Is OSXS 10.4 right for us?

Gentleones,

I’ve been using MacOSXS 10.3 for a coupla’ years now and have not really tapped its power. I have an opportunity to upgrade to 10.4, but wonder if it’s going to be worth doing so in order to make bestest use of all that Tiger Server has to offer.

First, the situation: my wife has a small medical practice with three practitioners at two separate locations. Our basement is the data center for all three as it is the most connected with a cable modem (primary) and DSL (secondary, to be installed in a coupla’ weeks) for internet access. The two offices will have differing connections: one is a static IP on a cable modem, the other is a dynamic IP on DSL.

Each practitioner will have an iBook. Now, my wife is 100% Mac-clueful, and not a novice. The other two people aren’t so clueful and maintaining configuration control on their machines will be somewhat important. That is, I don’t want them installing updates willy-nilly, etc. The receptionists, nurse/techs, will (or already have) iMacs, minis, or one Dell (yuck–an artifact). Configuration control there is a must. These folks are likely to be the ones to download “FREE SCEENSAVORS!!!!!!” (sic… sic… sic…).

In my current server setup, all I really use it for is web hosting, backups (Retrospect), E-mail, a MySQL-driven database system, and internal DNS resolution. (External DNSs take care of requests for addresses in our domain.)

1: Can 10.4S nicely (graphically) deal with setting up resolving DNS queries for internal vs. external addresses?

2: Do the technologies of NetBoot, Network Install, and Network-based Home Directories work well over somewhat slow connections? (Somewhat-slow means here that the VPNs will be running over the “slow” 7.1Mbps/601kbps cable modem connection–yes, I’m serious: 8M/768K is the current offering in my area.)

3: While the permanently-sited Macs won’t be going anywhere, the iBooks certainly will go to the practioners’ houses. In light of that, do any of the technologies in (2) make sense?

4: Is there a Tiger Server book that covers these questions (and more!) that is really, really basic at first but then delves very deeply into the technologies of Tiger Server?

5: Does the Software Upgrade Server bit handle things like I’d be wanting to do, such as upgrading other non-Apple apps, for example? I can see that it obviously handles the Apple end of things, or does it require some of the technologies mentioned in (2) to make non-Apple upgrades work?

There are, certainly, some selling points: a private iChat server for interoffice (and secure) communications, integrated SpamAssassin (and ClamAV? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve installed these two guys…).

Listen, I know that I’m asking a lot of deep questions, and you can’t know how many hours of lost sleep I’ve suffered over these questions, along with the meaning of life (funny thing–I figured out the answer on that one: 42), where socks go in the laundry, and other things. Any time that you can give me on this one would be greatly appreciated.

Many, many thanks in advance,
Bill