Advantages of getting OSX server

[BKGarry]

It was suggested to me the other day to get an OS X server to control our macs and give better intergration with Active Directory

The main thing is so our macs have a central shared storage for music work

but i am not quite sure what the extra goodies are in terms of active directory integration to the rest of our windows network.

Can anyone explain the AD side of things for the OS X server, and also how much control it gives you over the students using the macs with their AD accounts

Gaz

[Grommit]

Yea we did that..... Hate Mac's gave the Department their own Server to get them out of my hair..

[BKGarry]

no the server is for us

[srochford]

You don't need an OSX server in order to give storage to Macs. Just join the Mac to the AD domain and then when a user logs on they'll get mapped to their home drive.

Alternatively, you can just do "connect to server" and enter the address of the home directory on your Windows server and you get to use storage there - it's pretty straightforward.

[kingswood]

It was suggested to me the other day to get an OS X server to control our macs and give better intergration with Active Directory

The main thing is so our macs have a central shared storage for music work

but i am not quite sure what the extra goodies are in terms of active directory integration to the rest of our windows network.

Can anyone explain the AD side of things for the OS X server, and also how much control it gives you over the students using the macs with their AD accounts

Gaz

Hi.

I agree that you don't *need* an OS X Server of any kind to have centralised storage. Your Macs will pretty much take their orders from an AD server if that's all you can afford, and even this solution will give you authentication and mounting of user home directories (normally stored on a Windows server).

Where an OS X Server *will* benefit you (and the server could be OS X Server on a Mac Mini quite happily for this job) is in the management of the Macs. Basically, what you get when integrating OS X Server with an existing AD network is integrated authentication, storage, and managed settings for Macs (think group policies for Macs and you will be on the right track here). The advantage then should be obvious. Don't want students touching network settings or advanced preferences on the Macs? You can either suffer the tedious task of configuring each by hand or use a server from which to command your will onto the Macs centrally (in a god-like way

So- take one Mac Mini (depending on the size of your Mac network it has to be said), one copy of OS X Leopard Server and what you have is a great way to manage your Macs (as well as image them, run a web server/wiki/blog/podcast server etc etc).

You can find out more here:

Apple - IT Pro

Good luck!

Paul

[GrumbleDook]

Our server is still a Mac Mini ... does what we need.

[gaz350]

yup any mac will do.
our OD Master is on a dual 1ghz G4 with 1GB of ram which manages 200+ mac clients

[BKGarry]

Nice on to 200 clients, we are looking at our present 20 clients plus a potential to expand by another 5 for Video Casting, Podcasting and photos blah blah blah.

We are looking at getting a macPro (with 1 processor not 2) as we want to have a nice big hunk of storage just for the macs and have the potential to expand it if we need to before BSF in 2 years time.

Gaz