Setup Question

[Yukira]

I am in the process of setting up an XServe to replace our existing Appleshare IP server. We have an existing WIndows network that our email, calendar, internet services all run through. The XServe will be for file serving only serving about 20 Mac users.

I know I can setup the server to integrate with Active Directory or I can just set it up as a stand alone server. The advantage of AD/OD is to us being able to automount drives, have networked home folders and utilizing the AD authentication setup. The down side for me is that we have in the past had problems with AD and our Macs and it usually requires lots of adjusting to get things working right again. I would hate to have an AD problem and our users not be able to access the file server. With a stand alone server we currently use Retrospect Server and we could just back up each machine’s home folder so we wouldn’t necessarily need networked home folders. Users do not save documents to their home folders. All documents are shared in a central location.

I am looking for suggestions and advice about which seems the better way to go for our situation, or if I am completely misunderstanding something please let me know. Each user has their own computer so I don’t need to worry about multiple users per computer. Also, we can always put aliases to the folders they use the most in the sidebar to get the server to mount easily.

Thanks for any help.

Lianne

[Yukira]

Thanks for your response. I guess I will go ahead and give AD a try. The problems we have had in the past relate to our small business server. Sometimes AD would stop accepting Mac user names and passwords. I could create a workaround by creating the user in a different container in the AD rather than the default SBS users. This went on for about a year and now it seems to be working properly again.

Unfortunately I didn’t realize I would have to purchase Apple Remote Desktop to fully administer the server (like using disk utility to mirror drives, etc.) so I will get that setup before I go for the full AD integration.

Thanks again.

Lianne

[maccanada]

Disk Utility has a command line equivalent, diskutil. You can also enable VNC support and just use any VNC client. Of course you lose all the extra coolness that ARD has to offer, but it’s certainly not mandatory to manage a server.

~Ian

[Yukira]

Ian,

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I was able to get a vnc server setup on the XServe using SSH and then installed the client on my desktop and was able to access the server with a GUI interface. This is going to be so much quicker for me than trying to learn all the terminal commands right away.

Thanks again.

Lianne

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