Once you’re ready, go ahead and plug in the cat5 cable from your machine to the router and go through the installation process. This should take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes, depending on your hardware.

When the installer is finished, you’ll be greeted with a few options on setting up your server. Once you set up the basics like your admin account, time zones, etc., you can opt to not use the rest of the wizard like the Gateway Assistant by skipping through it. Just make sure you select “stand alone server” when asked how the server will be used.

By default, most services will be turned off. Since your computer is now connected to your LAN (Local Area Network), the newly minted server will need an IP address. This is done automatically if you have DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) running, but if you don’t, you’ll have to manually assign one. You should already be familiar with this process if you have a network in place with multiple computers.

For me, I let the DHCP server of my router assign an IP, and later chose the manual option in network preference using the same IP. You should now test your connection by accessing the internet through your browser.

Here’s a screenshot of my Network setting in System Preferences.

You’ll need to make sure that your IP remains static within your LAN so that you can forward traffic to your server.

• In your router setting, you’ll need to assign your server’s IP address to be static, even though you may be running DHCP for the rest of your computers and devices connected to the router.

• You may also need to specify your MAC (Media Access Control) address specific to your machine as well as your IP, which can be found in your Network preference under Ethernet.

Also, note the IP address 192.168.1.100 in the Network Preference screen above. I’ll be using this IP for the duration of this tutorial to refer to my OS X Server. You’ll have to supply your own IP accordingly.

Where to keep the Tiger

Next, you’ll need to decide where on the LAN that the server will reside. If you want to use services like web and mail, you may want to place your server on the network known as the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone).

In your router admin (most likely accessed through client program or a web browser), find the option for DMZ and point it to your OS X Server with the IP address assigned to your machine. Placing the server in the DMZ will make it easily accessible to Internet traffic like web (http), ftp, and email (smtp) since the server will exist between your private LAN and the internet. Just be careful in safeguarding sensitive information that can potentially be stolen.

You’ll have to decide what kind of information is appropriate to have on the server as well as services that will be enabled. OS X Server ships with a software based firewall, but you may want to consider a more robust hardware solution.

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