Mac/Windows Networking NAS, X Server, Win 2008 ? Advise please

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Hi All,

 

My Centre has just had donated 16 late 2006 Imacs running OSX 10.6 also a Power PC X server running 10.4 (Tiger). All of the imacs have be configured with Boot Camp running Windows 7.

These macs are going to replace our old HP Win7 machines.

We have a year old Xeon server with win 2008.

We also have a droboshare NAS with 1Tb space and a LaCie Network space MAS with 1TB hd space. The drobo is currently used for backups

 

The macs will get used in both mac and windows modes on a regular basis. By different children every week. Currently the students log in with just one mandatory profile "Student" their home directory is mapped to a fileshare on the win2k8 server called "public"

 

I can see the macs being booted a lot into OSX for image work. While windows will be used for datalogging and some mapping software we use.Or it will be a case of the kids and staff using which ever mode they feel most comfortable with.

At the end of the week when a school leaves us I would like to simply go to public find all of their work in the same folder regardless of wether they have used a mac then burn a dvd for them and wipe public clean ready for the next group.

 

I am trying to work out the best way to sort the filesharing. Macs are a new challenge for me and I havent got at all to grips with permissions or sorting out security. From what I have heard MAC security on a network can be a pain so I was trying to avoid allowing them access from OSX to the windows network.

 

What would you do in this situation ?

 

I am thinking this. Use one of the NAS boxes for the Public folder assuming this can be read a written to by both PC and MAC. Using the Xserver for OSX logins and the win2k8 server for windows logins. and thats it !!

 

Any help will be gratefully received :-)

 

Cheers

 

John