Chapter 1. Planning and Installation

1. Planning and Installation

One of the biggest decisions you're likely to make about Mac OS X Server 10.4 is how to use it to best serve the needs of your particular environment. Servers generally hold and distribute the crux of the information that flows throughout an organization. How many client machines will there be? What platforms must you support: Mac OS X? Windows? Linux? What services will you run? On what type of machine will you install Mac OS X Server? If you use Xserve (Apple's rack-mountable server), will you be adding a hardware RAID card? How about Fibre Channel and an Xserve RAID? Will you be adding two or three servers to your mix? How should you divide the workload? Will this be an upgrade instead of a new install? What about DNS? Who's the domain admin?

These questions and others are part of proper planning before you install Mac OS X Server. Knowing exactly what your requirements are will assist you in making the correct decisions. Once the planning is complete, it's time to decide how to partition your disks, if necessary, and then format them using the style of your choice. After the formatting is finished, you can install the server software.

Installing Mac OS X Server 10.4 is easyalmost too easy. You'd think that a server system this powerful would require all day to install. But as long as you meet Apple's hardware requirements, the installation should take place without a hitch in about 30 minutes, depending on the hardware configuration. You'll need to decide where to install Mac OS X Server and whether to install it onsite or from a remote location. Apple's Xserve mounts in a rack and doesn't contain a video card (so you can't connect a monitor to it, although you can purchase one separately), thus making remote installation, configuration, and management a necessity. Another option for the Xserve is an internal RAID card, allowing you to configure hardware RAID with your Xserve. You can also attach a separate RAID system to the Xserve. Apple's foray into the RAID array is called Xserve RAID, a hardware RAID array system that can be used with Apple's Xserve and other platforms as well. Regardless of the hardware, you'll need a few things prior to installation.