Edit, as this post still gathers the occasional vote: All of the points below are now irrelevant. With no real Mac Server hardware and the Server software being just a cheap add-on to the client OS X with dramatically limited usability and functionality, newer OS X server versions (10.7+) can’t be reasonably used beyond small workgroups, preferentially in Mac-only shops.
I was about to write an endless essay about the pro’s and con’s, but let’s make it short instead.
- MacOS Server offers major advantages if you use Mac clients in you network. It allows for an extremely easy creation of features comparable to Win group policies for Mac clients, much more easy then to do the same for Win clients on a Windows server.
- Naturally, it also has full support for all the small Mac client specifics like resource forks, finder attributes and stuff like that which all have the potential to become a real PITA if you use a Win or Linux server instead. Telling your users you don’t support these might be possible, but it also might break some applications.
- In my experience, general administration is much more easy than on any Linux system and also than on Windows, at least for smallish groups. Scaling out is another thing, but this requires detailed knowledge on any platform. At least with simple requirements, the promise of not needing a pro admin is much more realistic for a Mac only shop than for any other platform.
- Even if you plan to run a Win clients only or mixed Win/Mac environment with a Linux server and Samba in a 10 to 20 user environment without a pro admin, I would recommend using MacoS Server in many cases, as it shields all those implicit complexities behind an really easy to use GUI.
- While this is not the subject of the question, even being more expensive than Windows clients for the initial purchase, Macs have a much lower TCO in many environments, if users would stop thinking in brands and reputations and instead start to learn what the real differences and pros/cons are, beyond the logo and the more or less fancy GUIs.
That said, MacOS Server has some drawbacks, of course.
- First, while certainly possible, it is not really cut out to scale to the enterprise, and doing so will require intimate knowledge of the system.
- Also, while Apple used many standard open source software packages to create the system, they often decided to do things a little bit differently than others, sometimes for no apparent reason. This might require working around some issues (not storing the password in the LDAP database being a prime example).
- If you know your way around Linux, have more Win/Linux than Mac clients and can live with some restrictions on the Mac side, a Linux server might indeed be cheaper.
- Integrating MacOS Server into a larger environment can sometimes be quite difficult.
- Often, software/hardware packages are not certified for MacOS, leaving you without support if needed. I currently experience this while planning a SAN.
All in all, I can only recommend to really learn what the different architectures offer and what your requirements are and make a decision based on that. A boss who just wants to add a few Macs to the network for no other reason that to be hip and have a Mac, without thinking about the consequences is the same kind of idiot than the admin who shuns everything Apple because “Apple is for fanboys only”, without knowing anything about the platform.