Networkink Question

[eschance]

I wanted to start by saying thank you in advance for any help or advice I may recieve.

Here goes the problem/question.

I have an office with 4 XP systems. I also have two employees who work from their homes with XP systems. Recently we have incurred the need to share larger files and email is not the answer.


I have concidered buying a mini and setting it up as a file server for my remote employees AND for us to access in my office just for files. Is this possible and secure and if so how do I do it. Am I better to buy the server software and put it on the mini? It will not be used heavily but may in the future.

I don't know what other info to include but can include anything if asked.

I sure appreciate any help or advice.

 

[nixgeek]

Essentially, Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server are the same operating system, except that Mac OS X server has a lot of graphical applications that aid you in configuring your server system for the intended use. This can be done with the client version of OS X, but it takes more work and manual modifications of config files. As for sharing, I haven't used this but many have recommended SharePoints which allows you to share out any folder you choose to Windows clients as opposed to just the public ones.

I tried doing this once way back with OS X 10.1 when a school I was visiting had lost their Server version and were stuck with a Mac G4 Server that wouldn't boot with the installed OS X Server. I was manually configuring Apache to store the pages fro the class on another folder instead of the personal ones for each user. I had it working but it took a good deal of work on the httpd.conf file to have it working.

All in all, it depends on what you would like to serve out. Your other option might also be to download a Linux distro and do it this way. I beleive the only issue on the Mac mini with Linux currently is sound, but that might have been fixed with recent kernel updates. Or you could even install Darwin and use that as a server OS.

Either way, you would be dealing with a UNIX-like OS, which means it would be more secure than using something Windows based, but that's my opinion. Just be aware that the Mac mini isn't intended for server purposes, so don't expect stellar performance. But for a small setup like this, it should be fine.