One of the best things about having a server is being able to manage the devices you have in your network from a centralized location. IT professionals have had the ability to do this for years but now with Lion Server, home users can now do the same thing with Profile Manager. Profile Manager allows you to manage all of your Apple computer, laptops, and iOS devices. Using profiles you can push changes to all devices at once, remotely wipe or reset devices, change passwords, and allow or restrict certain things.

In this tutorial, I cover how to set up Profile Manager. In the set up, Lion Server makes sure you have an Open Directory set up and your SSL Certificate in place (required for running Profile Manager). Open Directory allows you to manage global accounts and allows remote access as opposed to a local network directory which only allows local accounts. I am doing this tutorial early because Profile Manager sets up al the services required to run it without having to start each service separately. In a future screencast I will cover the web interface that is used to manage your devices and groups.

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Tags: Tutorials, Mac OSX, Server, Apple, Screencast