OS X Server? Why the Hell Not?

I’ve spent the last fifteen years as an IT professional. I was an IT manager for a Fortune 500 company for nine years and an independent consultant for the past six. I’ve spent too many late nights up to my ass in Windows, Novell and Linux server problems of every flavor to ever want a server in my home to care for, right? Well, no.

You see, that was my attitude a year ago. I still had a very bad taste in my mouth resulting from some bad experiences dealing with mission-critical servers while under pressure to make things right for a couple hundred users whose files, email, profiles, etc. all resided on said boxes. If the servers weren’t working properly, no one was working properly. I just got a shudder thinking about it.

Now, the word “server” has an entirely different connotation. Yes, I’m now working from home and the only users I have to deal with are my wife and daughter, so why would I need a server? It really comes down to only one thing, convenience. When I thought about it, I realized my home probably needs a robust network as much as most small businesses I deal with. In our household there are 3 Macs, 2 Windows and 1 Linux computer, 3 iPhones, 2 iPads, an iPod Touch and a Nexus 7 Android tablet. Out of 13 devices, 9 of them are made by Apple.

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Cord-cutting is Difficult

My beautiful wife and I recently retired and bought a wonderful home in Sedona, AZ. We plan to move there this summer, but in the meantime we’ve been going back and forth as much as possible. There’s lots of decisions to be made as we plan our move. Which furniture do we pay to move and what do we buy new? Which cars do we keep? Do we really need a Jeep to take advantage of the hundreds of miles of trails surrounding our new home? Do we move our DirecTV subscription or try cable-cutting?

The first trip to our new home was all about getting things set up. Power, natural gas, water, sewer, garbage pick-up and the like. There was no doubt about needing an Internet connection, so I studied the options and talked to existing customers about their service experience. I settled on the local cable company, Suddenlink. They offered the fastest and most affordable service. I purchased their small business package with 100 Mb down and 20 Mb up service for ~$60/month. I just happen to be a Suddenlink customer at our current residence and I was pleased that our new home connection is over three times faster for the same money. I arranged for them to install our new service the second day after we arrived. Everything went smoothly. I chose the high-speed Internet-only option for now since we’ll only be there one week per month until we move. I took along one of my 3^rd generation TVs and hooked it up to a 27” monitor so we’d at least have something to watch while we’re there in the interim.

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