• Mac OS X Server

    Configure The Mail Service in OS X Server 5

    Mail is one of the hardest services to manage. Actually, mail is pretty simple in and of itself: there’s protocols people use to access their mail (such as IMAP and POP), protocols used to communicate between mail servers and send mail (SMTP, SMTPS) and then there’s a database of mail and user information. In OS X Server 5 for El Capitan and Yosemite, all of these are represented by a single ON button, so it really couldn’t be easier. But then there’s the ecoysystem and the evil spammers. As a systems administrator of a large number of mail servers, I firmly believe that there is a special kind of hell where…

  • On the Road

    A Glympse Into Where You’re At

    When you’re flying, you might find that you’d like to let someone know here and there where you’re at. For example, someone who’s supposed to pick you up at the airport. Or someone who you’re supposed to visit when you arrive at your destination. So there’s a pretty cool new tool called Glympse. Using Glimpse, you can send an invite to someone you’d like to see your travel times; these are known as glympses. Once you send an invite, your friends can click the link and see down to the minute stats of when you’ll be at your destination. And they can keep the screen open for as long as they wish.

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Microsoft Exchange Server

    Configure The OS X Yosemite Server Mail Service

    Mail is one of the hardest services to manage. Actually, mail is pretty simple in and of itself: there’s protocols people use to access their mail (such as IMAP and POP), protocols used to communicate between mail servers and send mail (SMTP, SMTPS) and then there’s a database of mail and user information. In Mavericks Server, all of these are represented by a single ON button, so it really couldn’t be easier. But then there’s the ecoysystem and the evil spammers. As a systems administrator of a large number of mail servers, I firmly believe that there is a special kind of hell where only spam is served at every…

  • Mac OS X,  VMware,  Xsan

    Scripting Compellent

    As with EMC, Compellent allows you to manage servers, volumes, server folders, volume folders, views, and of course mappings programatically. This provides the automation minded engineer with a full-on suite for managing their Compellent-based SAN. All of this is made possible using CompCU.jar. I keep a scripts folder and keep the jar file there, which can initially be downloaded from the Compellent site. Unlike a traditional shell script the scripts are to be placed into a text file and replayed against the SAN. If you are using VMware or Xen then you can combine the automation in Compellent along with the automation available with the command line interface for those…