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I have read where Apple plans to stop making OSX server. What does this mean for LDAP services? Is it possible to install LDAP on a regular mac running High Sierra? Could my own iMac be the LDAP server for my organization in other words?

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macOS Server is keeping LDAP with no published plans for it to be removed. See:

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To answer the question(s)

Is it possible to install LDAP on a regular mac running High Sierra?

and

Could my own iMac be the LDAP server for my organization in other words?

Yes on both counts, though I wouldn't put LDAP server on a production workstation (if you turn off your iMac, LDAP goes down for everyone) You could put it on a Mac mini (two would be better) and let it run as server 24/7.

LDAP is just a service much like SSH, Apache, or DHCP. You don't need a server version of an OS to run a server instance.

OpenLDAP is available via Homebrew and you can run this on your plain macOS machine.

That said (non-Apple solution follows) I probably wouldn't run LDAP on a Mac - it's just too expensive (hardware wise). I would get two cheap PCs, load up FreeBSD (what Mac is based on) and fire up OpenLDAP on each.

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  • This is happy news. My thought was to get two mac mini's (we have a few at hand already) and have them run High Sierra (not server) and have them run LDAP in kind of a load balanced or at least master/slave kind of way. Can you recommend any articles on setting them up?
    – zeeple
    Feb 13, 2018 at 18:27
  • The best one I know of is from the FreeBSD manual It should follow the setup for Mac, but I personally haven't tested it. At the very minimum, it's a good primer
    – Allan
    Feb 13, 2018 at 18:29

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