Couple of early answers/observations . . . The developer preview offers you an option at installation to install the server tools . . .if you do then the resulting install looks similar to a Snow Leopard server installation . . .without them it looks like a normal client install (albeit with the Lion UI differences for both).
Several of the Mac literati folks have surmised that this will likely continue to be the case even after official release. The developer preview is delivered as an installer from the App Store and not as a DVD image like it was before . . .again, the surmise is that this will continue to release. A secondary question is whether DVDs will be available at all or if Lion will only be distributed electronically. I find it hard to accept that this will be the case as some folks don't have broadband or may have computers or networks with no internet connectivity. Another question is how to install on more than one computer . . .the developer preview can be copied to another computer but (early reports . . .I haven't actually tried this yet) are that you must use the same MobileMe userid/password on both computers. This would obviously prevent buying/downloading the family pack version and installing it on multiple computers since they have different MobileMe ids . . .perhaps the release will include the ability to burn a stand alone installer DVD. My guess is that both DVD and electronic download will be available . . .and I would not be surprised to see the DVD version replaced by a USB stick instead. All hardware that will take Lion will boot from a USB stick . . .installation is much faster than from a DVD . . .and this lends itself easily to a future where the DVD mechanism itself is an optional component. Although I have no inside knowledge . . .I foresee the MacBook Pro becoming much more Air like in it's next architecture redesign . . .thinner and lighter but still maintaining the high end performance of the current models. With the addition of the new Thunderbolt port . . .the ability to (with an adapter) plug a monitor, Firewire drive, or Thunderbolt drive into a single port and to daisy chain them together would make it easy to make the MBP thinner/lighter but still maintain the ports that one might need. I really like the Air from a size/weight perspective . . .but if I was a professional or did a lot of video stuff the USB only port capability would be limiting. Again, no inside info . . .but it's a pretty safe bet that the next Air release will upgrade to faster chips, have more drive space, and have Thunderbolt to help solve the I/O port problem. As to the NC data center . . .with the demise of the XServe . . .who knows what they're running it on. One one hand . . .I could easily see them using commodity PC hardware and a slightly customized version of Lion Server (or Snow Leopard Server) with some additional drivers and code to make it run on non Apple produced hardware. That would require a "non standard" version of MacOS . . .but lets them stay in the camp of eating their own dog food. On the other hand . . .without a robust hardware solution that will run standard MacOS out of the box . . .I could see them going with Red Hat or something like that as well since it will run on any hardware they throw at it. The latter would cause them a PR hit when the word got out . . .but only Apple knows how much of a hit they think that would be and whether they want to take it or not. My guess is that since it's relatively simple to install MacOS on PC hardware as a Hackintosh that's the way they'll go. Intel server hardware is pretty standard these days and they wouldn't need to maintain all that many drivers to use it. Add in some fiber channel SAN storage and while it would be a non standard MacOS . . .it's almost standard. Virtualized servers . . .I can easily see them doing that as well with VMWare ESX underneath. I've wondered about the tuning myself . . .there are some advantages to Server . . .but would installing Server significantly affect performance if you mainly used the particular machine as a client? I've asked the same question before on several lists and never gotten a decent answer. My guess is that it wouldn't really matter for the majority of users since most of us aren't taxing our computers anyway. On Feb 25, 2011, at 1:28 AM, Ashley Aitken wrote: > I wonder what Apple is going to run Lion Server on at their NC data server? > > Or I wonder if they are actually going to use Mac OS X Server? Would they > install X-serves and OS X Server if they knew the X-serves where being phased > out? > > If they do run Lion Server and virtualise it, I hope they will allow us to do > so as well. Not sure how all this works out if Lion and Lion Server are > becoming one? > > I thought Mac OS X Server is tuned differently from the client. If they are > both integrated into one OS, how does the tuning work? ----------------------------------------------- There are only three kinds of stress; your basic nuclear stress, cooking stress, and A$$hole stress. The key to their relationship is Jello. neil _______________________________________________ MacOSX-admin mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-admin
