New OS creating Macintosh converts

Unix-based Mac OS X 10.2 offers network executives more familiar administrative tools.

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."

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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.

Bratt has a mixed network with Linux and Windows NT servers and one Apple Xserve server, and an assortment of 900 client workstations that he backs up with Veritas Software's NetBackup. More than 100 of his workstations are Macs. Bratt's IT staff also uses an inexpensive shareware product from Famatech, called Remote Administrator, to remotely manage and install software on the company's Windows, Macintosh and Linux workstations. Remote Administrator starts at $35.

"Mac OS X has all the communications and network/systems management tools BSD Unix has, so it can integrate quite tightly into a TCP/IP network," says Dan Kuznetsky, research director for IDC.

Another user says that remotely managing Mac servers and workstations is much easier now that he has upgraded his Macintosh workstations to Mac OS X from OS 9.