Snow Leopard™ Server

Chapter 3. Planning Deployment Complexity

In This Chapter

• Standard configuration

• Workgroup configuration

• Advanced configuration

Mac OS X Server attempts to cover a wide range of uses:

• The relatively basic needs of small business users for email and file sharing

• The more advanced needs of higher education and corporate groups using Podcast Producer, iChat Server, and wikis, blogs, and web calendars

• The very customized needs of large organizations and enterprise groups who need to integrate their servers into an existing corporate directory and install their own server applications

Creating one product with the ability to cover such a broad range of needs is challenging. On one end, there are users who want everything to be as simple and intuitive as their Mac OS X desktops; at the opposite pole, there are users who need to get down and dirty with advanced customizations.

In Mac OS X Leopard Server, Apple defined three configurations to allow users with different needs to either limit the complexity they have to deal with or, alternatively, to expose the complexity they need to deploy customized, advanced services:

• Standard configuration

• Workgroup configuration

• Advanced configuration

The first two configurations were designed to use the simple Server Preferences application for most of their initial configurations and ongoing administration. This application is designed to mimic the Mac's System Preferences, reducing administration down to a series of approachable panes of options.

Note

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