14 DAY TRIAL // Apple this week seeded new Client and Server betas of OS X Mavericks, the company’s upcoming desktop OS revision scheduled for debut this fall. This report takes a look at the changes and known issues of OS X Server Preview Build 13S357e (Beta 7).
According to people familiar with the software, OS X Server Preview must be installed on a computer running OS X Mavericks.
Testers running Snow Leopard Sever (v.10.6.8), Lion Server (v.10.7.5), or OS X v10.8.3/v10.8.4 can migrate to OS X Server Preview without a problem.
Notable additions in OS X Server Preview include support for Xcode Server, described as “a new continuous integration service for teams using Xcode 5.”
The industry standard SMB2 file sharing protocol is now supported, and Caching Server 2 is used to speed up the download and delivery of software and caching of files for iOS 7 hardware.
Future users of OS X 10.9 Server will be able to employ Profile Manager for managing OS X Mavericks and iOS 7 (complete with software distribution) and Time Machine quotas in order to limit the amount of storage available to each backup.
In the latest seed (13S357e), Apple reportedly mentions a few known issues which currently prevent the software from reaching Final status.
According to one developer who is familiar with the seed notes, “Database restores from Time Machine during migration may not be reliable in this seed.”
Affected services include those that rely on PostgreSQL, such as Calendar, Contacts, Wiki, Xcode, and Profile Manager.
To upgrade or migrate Xcode Service, users will need to have the previous seed of OS X Server Preview installed (Build 13S341g).
Also noteworthy, the Server app may launch with more than one window, with Apple instructing developers to close any extra windows that open and carry on with their work normally.
Dragging Server.app to the Trash may or may not prompt a warning dialog explaining that services have been stopped, so that’s also a bug in need of fixing.
Developers must remember to enable device management prior to starting the Profile Management service in this seed, while changing a Shared Calendar from Read/Write to ReadOnly may require a relaunch of the Calendar app, to see any changes.