It’s not just the product itself that has lost some luster, but the entire category of SMB office and business servers, which has been undergoing a gradual change in recent years. Since then, macOS Server has hardly been a prominent part of Apple’s product lineup.

Apple left the server hardware space back in 2010 when Steve Jobs announced the company was ending its line of Xserve rackmount servers, which were introduced in May, 2002.

These alternative services are all FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software).Īs difficult as this could be for organizations that use macOS server, this is not unexpected. The note lists the services that will be removed in a future release of macOS Server, including calendar and contact support, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Domain Name Services (DNS), mail, instant messages, virtual private networking (VPN), NetInstall, Web server, and the Wiki.Īpple assures users who have already configured any of the listed services that they will be able to use them in the spring 2018 macOS Server update, but the statement ends with links to a number of alternative services, including hosted services that macOS Server users should consider as viable replacements to the features it is removing. A number of services will be deprecated, and will be hidden on new installations of an update to macOS Server coming in spring 2018. As a result, some changes are coming in how Server works.

MacOS Server is changing to focus more on management of computers, devices, and storage on your network. Businesses and organizations that rely on macOS server for essential office and data services are facing some decisions about the future of their IT services.Īpple recently announced that it is deprecating a significant portion of essential network services in macOS Server as they described in a support statement posted on April 24, 2018, “ Prepare for changes to macOS Server.” Apple’s note includes:

Best home apple server os