Shawn Wallace at O’Reilly was a huge help in guiding me through the O’Reilly way of publishing. He was also instrumental in defining the tone of the book and helped along the way (especially with all those screen shots we were able to dump). Marsee Henon has also been a huge help over the years with various user groups that I’m connected with and keeping me supplied with a flow of O’Reilly books that helped me learn how to do much of the open source side of the Mac Server. And a special thanks goes out to Brian Jepson for helping get this thing kicked off! Thanks also to the more than 100 O’Reilly authors whose animal books sit on my shelves at home. The home decorating is so much easier with that rainbow of book jackets!

The Mac system administration community is by far the best IT community in the world. I stand on their shoulders. No single person could learn how to manage all the components of a Mac OS X Server (especially from the command line) on their own without at least some assistance from the community. From Macworld (now MacIT) to MacTech to MacSysAdmin, there are hundreds of talented engineers and technical writers who have shaped our community into one that embraces an open transfer of knowledge and helping others. I am lucky to count you all among my friends and look forward to many more years on Twitter, hanging out at camps and at Dave’s.

Big thanks to Arek Dreyer and Ben Greisler for their continued work and support of the Apple Pro Training Series, as well as all the people who contributed to Server Essentials and provided guidance, in whatever form, to the community.

Also I’d like to thank the good people at Apple. The products that Apple makes are why my career (and this book) is possible. The quality with which Lion Server has been crafted is a testament to all that Apple stands for. Those at Apple Training, Apple Enterprise, and Apple Education: thanks for being the conduit for the Mac admin community, for listening to all the good and bad things we have to say, and for being our voice within Apple.

Finally, this book is dedicated to my wife and daughter. It is time taken from you that allows me to keep writing these books. Thanks for the love and encouragement.