Overview
Simple administration
iCal Server 2
Address Book Server
Podcast Producer 2
Wiki Server 2
Mobile Access Server
iChat Server
File sharing
Mail services
Web hosting
Spotlight Server
Client management
Networking and VPN
File sharing. Share and share alike.
Mac OS X Server is the easiest and most cost-effective way to share files between Mac computers and PCs, locally or over the Internet. Snow Leopard Server offers up to 2.3x faster file-sharing performance than earlier versions.
File sharing made easy.
Whether you’re supporting a creative team, a distributed sales force, a class of multimedia students, or just about any small business or workgroup, you know your users need to share information to work effectively. Mac OS X Server makes it easy to share folders and exchange files between Mac and PC systems without the installation of additional software.
Why a server?
Productivity is greatly enhanced when users store work in centralised folders rather than on individual computers. With centralised file storage, all users have access to the same up-to-the-minute file. Since a single version resides on the server, there won’t be any confusion about multiple versions of the same document. And users won’t need to worry about losing important data in the event of a system failure or a lost or stolen laptop. The file is always safe on the server.
Sharing made easy.
It’s easy to share hard drives or individual folders and assign custom access permissions with Mac OS X Server. To facilitate collaboration, each group has its own shared folder on the server. Whether they’re using Mac or PC systems, all group members can read and write to files in the shared folder, just as if they were using their own hard drive.
An affordable NAS replacement.
Many businesses purchase network-attached storage (NAS) appliances to avoid client-access licenses. However, NAS appliances are slow, limit your storage expansion options and provide little or no control over access controls or directory integration. With Mac OS X Server as your file server, you won’t have these limitations. Users can share files between Mac, Windows, UNIX and Linux systems while taking advantage of rich file system access controls, directory integration and more. Best of all, Mac OS X Server scales to meet your future needs.
File Sharing Performance 
Snow Leopard Server
Leopard Server
SPECsfs2008_cifs results
Snow Leopard Server
Leopard Server
SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3 results
Snow Leopard Server
Leopard Server
AFPBench results
Time Machine backup.
The Time Machine feature in Mac OS X enables users to go back in time and revisit their Mac as it appeared on a given day. By making a copy of everything on the system — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows and documents — Time Machine makes it easy for users to recover their data and undo their mistakes.
Mac OS X Server can automatically back up your users’ previous versions to the server or another designated hard drive on the network, protecting valuable data and freeing up disk space on individual hard drives — or eliminating the need for backup drives altogether.
Built-in file-level locking keeps any Mac or PC from overwriting changes when a file is opened by more than one user at a time; only the user who unlocked the file can make changes.
Native file services.
Mac OS X Server makes it easy for you to set up central network storage that’s accessible to clients throughout your organization. Using native protocols, it delivers file services to all the clients on your network: AFP, SMB/CIFS, NFS and FTP. These flexible cross-platform file services enable groups to work more efficiently, share resources, archive projects and back up important documents. Mac OS X Server even works in organizations with an existing directory service, allowing you to provide lower-cost file services while still integrating with a directory — such as Open Directory or Active Directory — for user and group account information, permissions and authentication.
Flexible permissions.
Mac OS X Server supports both traditional UNIX file permissions and access control lists, giving administrators an unprecedented level of control over file and folder permissions. With access control lists, any file object can be assigned multiple users and groups, including groups within groups. Each file object can also be assigned to allow and deny permissions, as well as assign a granular set of permissions for administrative control, read, write and delete operations. Mac OS X Server supports a file permission inheritance model, ensuring that user permissions are inherited when files are moved to the server and rewritten when files are copied to the server.
*Testing conducted by Apple in May 2009. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Xserve and Mac OS X Server. View more detailed information.
