Setting up Tiger Server in the office

Hey all,

This is my first post on afp548 but most certainly not my last. I have been tasked to take a look at our current network at my company and getting it more secure and a directory service.

Currently we run a data center for dedicated / co-located and our shared hosting services. We have a subnet dedicated for office use. The problem with is that each workstation (18 macs running tiger, 2 running panther and 2 PCs running Windows) and network printer is on a public IP.

I would like to put these on a private VLAN (like 10.0.0.x) by routing the network through a Xserve G4 running 10.4 Server. At the same time I’d like to setup a central login so that users are still restricted to their workstations but have accessed to all the shared resources (we have two file servers, one administration and one with various programs) and I believe the Directory Services can allow this).

Now I know my way around OS X but have never gone into the depths of OS X Server other then running a website off of it and installing MySQL on it. Unlike Windows Server, OS X Server services such as Directory Services and seems to be far less documented and it almost seems required that I will have to attend a workshop that Apple has in my area. Don’t get me wrong I am a die hard Apple fan but it just seems those NT administrators have far more resources to work with (which I suppose is understandable as there are far more networks running Windows AD domains then OS X’s Open Directory).

So enough blabbering this is what I’d like to do summarized:
-Setup 10.4 Server as a router / DHCP server to hand out IPs to office computers and the ability to assign statics to for example Network Printers and File Servers
-Setup VPN to allow outside access to the internal network
-Setup Directory Services to allow access to the file servers with unique logins for everyone however restrict logins to their respective current workstations.

Since the Server Essentials for Tiger Server were cancelled can I still user the Panther Server book since at least there is a basic understanding or is Panther Server so different then Tiger Server that I shouldn’t bother? Is there any literature available to guide me through this process or am I just SOL?

Thanks in advance guys/gals!

Yvo