Apple computers on school network (RM)

[Mowgli21]

Hello

I am an ict technician at a high school and have finally persuaded the school to consider purchasing a suite of imacs for multimedia work.

At the moment i am getting quotes for equipment etc but just wanted to know if anyone here has set up or is using a Apple Macs on a school network preferably a RM network.

We are looking at two options:

Option 1
10 iMacs
Mac Mini running Snow Leopard Server with two 500GB Drives

Option 2
10 iMacs
Mac Pro Server

Any advice on the above options or if your using one of the options would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[simsaladimbamba]

What applications will you use and how will you use the server?
The Mac mini seems the cheaper option, as it doesn't cost as much and definitely draws less power.
You are also limited to the Gigabit Ethernet port anyway, due to the iMac.
But you can only add additional storage capacity via FW800 to the Mac mini, unless you use some kind of network HDD, but the Mac Pro offers additional internal HDD capacity.

Maybe this is worth a look: http://www.activestorage.com/activesan.php

 

[Zanthus]

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Hi

I have done the above at a school I used to work for the mac pro is the better option and can be expanded more in the future so will last longer. There's hardly any support from RM about macs even though they say they provide it. You will have to create new accounts on the mac pro for students. You may also have to change some settings on you RM servers we thought ours were secure yet even though they were all password protected, the macs could see all the server hard drives on the network and could also delete all files with out any authentication !

Hope this helps

Craig

 

[Mowgli21]

Thanks for the quick replies guys. Zanthus when you set up the new accounts any work that is done on the macs would that have to be saved on a shared drive then? Or are your students still able to access their normal documents?

Also do your macs exist in your active directory? Our web filtering is handled in AD and was wondering whether these filters were also carried accross to the macs?

Thanks again, it'll be an interesting project.

 

[Zanthus]

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Hi again when I set them they were given static IPs on the active directory so the web filtering worked. We had to set up separate accounts for the macs which were stored on the mac server. Students accessed there RM directory online . RM used to have a mac app that would mount the students RM profile but that stopped working in leopard and I don't think they ever updated it !

 

[wordoflife]

Not that this is entirely useful, but at my school, we have iMacs and MacBooks. Each student has their own unique account which can be accessed from any of the school computers. Is that what you're trying to do?

 

[Mowgli21]

Not that this is entirely useful, but at my school, we have iMacs and MacBooks. Each student has their own unique account which can be accessed from any of the school computers. Is that what you're trying to do?

Ideally one login for all would be great but it's not looking like it's easily achievable.

Thanks zanthus for your help. Lot clearer now.