IPad – Differences between Snow Leopard Server and Desktop

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I have a friend who is wanting to get a Mac Mini to do iPad development. He says the server version is cheaper than the desktop version. I've only ever used the desktop version. Is there any reason not to get the server version? What are the main differences between Server and Desktop?

Best Answer

First off he's wrong on all levels.

The Desktop Version is $29, the Server Version is $500.
A standard Mac Mini is $700 base. Mac Mini Server is $1000 base.

Second, the distributions are pretty much identical. The difference is that the Server Version ships the server applications, tools, and processes. Postfix, Dovecot, Jabberd2, OpenLDAP, the entirety of the /Applications/Server directory, and some of the things in /Applications/Utilites like XSan management and the RAID Utility.

If he's looking to do development for iOS, getting the server version makes no sense. If he's looking to do development for Web Services, it's still easier and cheaper to run it on the Desktop version.

If he's looking to run a server, trivially, for mail services, chat and calendaring services, MORE than just web services (web services are trivially easy on the Desktop Version), then he should get a MacMini Server.

Use a Server for a Server for the features it provides, otherwise, use a standard version.

[edit]
We have two versions of XServes, and two Mac Mini Servers (classic style body), I'd be glad to answer any additional questions you or your friend has.

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IMac – Is Snow Leopard Server a good candidate for everyday use as a main OS

To answer your question, you can work perfectly under Server (given the above machine) in fact, if you disable some of the services, the OS X will be very similar to the regular version. On the other hand, you can always rely on Google docs and calendars, Remote Desktop and even OpenVPN if you really need an internal network.

I mean, configuring the above (even on OS X Server) carries a lot of overhead, backup planning and maintenance.

Focus on your "startup" and leave the unrelated tasks to others. Will having a server at your place (with all the electricity costs associated) make your start up better? earn money faster?

Anyway, that's a topic for "startups". The answer is yes, that computer is more than capable to serve as a server for all those tasks and much more.

How to run a nightly backup job on Snow Leopard Server via launchd

Several things come to mind:

Did you wait overnight for it to run? launchctl load won't make it run out of sequence -- if you want to make it run at some time other than 3:15 am, use sudo launchctl start dk.revealit.NightlyRSyncBackup after it's loaded.
Does the run-rsync script fire off any background processes, or does it do everything inline? 'Cause if the script exits and there are background processes still going, launchd thinks something has gone wrong and kills the background processes. If you don't want it to do this, add <key>AbandonProcessGroup</key><true/> to the .plist.
Does the script depend on PATH including any nonstandard directories (e.g. /opt/local/bin or something like that)?

One useful debugging technique is to add something like:

<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/var/root/NightlyRSyncBackup.out</string>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/var/root/NightlyRSyncBackup.err</string>

to the .plist and see what shows up in those files.

Best Answer

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