How to turn macOS Sierra 10.12 into a light and fast Server environment?

Question

I upgraded my old OS X Lion Server to macOS Sierra. It's been some releases since OS X doesn't ship in a "Server" edition and all you can do is buying the Server.app from the App Store, but the reality is it brings a lot of services that I don't need (like wiki, calendar, etc).

Looking at launchctl list and Activity Monitor I notice a lot of useless running services like Siri, the Bluetooth keyboard searcher, Spotlight, etc.

The main usage for this machine is development. It runs SSH, Apache, PHP, R, PostgreSQL, AFP, SMB and this kind of stuff.

Basically I don't need services related to Bluetooth, Wireless, User-Experience (Siri, animations, automatic updates), network printing, VPN, Wiki, Calendar, cache server, mail server, rubrica, iTunes and Spotlight, but probably there are many other services that I ignore.

I've done some adjustments yet, but was wondering if someone knows what services I can safely disable and what are some tricks to turn Sierra into a light and fast Server environment?

Answer 1

Here is a script that turns off most of the nonsense; https://gist.github.com/pwnsdx/d87b034c4c0210b988040ad2f85a68d3

You have to disable SIP, run it (disable.sh), then re-enable SIP again; (cannot provide link as need 10 reputation points!)

I run this disable.sh script on my desktop and servers, and also add disks to Spotlight, Privacy. Also make sure iCloud is disabled on the server.

If you want to improve networking performance also read; https://rolande.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/performance-tuning-the-network-stack-on-mac-os-x-part-2

It is old, but explains the theory well. Use with caution; change one thing at a time, test, change another, test, etc (if something does not make sense, don't change it).. I enable reno "net.inet.tcp.use_newreno=1" instead of rfc1323 as reno is newer.

And for what its worth, enable OSX "performance mode"; (cannot provide link as need 10 reputation points!)