I need a file server for a PC and Mac network!

[Gruff Nutz]

I was wondering if anyone on this forum would know, what software I could use to make a file server for a network consisting of both PCs and Macs.

I work in a small graphics studio, we have 3 macs running OSX and 5 PCs running XP.

What I wanted is to have a server were every night, all computers back up our Work in Progress automatically so if someones HD fails, we're not up shit creek.

Anyone have any ideas?

[ersatz]

I have an idea. pm me.

[thingy]

If they have megabux, get either an X-Serve or a server to run Windows 2000 Server. That's what our creative and studio servers run (one x-serve, 2 * Windows 2000 Server). Works well. They'll all host files across both platforms quite successfully.

I'm not sure of any software that could automatically backup to the server - the best way to go is get something that has enough storage space, get them to keep all work on the server and only copy something to their machines when they need to work on it. The moment they're finished, re-upload it. It's appalling practise to let them keep anything on their local machines except for things they currently have open. It's also bad practise to let them work off the server - especially for creative files that could be 100+MB in size

[scathing]

OS X supports Samba, doesn't it? It shouldn't be too much hassle to create network shares that can be accessed by both platforms.

As Thingy says, synchronisation would be the best option for performance. Having clients manipulate possibly large images over your network will probably bring it to a grinding halt.

WinXP supports synchronisation, so it can be told to retrieve files on-boot, and send them back to the server on log-off. This is, of course, only really useful for personal drives since anything shared will unsynchronise pretty quickly.

From your description, however, it seems like each user works on their own thing so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. Just instill a practise of logging off at the end of the day (or configure XP to auto-logoff at a certain time).

I know there's software that can be set to transfer files to a remote host. When I worked for a small IT outsourcer, we used to set up customers' machines to establish a VPN connection to our office, and then either SMB or FTP their incremental backups to our server using an unremembered backup software.

You could consider doing that too, though I'm not sure of any OSX software. It wouldn't need to be the same if you use a transfer-agnostic transfer protocol like FTP to connect. It just means you have two different products to support.

[Gruff Nutz]

Thanks for the suggestions guys!

Being a small company, usually 1 person will manage a job from start to finish, people keeping their work files on their workstations doesn't bother me.

I was just after someting that can back-up the data on our workstations maybe once every 24 hours, basically as insurance for us.

So if we had a Win 2000 server, as Thingy suggested, I guess it would be easy to make the PCs back up their jobs over the network, do you guys know of any software for OSX that could do the same?

[DJos]

Win2k Server or 2003 server with Mac & Unix (for OSX) Networking Component enabled will definately do the the trick and it's a doddle to setup.

You can even do it with NT4 Server if you want.