Why do I need OS X Server?

wicky

wicky

play thing
I work in a busy design studio, and at the moment we are working in a pretty messy way... locally, off of each others hard drives. I know this is very bad!

I am trying to put together a solid recommendation for getting a server, but I don't fully understand the benefits. The question has been asked, why not just get a BIG harddrive? To which I only have a vague answer.

Can somebody please give me an overview of how we might benefit from OS X Server?
 
wicky said:
I work in a busy design studio, and at the moment we are working in a pretty messy way... locally, off of each others hard drives. I know this is very bad!

I am trying to put together a solid recommendation for getting a server, but I don't fully understand the benefits. The question has been asked, why not just get a BIG harddrive? To which I only have a vague answer.

Can somebody please give me an overview of how we might benefit from OS X Server?
Click to expand...

There are 2 issues here:

1) What is the advantage of an SERVER

2) Which server (especially MAC OS X) should i use.


There are many reason for using (NOT) a server.

a) You know where the (latest) file is.

b) Making a backup is easier.

c) You can create USERS and manage who sees what (NOT).

d) If I leave, i turn my computer off and whatever would be on my system is not available anymore (in best (or worst) case - for backup purposes only).

e) If I trash my system, i reboot it) and whoever had connection my system loses his or her work (although not always immediately clear).

f) If i need more disk space, add a harddisk and if configured correctly, nobody notices it (except for the additional diskspace).

g) A server can do a lot more, but these are the most important.


Why a MAC OS X server.

THREE big reasons

1) Its stability

2) Its maintanability

3) Total cost of ownership is low



Good luck, Kees
 
Mac OS X Server isn't hard to maintain, to be quite honest I'm 17 and I'm the admin for the Macintosh's at my school. I started to learn Mac OS 2 years ago when I was a sophmore and now my teacher is trying to get the superintendant (however you spell that) to put me on salary so I can work for them with the Macs. Didn't own a mac till 1 year ago, now I have a PM G5 in my basement =D along with an iBook and iMac G3. It's an easy os, if you know OS X, you know OS X Server.

If you need any help we're here or you can contact me directly. There is one other thing you could do if you have a spare system. Get a bigger hard drive, or an external hard drive, boot that one up and just have everyone connect to it. May be a more cost effective solution, but I do recommend the server.

EDIT: If you have a registered IP address for a domain name or that, you can always connect to the server so that if you need any files when you or your design team is at home they can access their files easily.
 
Thanks for the reply guys, much appreciated.

Slook.., we have a static IP at work, can you tell me more about how I can access files from outside the office. How exactly does that work and is it pretty straight forward to set up? Would this also allow me to give clients access to FTP space in order for them to offload large files instead of crippling my email? Presumably this is all very secure?
 
Ideally, you'd use a VPN connection from outside of your internal network to access your server, especially for any sort of file sharing.

The OS X Server platform is great to work with. I've worked with it for the last four years (since 10.1 Server) and I've worked with it every day for the last two+ years.

Pretty much, no matter how secure the platform, you can always make decisions that will make it insecure. If you have remote users, use a secure way to share your data, like VPN. Then, with your VPN connection you can do your file sharing. :)
 
You can enable it so that they can FTP to your drop box, or you could create a new user and have your clients know that user name and password so they're not using your name or that. Or you could create them their own. To connect to shares on your server at the office, press CMD+K then type in afp://your_work_ip_address then click Connect. Next it'll have you choose your share and type in your username and password. If you want ftp just go to a web browser and type in ftp://[i]ip_address[/i]/ I think to login from a web browser you type in ftp://username[:]password@ipaddress sorry doing : p makes a characer so just take off the []
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top