<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Nov 29, 2013, at 2:52 PM, Andre LaBranche wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><br><div><div>On Nov 29, 2013, at 5:15 AM, Scott Cherf <<a href="mailto:cherf@ambient-light.com">cherf@ambient-light.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">Bernard, I strongly suggest sticking with the Calendar Server you have and avoiding MacOS X Server at all expense. At the very least, take a look at some of the critical commentary available for the Server product. I tried that route myself when I became frustrated by some installation issues I was experiencing with CalanderServer and wasted several weeks. I would not recommend attempting to install the Apple Server product; in my experience it does not work at all.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Hi,</div><div><br></div><div>It might be useful to qualify this a little. While I don’t doubt your experience, I can’t help but feel like there’s an implied “… for my purposes” at the end of your last sentence. I can confirm that OS X Server and the Calendar & Contacts service therein does actually work for many purposes - but not all purposes :)</div><div><br></div><div>Based on my fair amount of sysadmin experience, I will assert that running a server ‘for real’ is going to involve some amount work. By ‘for real’, I mean:</div><div><ul><li>the service is actually used by real humans other than yourself, whose numbers may be increasing or decreasing, and whose usage patterns may change.</li><li>those humans use the service to create data which they care about. don’t lose, break, or leak this data.</li><li>the service needs to be up, always and forever, notwithstanding planned outages for things like upgrades / migrations / end-of-life.</li></ul></div><div>I’m not aware of any vendor’s non-hosted solution for any service fitting these criteria that doesn’t require the operator to wear a sysadmin hat, at least sometimes. If any of those criteria don’t fully apply, it gets much, much easier. I assume they must all fully apply.</div><div><br></div><div>That’s all rather vague, so here are some specific questions I think about when I’m evaluating options for deploying any solution that is at least partially vendor-supplied:</div><div><ul><li>What’s the startup cost in time and money? How much needs to be built / configured versus acquired ready-to-use?</li><li>What are the different high-level components of the service - the moving parts? This is basically the list of things that can break.</li><li>Where is the demarcation line between things the operator is responsible for fixing and things the vendor is responsible for fixing? What’s the expected level of service for vendor fixes?</li><li>Who owns the responsibility for monitoring, troubleshooting, maintenance, performance / scalability testing? For things the operator is responsible for, what tools are available?</li><li>With the answers to the above in-hand, how much operator knowledge is needed to achieve success in a worst / average / best-case scenario, without relying on luck? What are the means for sourcing that knowledge?</li><li>Do all involved parties understand and agree on all of these points?</li></ul></div><div>There are multiple continuums at play, and making a solid decision requires understanding the tradeoffs involved in each.</div><div><br></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>All good tuff Andre, and I expect for very large installations it may be more efficient to work through the installation and configuration issues I've experienced with MacOS X Server over the past 5 years. My experience is based on managing a small business network of 2 servers and 5 client machines running 10.6.8. I began experimenting with the Server product with 10.4 and successively installed and tested versions through 10.6. I have no practical experience using later operating systems. None of my experimental installations were successful and in every case I rolled back to the retail product.</div><div><br></div><div>My background is in IT and I began my career as a systems administrator using HP 1000 machines running both RTE (4 through 6) and BCS in a research lab environment (NASA's Gerard P. Kuiper Airborne Observatory). Since then I spent 12 years writing OS software for Tandem Computers, then took a position designing and implementing the software development environment for cisco Systems. I retired as Chair of cisco's Reliability, Availability and Serviceability Lab. I consider my IT background extensive.</div><div><br></div><div>That said, I would rather use open source tools like your Calendar Server without the additional management overhead of MacOS X Server in my environment. I find the lack of documentation and poor user interface to be a drawback, along with some severe shortcomings in basic product functionality. I can't recommend it, and I hope I've at least qualified myself to have an educated opinion on the subject.</div><div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>Scott.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><div><div>Just my two cents :)</div><div>-dre</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><br>Scott.<br><br>On Nov 8, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Bernhard Spinnler wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite"><br>On 07.11.2013, at 22:09, Olivier DUCROT <<a href="mailto:olivier.ducrot@easymac.fr">olivier.ducrot@easymac.fr</a>> wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Why don't you simply install Server 2.2 from AppStore. It's worth the price. $20 and one click install..<br></blockquote><br>Yes, that's certainly a good option. However, I thought, since I do not need any other parts of the server right now and the CalDAV/CardDAC server is probably similar or even identical, I try the open source solution. Thanks for the suggestion.<br><br>Cheers,<br><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Bernhard<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>calendarserver-users mailing list<br><a href="mailto:calendarserver-users@lists.macosforge.org">calendarserver-users@lists.macosforge.org</a><br><a href="https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/calendarserver-users">https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/calendarserver-users</a><br></blockquote><br>_______________________________________________<br>calendarserver-users mailing list<br><a href="mailto:calendarserver-users@lists.macosforge.org">calendarserver-users@lists.macosforge.org</a><br><a href="https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/calendarserver-users">https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/calendarserver-users</a><br></blockquote></div><br></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>