With the release of Snow Leopard Server, Apple is on track to gain ground in a market Microsoft dominates with its Windows Small Business Server 2003 (SBS). This Mac OS X-based server software is friendlier than ever. Apple has reduced access to the underlying Unix so you only see it if you want to use the command line. Aside from some minor upgrades, there are advancements that will attract small businesses, especially shops running Mac OS X clients. Unfortunately, not everything worked out well in testing, including the performance of some tools and protocols.

Price for Snow Leopard is $499 for an unlimited number of client licenses; with the hardware loaner we tested came to a total of $2,998 total. The good news is that Snow Leopard Server can run on different hardware. The minimum requirements are more flexible than its predecessors and you can find them here.

Apple asked me to make some tweaks to improve performance and to verify the server's configuration. The changes, however, were challenges beyond the scope of this review (such as setting up a separate DNS server; see below).

Installation and Setup
For those comfortable with Linux, Snow Leopard Server might be easy to maneuver at the command line, but the GUI is what always matters with a Macintosh. Services and their parameters in this server OS are simplified (maybe over-simplified) in the Server Preferences.