Chapter 13 of “Take Control of OS X Server” Now Available
We’re known for beating the backup drum, both in TidBITS and in a variety of Take Control books, so hopefully it won’t be a surprise that this week’s chapter of Charles Edge’s streamed “Take Control of OS X Server” focuses on backup. In Chapter 13, “Backup,” Charles looks briefly at what’s involved with backing up your server (nothing unusual, though there’s a special tool for backing up just your settings) before moving on to explain how to turn on OS X Server’s Time Machine service.
That’s right, when you’re running OS X Server, you can enable its Time Machine service, point it at a large storage device, and instruct all your users to back up to your server over the network. It’s a great way to centralize network backup and make sure that users can’t forget to back up by failing to connect an external hard drive.
The basic configuration isn’t hard, but Charles offers some advice about how to estimate how much storage to devote to backups, and what to do if you run out of space on your backup destination.
This is the last chapter we had promised back when we started, but we decided that we needed one more chapter about maintaining OS X Server once you’ve set it up. In the next and final chapter, Charles will be offering a number of tips on this topic, along with suggestions for other resources that offer useful information about running OS X Server. So, if you have specific questions about maintenance, let us know and we’ll try to make sure they’re covered in this upcoming chapter.
We encourage everyone to read the first two chapters of “Take Control of OS X Server” to see where the book is going — all subsequent chapters are available only to TidBITS members for now. If you have already joined the TidBITS membership program, log in to the TidBITS site using the email address from which you joined. The full ebook of “Take Control of OS X Server” will be available for purchase by everyone in PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket (Kindle) formats once it’s complete.
Published chapters include:
- Chapter 1: “Introducing OS X Server”
- Chapter 2: “Choosing Server Hardware”
-
Chapter 3: “Preparation and Installation”
-
Chapter 4: “Directory Services”
-
Chapter 5: “DNS Service”
-
Chapter 6: “File Sharing”
-
Chapter 7: “Collaboration Services”
-
Chapter 8: “Mail Services”
-
Chapter 9: “Mobile Device Management”
-
Chapter 10: “Web Services”
-
Chapter 11: “Wiki Services”
-
Chapter 12: “Software Updates”
Publishing this book in its entirety for TidBITS members as it’s being written is just one of the ways we thank TidBITS members for their support. We hope it encourages those of you who have been reading TidBITS for free for years to help us continue to bring you more of the professionally written and edited articles you’ve become accustomed to each week. For more details on what the membership program means to us, see “Support TidBITS in 2014 via the TidBITS Membership Program” (9 December 2013).
Thanks for this great series - just reading these summary emails has shown me there is enough benefit to pony the $20 or so buy OS X Server and implement various services at home. I look forward to reading all the chapters in detail in the near future.