10.4 Tiger Server to Ship April 29

Apple Computer announced Tuesday, it will begin shipping Mac OS X Server 10.4 "Tiger" on Friday, April 29 at US$499 for a 10-client license.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Server has more than 200 new features including native support for 64-bit applications, access control lists (ACLs), portable home directories and all-new services like iChat Server, Weblog Server and Software Update Server. It also includes a Gateway Setup Assistant that lets small operations configure a secure network and Xgrid software that helps scientists and researchers configure superpowered computational clusters.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Server will retail for $499 for a 10-client license and $999 for an unlimited client license.

Mac OS X Server v10.4 delivers 64-bit memory addressing and support for 32-bit applications. 64-bit memory addressing lets users processes applications that require more than 4 gigabytes of memory. For easy portability from other 64-bit UNIX-based systems, Mac OS X Server v10.4 supports the LP64 data model.

Weblog Server allows non-technical individuals to publish and syndicate content using their existing web browsers. It supports calendar-based navigation, and user/group blogs as well as HTML, RSS, RSS2, RDF or ATOM protocols. Weblog Server can integrate with Open Directory, LDAP and access control lists for authentication and comes with several Apple-designed blog themes.

The new server OS includes a new iChat Server designed for organizations that need to keep internal communication private. iChat Server integrates within an organizationis existing directory services, uses SSL/TSL encryption to ensure privacy, works with Appleis iChat conferencing software in Tiger and is compatible with open-source Jabber clients available on Windows, Linux and popular PDAs.

Both Tiger and Tiger Server include Xgrid, Appleis solution for distributed computing. Xgrid turns an ad hoc group of Macs into a virtual supercomputer by streamlining the process of assembling nodes, submitting jobs, and retrieving results. With Xgrid, scientists, animators and digital content creators can easily run a single job across multiple computers at once, dramatically improving performance and responsiveness.

Additional new features of OS X Tiger Server include:

  • Support for Access Control Lists and native file permissions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 Active Directory environments that provide a more flexible permissions model to give administrators better control over files, folders and network services in mixed platform environments.

  • Adaptive Junk Mail Filtering with virus detection that protects all clients connected to the mail server from viruses and unwanted junk email.

  • Software Update Server saves on network costs and avoids bandwidth bottlenecks by letting system administrators host their own proxy/cache server to control the availability of Appleis software updates.

  • Ethernet Link Aggregation and Network Interface Failover that support the IEEE 802.3ad standard to increase potential I/O performance and eliminate single points of failure by allowing multiple network interfaces to appear as a single interface.

  • Gateway Setup Assistant helps companies with little or new I.T. support set up network services, including DHCP, NAT, DNS, port routing, firewall and VPN services.