Apple Previews Mac OS X “Panther” Server

WWDC 2003, San Francisco—June 23, 2003—Apple® today previewed Mac® OS X version 10.3 “Panther” Server, the next major release of Apple’s award-winning, UNIX-based server operating system that makes it easy to deploy popular open source solutions for Mac®, Windows and Linux clients. Ideal for business and education customers, Panther Server includes powerful open source solutions and innovative, easy to use server management capabilities. New features in Panther Server include Automatic Setup for easily setting up multiple servers; Open Directory 2 for hosting scalable LDAP directory and Kerberos authentication services; Samba 3 for providing login and home directory support for Windows clients; and the JBoss application server for running powerful J2EE applications.

“With Panther Server, Apple combines the most popular solutions from the open source world such as Samba and Apache with Apple’s legendary ease-of-use,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The result is a powerful standards-based server operating system capable of a wide variety of solutions from supporting Mac, Windows and Linux workgroups to hosting dynamic web sites with powerful web services.”

One of the powerful new capabilities in Panther Server is Automatic Setup, which makes setting up a rack of Xserve® systems as easy as setting up a single server. This groundbreaking new feature allows system administrators to setup any number of servers from configuration settings stored on a directory server, external FireWire® device, USB storage device or an iPod™.

Apple is the first major vendor to ship a server operating system with Samba 3, the latest version of the popular open source project that delivers high-performance, reliable file and print services to Windows clients. Now Windows users can authenticate against Panther Server directly from a PC login window. Panther Server can also host their Windows home directories and support Windows “roaming profiles.” By tightly integrating Samba 3 with Apple’s Open Directory, Panther Server makes it easy for users to access their accounts from either a Mac or a Windows-based PC.

Other open standards–based network services in Panther Server designed for mixed-client environments include Open Directory 2, a robust LDAP directory and Kerberos authentication server based on OpenLDAP, Berkeley DB and MIT’s Kerberos KDC that delivers industrial-strength scalability and security. An all new mail server rebuilt from the ground up using the open source Postfix SMTP and Cyrus IMAP and POP servers provides an open architecture for integrating with spam and virus filtering solutions, and SSL for secure email. In addition, a new VPN server built into Panther Server supports Mac OS X, Windows or UNIX clients using PPTP and L2TP tunneling protocols

Panther Server includes an updated release of Apache, the world’s most popular web server along with Apache Tomcat and Apache Axis for creating powerful web services. With the addition of a new JBoss application server and new application deployment tools, Panther Server is now the easiest way to develop and deploy J2EE applications.

Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X version 10.3 Panther Server will be available by the end of this year through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), at Apple’s retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $499 (US) for a 10-client edition and $999 (US) for an unlimited-client edition.

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