Hey everyone. I'd like to get some opinions on the best way to set up my home network. I made some pretty drastic changes this week to my entire system, and am a bit overwhelmed as to the best way to do things with all the new equipment. Previously I had a WinXP system running as a file server with external drives. This was accessed through SMB sharing by the Macs using my old Linksys WRT54G as the traffic cop. On this file server we kept all of our software installs, work documents, and things that weren't accessed enough to keep local, but were too important to burn to disc (and subsequently lose said disc). We also kept movies on the file server, and these were streamed real-time to the Xbox360 in the living room using TVersity.
Last week I decided to rid my entire house of all Windows machines once and for all. I ditched all of my old legacy equipment, including the old file server and WRT54G router. That has been replaced with an iMac Core Duo (early 2006) with two 1TB firewire drives (one for network storage, the other for Time Machine backups). I also now have an Airport Extreme running router duty. In addition to the equipment listed above, I'm running a 15" uMBP, and my wife is running a 13" uMBP. There's also a G4 over in the corner we keep around for guests to use, along with a couple of Ubuntu laptops. And as bad as I hate to say it, I simply must have my work WinXP machine as my company won't provide a working VPN for the Mac - so this is the one holdout to my "no Windows" rule.
I initially bought the AEBS to take advantage of Snow Leopard's new wake-on-demand feature. My initial thought was to set the iMac up as the file server, and have the wake-on-demand rouse it if anyone in the house wanted access to the storage drive (this works well, btw). After researching a bit more about the AEBS however, I'm wondering if the iMac is even needed? Seems I can put the 1TB drive on the USB port of the AEBS and share the contents throughout the house with no need to wake the iMac. My only concern here would be the backup of the storage drive. Can it be backed up if connected to the AEBS like this?
I'm also wondering if the wife and I should put our Time Machine drives on the AEBS and do our TM backups over the air? The only advantage I can think of here would be to simply free up a little desk space by relocating our TM drives. I suppose I could also connect a drive to the AEBS that is large enough for both of our TM backups avoiding some clutter (I gained an extra 500GB drive from all the reconfiguring). Any advantage to doing this rather than having our small 2.5" external HDD's connected to our Macbooks on our desks?
Any suggestions on how to best set this all up? My big goals were to a) ditch all the old legacy equipment, b) arrange things in a way where computers aren't involved for sharing, and if they were to wake them only when needed, and c) get rid of all Windows machines once and for all. It think I'm in a position to *almost* meet all my goals (except for the work laptop). Any suggestions anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated!
PS - Oh yea, I found a program called Rivet that will replicate the streaming to the XBox360 we had going with Tversity on the old file-server. So the iMac will still probably have to be used for that.
Last week I decided to rid my entire house of all Windows machines once and for all. I ditched all of my old legacy equipment, including the old file server and WRT54G router. That has been replaced with an iMac Core Duo (early 2006) with two 1TB firewire drives (one for network storage, the other for Time Machine backups). I also now have an Airport Extreme running router duty. In addition to the equipment listed above, I'm running a 15" uMBP, and my wife is running a 13" uMBP. There's also a G4 over in the corner we keep around for guests to use, along with a couple of Ubuntu laptops. And as bad as I hate to say it, I simply must have my work WinXP machine as my company won't provide a working VPN for the Mac - so this is the one holdout to my "no Windows" rule.
I initially bought the AEBS to take advantage of Snow Leopard's new wake-on-demand feature. My initial thought was to set the iMac up as the file server, and have the wake-on-demand rouse it if anyone in the house wanted access to the storage drive (this works well, btw). After researching a bit more about the AEBS however, I'm wondering if the iMac is even needed? Seems I can put the 1TB drive on the USB port of the AEBS and share the contents throughout the house with no need to wake the iMac. My only concern here would be the backup of the storage drive. Can it be backed up if connected to the AEBS like this?
I'm also wondering if the wife and I should put our Time Machine drives on the AEBS and do our TM backups over the air? The only advantage I can think of here would be to simply free up a little desk space by relocating our TM drives. I suppose I could also connect a drive to the AEBS that is large enough for both of our TM backups avoiding some clutter (I gained an extra 500GB drive from all the reconfiguring). Any advantage to doing this rather than having our small 2.5" external HDD's connected to our Macbooks on our desks?
Any suggestions on how to best set this all up? My big goals were to a) ditch all the old legacy equipment, b) arrange things in a way where computers aren't involved for sharing, and if they were to wake them only when needed, and c) get rid of all Windows machines once and for all. It think I'm in a position to *almost* meet all my goals (except for the work laptop). Any suggestions anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated!
PS - Oh yea, I found a program called Rivet that will replicate the streaming to the XBox360 we had going with Tversity on the old file-server. So the iMac will still probably have to be used for that.