The new OS X Server brings even more power to your business, home office or school. It’s remarkably easy to install, set up and manage. And new features make it faster than ever to download software across your network. Add OS X Server to Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store .
Now anyone in your group can share folders, exchange files and access documents on a Mac, iPad or PC. Because OS X Server supports both UNIX permissions and access control lists (ACLs), you have more control over who shares what. With file-sharing connection monitoring, you can see who’s accessing your server, who’s connected and for how long. And intelligent Spotlight searching helps users find content on the server quickly and easily.
straight from your Mac, iPad or PC.
Profile Manager simplifies deploying, configuring and managing them all. It’s one place where you control everything: you can create profiles to set up user accounts for mail, calendar, contacts and messages; configure system settings; enforce restrictions; set PIN and password policies; and more. Because it’s integrated with the Apple Push Notification service, Profile Manager can send out updated configurations over the air, automatically. And it includes web-based administration, so you can manage your server from any modern web browser. Profile Manager even gives users access to a self-service web portal where they can download and install new configuration profiles, as well as clear passcodes and remotely lock or wipe their Mac, iPhone or iPad if it’s lost or stolen.
OS X Server can act as a designated Time Machine backup location for all the Mac computers on your network. Centralising your backup storage helps protect valuable data and free up disk space on individual drives. And it eliminates the need for separate backup drives altogether. OS X Server also takes advantage of Time Machine to back up your server data — including shared files, calendars, mail, wikis and more — to another hard drive, so you can easily restore to an earlier configuration. And now you can view the backup status for each Mac on your network. See which computers and users are backing up to your server, when they last backed up and the total size of each backup.
OS X Server makes it easy for groups to collaborate and communicate through their own wiki-powered website. With simple yet powerful tools, users can create and edit wikis and individual pages, tag and cross-reference material, upload files and images, and create tables and add comments. The wiki is accessible from a browser, so anyone can access it anytime. Users can easily search for new pages and content, show recent activity and view attachments with Quick Look. Whenever a page has been updated or new comments have been added, everyone receives an automatic email notification. Wiki Server is optimised for iPad. And with WebDAV support, iPad users can now open and save attachments from the wiki in Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
Calendar Server makes sure everyone knows where to be and when to be there. Everyone can share calendars, schedule meetings, book conference rooms and coordinate events. Contacts Server makes it easy to share contacts and keep them in sync on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. Mail Server in OS X Server works with email clients on the Mac, iPad, iPhone and PC. It supports push notifications for immediately notifying users when new mail messages arrive. With built-in virus detection and junk mail filtering, unwanted mail doesn’t come close.
Messages Server brings the collaborative power of instant messaging to your organisation. Now workgroups can transfer files securely, share group messages, conduct audio conferences, even broadcast a presentation, movie or photo slideshow to other Messages users running OS X.
Caching Server makes it faster than ever to download apps to every Mac on your network running OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.2 or later. When a user on your network downloads new software from the Mac App Store, a copy is automatically stored on your server. So the next time other users on your network update or download that same software, they're actually accessing it from inside the network.
Virtual private network (VPN) access enables your offsite users to securely connect to your network and its services, while preventing access by unauthorised individuals. OS X Server includes VPN on demand, which allows every Mac to establish a secure authenticated connection automatically. VPN Server supports L2TP/IPSec and PPTP tunnelling protocols to provide encryption and remote network access for your Mac computers, iOS devices and Windows PCs.
NetInstall is designed for administrators who manage operating system installations and software updates for their organisations. It’s the perfect IT assistant. It performs automated software installations — whether a new version of OS X, a specific suite of applications for a workgroup, or both. It eliminates the expense of distributing software on disk. And it saves administrators from having to configure each system in person.
Xsan is a powerful and scalable solution for storage consolidation. Now everyone in your organisation can have fast, concurrent access to terabytes of centralised data. Built into OS X, Xsan allows any Mac with a Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel adapter to access an Xsan volume. OS X Server includes the Xsan Admin application for hosting and configuring Xsan volumes.