Macintosh servers and workstations might no longer be the black sheeps of network and systems management.

The reason, IT executives say, is that a new version of Apple's Unix-based operating system - Macintosh OS X 10.2 - is giving them the long-sought-after tools to bring these machines into the management nuclear family.

"Macs and management. Have you ever heard the expression 'like herding cats'?" asks Shane Wilson, coordinator of network services at Centre College in Danville, Ky. "Macs have always been this way."

The advent of Mac OS X 10.2, however, is changing that attitude. Network managers who formerly managed Macs with proprietary software and hardware can now use some of the same software they used for their Intel- or RISC-based servers and workstations to manage Macs. Mac OS X for the first time really supports standards-based enterprise qualities such as security, protocols and tools, which make management easier.

Familiar tools

The Mac OS X (pronounced OS 10) supports many of the same applications and command-line tools that IT managers use to configure, install and manage Windows, Linux and Unix machines. That's possible because OS X, unlike OS 9, is built on FreeBSD, an open source operating system for Intel, Alpha and PowerPC-based servers that is based on BSD Unix, an implementation of Unix developed at the University of California, Berkeley.

"The deployment of Mac OS X is the primary reason for the sudden attraction of Macs at our organization," says David Bratt, technology architect for H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla. "The researchers with Unix workstations like it because it is basically FreeBSD with a [Windows-like graphical] interface. Now that we have the quasi-Unix look and feel with Mac OS X, we have several options for managing Macs."

The newest version of the Macintosh operating system is causing network executives to re-examine long-held assumptions.

"We are currently looking at our future and determining where Macs will fit and how we'll support them," Bratt says. He says Macs are being installed more often in Moffitt's research division, where they are used for computationally intense bioinformatic applications that are often written for Linux or Macintosh servers and workstations.