This is what I half-heartedly joked about this morning. Besides the abandonment of a real enterprise piece of equipment, I joked that "Well, someone messed up as I'm sure the virtualization announcement was supposed to happen today too."

If supported, I'd see us throwing OS X VM's in our ESXi infrastructure.

It's just kind of silly to think Apple is telling us with a straight face to use a mac mini or a tower computer (MacPro) in our datacenter in the rack next to a blade chasis and EMC storage arrays in an ESXi environment set up for enterprise-class computing... Riiiiiight.... Our JSS is a mission critical piece of software for us as our processes are closely tied to it. We've invested in Enterprise-class hardware to make that happen but now we're being told it isn't an option in the future.

For larger districts like us, K-12 is an enterprise environment, we don't have the luxury of down-time anymore which seems to be lost on some, both in Apple and in education itself. For us at least, the days of "This is going to be down for a while until we fix it." or "It went down over the weekend but that's okay because it's the weekend." are long gone.

I like to hear that JAMF is testing against other platforms as that sure seems to be where many of us with larger environments are going to have to go at some point here.

John

--
John Wetter
Technical Services Manager
Educational Technology, Media & Information Services
Hopkins Public Schools

Should be more from Apple after Monday (they are having an enterprise sales
meeting) ­ hopefully that will provide clarity.

I concur we have over 200 Xserves in our district, 80+ of which were
purchased in the last 6 months to accommodate Casper distribution points.
-- Hasaan Herrington
Technical Support II
Information Technology
Anchorage School District
1602 Hillcrest Drive, Anchorage, Alaska, 99517

I think Virtual Server/s or JSS running directly from a Linux or Win
server box will ease my and data centre guys' job.

First off all, I don't have to worry about backing the server up as data
centre infrastructure will do this automatically. Second, I don't have to
freakout about hardware failure as these guys are trained for the hardware
and they have the greatest monitoring systems.

I really want to see JAMF Software to give us an Enterprise Level High
Availability/ Resilience to their great product. So I think this change
will make it happen quicker :)

It will be interesting to see future NetBoot and SUS solutions though...

Cem

Hi Cem,

They only stop making Xserve's not Mac OS X Server. Maybe Apple will change the license and let's run Mac OS X Server on VMware ESX(i).

Kind Regards,

Martin van Diemen

t +31 (0)205677744

G-Star International B.V.
www.g-star.com

Yep I am aware of that...that is why I have mentioned Virtual Server/s (I
meant Virtual Mac OS X Server/s)
Thanks for highlighting it though.

I've got JSS running on a testbed Debian box already. I've also been reading up on netboot via Linux and am going to start testing on Monday.

As for SUS, well... it can't be impossible. But, worst case scenario, we'll keep a Mac Pro around for SUS services pointed to share space on bigger iron.

OD is going to be interesting as well. Fortunately, there are options and I'll have some time to begin testing there as well.

Hopefully, though, this is all going to be moot when (please be when, not if) Apple opens licensing for OS X Server VM's on vanilla hardware. In the meantime, I'm making a recommendation for migrating as much as possible off our existing Xserves and will not be advising replacement orders before January.

And I must admit that I'm very disappointed in the information we get from our sales and technical contacts from Apple. I know they get their jollies on secrecy, but they take it too far when it comes to enterprise support.

thom

Doesn't anymore remember what happened with the Xserve RAID?

Apple didn't want to invest any more money, so they qualified an external vendor....

-j

Sorry, I doubt that's the case. Had they announced prior to discontinuing or, at the very least, in the same breath, okay.

Besides, when a company that is sitting on a cool $50 billion in liquid doesn't want to invest in providing backend infrastructure to maintain their products and decides to announce that fact without forewarning or notice to those that support them... well, I'm being asked now to justify why we should consider keeping 1000 odd computers in rotation without enterprise tools from the manufacturer.

Not sure I can. I'm on the phone with our Apple cat this morning. I really need to hear relaxed EULA on OS X Server for vanilla hardware/virtualization, because people above me are telling me that's what they want to hear.

Macs make up less than a tenth of our population, upper management will let them go. Period.

They are still making servers, just not rack mount ones. The Xserve is now in the Mac Pro case. I don't like this transition but there are some people at Apple that do not view Apple as an enterprise company, which is sad.

http://www.custom-consoles.com/Mac_Pro_Rack.php

They already make these, which are like shelving for your huge mac pro desktop cases.

The MacPro is definitely not an Xserve in MacPro clothing. Redundant power supplies is the biggest thing missing if you ask me.
--
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

Not to beat a dead horse, but without LOM, redundant power supplies and hot swappable bays, no... they're simply installing a server OS on consumer hardware.

There is no way I can drag a tower into the server room -- I've already been told that will not happen.

I'm pretty sure Apple just told my school district they don't want our business and that we can plan on refreshing our thousand Macs with Dells when they hit EOL.

OK, touché on the redundant power supplies. Though I think that the
Mac pro could easily support LOM if you added a NIC to it. Not sure on
that though.

On Nov 8, 2010, at 8:45 AM, Thom Burrell wrote: Sorry, I doubt that's the case. Had they announced prior to discontinuing or, at the very least, in the same breath, okay.

Good point

Besides, when a company that is sitting on a cool $50 billion in liquid doesn't want to invest in providing backend infrastructure to maintain their products and decides to announce that fact without forewarning or notice to those that support them... well, I'm being asked now to justify why we should consider keeping 1000 odd computers in rotation without enterprise tools from the manufacturer.

Apple has repeatedly stated that they are not an enterprise company...

Not sure I can. I'm on the phone with our Apple cat this morning. I really need to hear relaxed EULA on OS X Server for vanilla hardware/virtualization, because people above me are telling me that's what they want to hear.

Most of us would like to hear that - not sure it will happen before 10.7 is announced, but hey...if they change the terms on 10.6 server...would be interesting.

Macs make up less than a tenth of our population, upper management will let them go. Period.

It happens - sometimes management decisions are based solely on form factor.

On Nov 8, 2010, at 7:36 AM, Jeremy Matthews wrote: Doesn't anymore remember what happened with the Xserve RAID? Apple didn't want to invest any more money, so they qualified an external vendor.... -j_______________________________________________ Casper mailing list Casper at list.jamfsoftware.com http://list.jamfsoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/casper

" Macs make up less than a tenth of our population, upper management will let them go. Period."

Same problem for us. Except we have less than that...

For what it's worth, Netboot should work off OS X with some work -- same
with SUS. I'll be testing both of those in the next couple of weeks once
I'm confident in my playtime on a test box at home. Casper does work on
Linux, it's just a tedious install process. If JAMF ramps up and rolls
out Linux install packages, that'll make things easier out of the gate,
though.

Under no circumstances am I suggesting that any of these are desirable
solutions, or that they "just work"; just that there are options for
migration away from OS X if need be (as I'm hearing in my organization
where Pros and Minis will not be allowed in the server room).

My biggest concern out of everything is OD. I've inherited a mess, I was
asked to come in on a contract to build out network deployment from the
existing 1:1 firewire CCC that was in place. After a test show-n-tell
with Netrestore and then a more formal DeployStudio prototype, I was asked
to revise with a product that had a point of contact for support. Casper
was my choice over Lanrev. We began rolling out in January and I was then
asked to come on full time to handle all things Apple.

That was two weeks ago.

Then I discovered what was going on in the rest of the setup and that our
ODM was a first gen Intel Xserve and our ODR was a G5 tower (being
contract, I wasn't allowed access to anything related to records or
accounts). So, I start drawing up a proposal for a fat Xserve to
virtualize those... I was preparing to present that Friday morning.

Now, what? Modify AD's schema to handle MCX? Centrify? Get hands on
with OpenLDAP?

How are you handling Directory Services?

Well, to retread on the first thread, Apple did indeed announce the end of
the xRaids weeks before letting everyone know that the Promise Raids would
replace them. Apple traditionally is guilty of one hand not knowing what
the other hand is doing. They are not stupid, though. Just not very
thoughtful of their customers. I believe that this block-headed method of
discontinuing the xServes will eventually lead to the announcement of a
better or different solution. Possibly being able to load Apple OS server
onto another server platform - maybe Sun or some other Unix hardware. But,
not before making a lot of faithful users totally paranoid and very pissed
off. To restate, the biggest customer of xServe is Apple! I spoke with a
few Apple reps on Friday and was told they were caught totally off guard
with this announcement, too. One was even going into a sales meeting with
a vendor to sell more xServes! We all need to take a wait and see posture
at this point. I am sure we will learn more about this in the next few
days. And, I am sure this uproar in the customer base has been heard all
the way up to Steve Job's ivory tower. Right now I am seeing if Apple will
let me trade back some of my older servers for a couple of new ones to get
me through the next 3-4 years. So...... as they say in my business.....
film at 11:00........

Best,

Roy

Some people at Apple? Like this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOmtMRsV7T8 ?

--Jim

Understandable. And I'd rather throw some new Xserves into racks and build
out according to Apple's recommendations (afterall, that's the payoff of
Enterprise ApplecareŠ). But with the lack of options and a meeting in two
hours to spell out my preliminary contingency plan, I'm not sure I want to
recommend buying some last of stock hardware as a "get by".

We're fortunate that we have quite a bit of weight on racks and there has
been a concerted effort to be proactive about virtualization (and the heavy
equipment to handle it ‹ the server guys have an impressive playroom). If
licensing were eased for virtualization, I'd happily move in that direction;
especially considering the ease in creating robust redundancy). But I
can't really make a recommendation based on conjecture, either.

AD provides us with authorization, but OD provides our groups as well as MCX
policies. I've been mostly happy with what I've seen for policies via
Casper, but I'm still getting my feet wet on where Casper meets WGM/OD and
where it falls short. I'm also not entirely sure of how to translate OD's
groups over to AD ‹ and I'm not going to make our two AD cats happy by
dumping this in their lap without insight.

That's the part I'm unsure ofŠ which is simply a point of my own ignorance
(and something I need to address post haste).

At least it's never boring, right? RIGHT?!? :D

Right on. Thank you, Don.

Thanks, mate. Nice food for thought.

Hi Thom,

We've been telling our Apple Reps and SE's for years that our #1 goal was to move services off Xserve and onto Wintel. We've to do so in all the enterprise environments we support. Where we are stuck is in two areas...Apple SUS and NetBoot. I'm sure there are third party vendors burning the midnight oil to bring us (supported) solutions for both of these services. Just like I'm sure JAMF are putting more resources into building a tool to help us get JSS installed on Wintel and Unix/Linux platforms. :)

Don

A bit off topic here, but...

I have been in IT for a decade now and I honestly really prefer MCX over AD group policy and I prefer OS X Server in many cases (with some exceptions) and they make a great product in many regards. Companies like Autodesk are finally porting over their software for Macs. I am all about VMs but I also like running things native when I can. I don't think I would want the ODM or JSS in my very large environment to run off a VM, unless the server was very top of the line.

Depends on the client. Is AD in decent shape, the right version, and are the folks who manage it willing to cooperate? If so, AD schema extension is our #1 choice. Since our goal is to reign in costs. If AD schema extension isn't an option, the client has two other choices. They can go with Centrify/Likewise/Quest/Thursby plugin, but then we're talking about money and an additional layer to manage (benefit: current AD admin staff can manage). Or, they can go with AD/OD triangle, which adds cost (additional hardware, possibly additional staff and training). We present the client with all our options, along with our recommendation based on our environment/staff survey...then the client decides.

Don

We're using AD authentication with Casper managing MCX. The UID/GID is
coming from our UNIX LDAP environment and is put into AD via AD and UNIX
admins. This seems to work nicely and we don't need OD or a schema
extension.
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