The new version of Apple's Mac server platform offers many new services to support workgroups at home or the office. The new software is an evolutionary revision of Snow Leopard Server, but is priced for everyone at $50. "Using OS X Lion Server" helps non-sysadmins set up and maintain services for sharing files, mail and calendars on their desktops, tablets, or mobile devices. The book covers new web, wiki, chat and podcasting server management tool, as well as tools for managing configurations of multiple OS installations across a network. The book concludes with advice for setting up a home media server. Apple has released 6 versions of their Mac server platform. The original Lion announcement said that the server components would be bundled with the OS and not marketed as a separate project. This changed in the Spring of 2011 and Apple announced the server package would be available separately for $50.
Major features include: File sharing between Mac, Windows, Linux and over the Internet iCal Server Wiki Server iChat Server Address Book Server SMTP, POP/IMAP, mailing lists, webmail server Server-side spam filtering and virus detection Podcasting tools and services Web server Directory services and authentication Profile manager for supporting multiple OS installations Networking and VPN services Distributed computing with Xgrid Automated backups and RAID Xsan