Mac as a Server - What's Special?

[nathano]

In an effort to learn about computers, networks and OSes, I'm setting up my home network: One Mac, one Linux machine, one FreeBSD machine, and one Windows machine.

I've already decided which services will be offered by the latter three machines; the Linux machine will host web sites and e-mail, the BSD box will be for DHCP, DNS and database, and the Windows machine will have IIS and MSSQL. What server services makes the Mac stand out?

 

[kaidomac]

In an effort to learn about computers, networks and OSes, I'm setting up my home network: One Mac, one Linux machine, one FreeBSD machine, and one Windows machine.

I've already decided which services will be offered by the latter three machines; the Linux machine will host web sites and e-mail, the BSD box will be for DHCP, DNS and database, and the Windows machine will have IIS and MSSQL. What server services makes the Mac stand out?

At the heart, OS X is UNIX, or more specifically BSD. Pretty much whatever you can run on your other boxes you can run on a Mac. Apache, PHP, etc. Sounds like you have a sweet home setup there!

 

[technologist]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/

It's Unix, yes, but it includes a bunch of administration and setup tools that make it easier to set up all of the myriad services.

For example, it includes a nice GUI tool that lets you combine ordinary Unix tools (Samba, LDAP, Kerberos) to get something that works like Microsoft ActiveDirectory and is about as easy to set up and administer -- only based on standards that play nice and are well undestood.