for up to 1100 simultaneously-connected users right out of the box (with no licensing issues). It's just as easy to set up users, groups, share points as in AppleShare IP, so there'll be no pain in upgrading if you're using AppleShare just for file sharing.

QuickTime Streaming Server is an optional install; version 1.0 of the server comes with a beta version, but the final version had just been released at the time of writing, and is available for download via Apple's Web site. The Streaming Server is a significant addition to QuickTime, as it gives viewers of your site the ability to watch a QuickTime movie as it's downloading, rather than waiting for the whole thing to be sent to the client.

Apple has made the source code for Streaming Server 'open source', which means other developers can implement it in their products, but for the time being Mac OS X Server is the only product which offers QuickTime streaming. It uses industry-standard RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocols) and supports both files which have been previously saved and live video streaming. It's a direct competitor to RealVideo, and at only £349 with the server software, it's significantly cheaper than a RealVideo server.

NetBooting is another feature which network administrators have been waiting for with bated breath. Now the wait is over, and our tests suggest it's every bit as good as expectant users had hoped for. NetBoot is a feature which enables iMacs and blue-and-white Power Mac G3s to boot from a disk image on the server, rather than from their own internal hard disks. For network managers this will be of great benefit, as the remote boot and application volumes are read-only (which means users can't customise the machines in any way), and file storage can also be controlled via AppleShare file serving.

Apple suggests that a 400MHz G3 server with 256Mb of RAM and a pair of 9Gb hard disks can easily support 25 NetBoot clients, and the installation instructions give many examples of how to link servers and clients together. Any network manager who wants to centrally control the configuration of their machines is going to love NetBoot - almost as much as hackers and software pirates are going to hate it.

WebObjects is another optional install. Acquired by Apple when it purchased Steve Jobs' NeXT, this technology is a way of creating complex Web sites with a great deal of functionality - the online Apple Store, for instance, is built in WebObjects. All the developer tools are bundled with the version of WebObjects supplied, as is a 'limited deployment licence'. This should be fine for most Web sites, unless they have to deal with a large volume of traffic, in which case an extended usage licence will be necessary. WebObjects is a separate install option, and the installer is a pleasure to use - graphically based, it's as easy as installing a standard Mac application.

Apple has also included a CD containing demo versions of third-party applications, which show the support that already exists for Mac OS X Server. If nothing else, it gives you a flavour of what else is available for the platform, although we suspect many purchasers will use it straight out of the box as a Web server or NetBoot server, and not bother installing much else.

Silver service

Apple has taken a bold step with Mac OS X Server. For years, Mac users have been asking for a true multi-tasking, memory-protected Mac OS, but this isn't really it. Although it does run Mac applications via the Blue Box,Mac OS X Server is greatly removed from the Mac OS most users are familiar with.

However, the server is very fast, very powerful, and capable of acting as a reliable Web server and QuickTime Streaming server, as well as implementing NetBoot - which alone will be reason enough for many network administrators to get their chequebooks out. Although Mac administrators with no experience of Unix may find themselves on a tough learning curve, the streaming QuickTime server, screamingly fast Apache performance, and NetBoot make this a serious server product which deserves to succeed.