The Mountain Lion version of OS X Server marked the end of a transition for Apple's server software. When Apple released OS X 10.6 in 2009, Server was an expensive and entirely separate version of OS X that only shipped on Apple's rack-mountable XServe systems and cost $1,000 if you wanted to run it on any of your other Macs. Fast-forward to 2012 and the XServe was long-dead, OS X Server was a $20 add-on to OS X, and the powerful-but-complex tools used to manage and configure the server software had been thrown out in favor of a greatly simplified application primarily controlled via big on/off switches. It took a couple of years, but Apple had done the same thing to its server hardware and software that it did to Final Cut Pro. The company made its features more accessible for small businesses and high-end consumers at the expense of features important to a subset of professional users.

The Mavericks version of OS X Server ushers in no such sweeping changes. In fact, the scope of the update is closer to the incremental updates that the Mountain Lion version has received between its launch in July of 2012 and now. Despite a version number increase from 2.X to 3.X, OS X Server is finished with the major overhauls. The software has been changed from an enterprise-targeted package to one better suited to power users and small businesses. Now that the transition is complete, it's clear that slow, steady improvement is the new normal.

This means there's a little less truly new ground to cover than there was last year, but in keeping with last year’s review, we’re still going to go through all of the services OS X Server offers item by item. This will serve as both an evaluation of those services as well as a basic how-to guide for those who are new to the software—in cases where nothing has changed, we have re-used portions of last year's review. If you'd like to read more about OS X Server's transition from an enterprise product to a "prosumer" product, that's background information that we covered last year.

Installation, setup, and getting started

When configuring a new OS X Server, the install process is the same as it was in Mountain Lion: take any Mac running OS X 10.9 and download and install the Server software package (hereafter Server.app) from the Mac App Store. Unlike Mavericks itself, Server.app 3.0 is still a $19.99 download both for new customers and for people upgrading from Mountain Lion or Lion Server, though download codes are being offered free of (additional) charge to members of Apple’s $99-a-year OS X and iOS developer programs. The older Server.app versions won’t run in Mavericks, and Server.app 3.0 won’t run in Lion or Mountain Lion, so the upgrade process is an all-or-nothing proposition.

Apple has removed most of the more intimidating configuration screens from the Server installation process. Where Mountain Lion Server and older versions would ask for hostname and IP address configuration (among other things), the new Server.app gets right to the point. Agree to the EULA, input an administrator’s username and password, and wait for the first-time setup process to complete. Configuring those more advanced settings can still be done after the fact in Server.app, but for home users, the more intimidating barriers to installation have been removed.

Another consumer-y touch is the addition of new Server Tutorials, which pop up in front of the Server.app window first thing after the first-time setup has completed. The old Server.app had a persistent “Next Steps” area across the bottom of the screen that would assist newbies through some of the server basics, but the Server Tutorials are more friendly and more comprehensive all around.

Each tutorial starts with an objective stated in plain language: “share files” or “provide centralized backup” or “host a website.” Clicking on each section opens up a tutorial that explains services like File Sharing and Time Machine at a high level before providing step-by-step instructions with screenshots and some resources for further reading—the “Advanced Topics” section of Apple’s online OS X Server help is generally the first stop.

Apple’s online help and the old-style Server Help files are all still there in the Mavericks version of OS X Server, but the new Server Tutorials fill a pretty obvious user education gap from older versions of the software. Along with the simplification of the setup process, they make it easier for a Mac enthusiast to make the jump from being a regular old OS X user to an amateur server administrator. Learning OS X Server before was a study in digging into Help files, Googling, and just poking around at stuff until it seemed like it was working, but the tutorials provide neophytes a clearer path from Point A to Point B.

Meet Server.app

If you want to do basically anything with OS X Server, you’re going to do it with Server.app. This all-in-one server administration tool has completely replaced the more advanced but less user-friendly Server Admin Tools from Lion and older versions of OS X, but it supports most of the same features. The look of the application has changed a little from its Mountain Lion incarnation—linen has been excised, the default window size is wider, and the way items are organized and presented has been rethought, mostly for the better—but it’s still largely the same interface.

Server.app is used to:

Manage local and Open Directory users and groups

Enable, disable, and configure services, all of which we'll be discussing individually

Add SSL certificates

Set remote management preferences

Enable push notifications

Check your server's status and log messages

You can launch the app directly from the server itself, or you can install it on any OS X client computer and connect to your Mavericks servers using their host names or IP addresses—just click Connect to Server from the Manage menu. Server.app in Mavericks is able to manage both Mavericks servers and older Mountain Lion servers, so if you manage multiple servers and don't want to upgrade all of them at once, you'll be able to use the same tool to control them both. Server.app in Mountain Lion couldn't connect to Lion servers, so this is a welcome change.

Looking at the left of the screen, start at the top and work your way down. Items in the "Server" section are all about server monitoring and general administration. This is where you can view uptime and log information, usage statistics, log files from your various services, and any alerts that the server may have generated. Even in the Alerts section, Mavericks dumbs things down a bit in the name of user friendliness. Things like "S.M.A.R.T. status" and "Disk unreachable" have been consolidated under "Disk," while most of the headings have been simplified.

Other Server.app uses include viewing and changing IP address and hostname information, managing your security certificates, and configuring the server's remote administration options. Your server can be managed remotely using SSH, screen sharing, or other client Macs running Server.app.

Finally, the Server section of Server.app is where you configure push notifications for your services. Push notifications are used with the Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Profile Manager services to alert your users when new messages or calendar invites or other data comes in. Apple's support documentation recommends using push notifications with these services as a more efficient alternative to polling the server for data at a set interval. Push notifications are also used to alert server administrators when new Alerts are generated—any Mac that has connected to your server using Server.app will receive these Alerts in its Notification Center.













Push notifications can be sent from your server to any OS X or iOS client that it manages. You first need to get a Push Notification Service certificate from Apple using an organizational Apple ID as opposed to the personal Apple ID that you might use in the Mac App Store or with an Apple Developer account. The certificate, which is used to encrypt the communication between your server and your clients, is free, but it must be renewed yearly.

Most of your time in Server.app will be spent in the "Accounts" and "Services" sections. We'll talk more about Accounts later in the Open Directory section, since it's mostly useful for administrators of small to medium-size businesses using their Macs to manage user credentials and permissions. The panes for Server's various services are where you'll spend the vast majority of your time in OS X Server, and we'll be going through each service one by one to explain their particular uses and features.

The only universal change to all Service panes is the addition of a new Access section that gives you more granular status messages about what the service is doing at a particular point in time, along with a link to an OS X Server help file with more information for each service. Most of the time this message will just tell you whether the service is on or off, but again, the name of the game is user-friendliness. This information will mostly be redundant or unnecessary for the power user, but Apple is working to make Server easier to learn for people new to the software.

Finally, there's now a separate section in Server.app for "Advanced" services, including DHCP, DNS, FTP, NetInstall, Open Directory, Software Update, and Xsan. These services are all hidden by default in the View menu (again, one assumes, to keep newbies from stumbling onto them), but clicking any of them will cause all of them to show up in Server.app as they normally would in Mountain Lion. We'll be going through all of them to talk about what they do, but unlike some of the non-advanced services, there are very few changes between the Mavericks and Mountain Lion versions.