setting up a mac mini for server, few questions

[omni]

So until now I've had a 27" imac with a Drobo attached running everything. This has been the 'brain' center to serve up 3 appletv's, 2 iphones and 1 ipad. It's also where I store all my photos for iphoto, etc.

Wanna purchase a mac mini to run headless as a media center for the appletv's.

My questions come into play when it comes to itunes itself. So if have all the 3 appletv's (gen 1's) point to the mac mini...that means it needs to run itunes itself and have a library pointing to all the media.

For the 27"...i'm going to need itunes pointing everything back to the mac mini right? So anytime i add music i'm gonna have to update both library's?

So far all the iOS devices are synced up with the 27" imac...so I just maintain course with that?

Was hoping the mac mini would simplify life but all of a sudden I'm thinking it slightly more.

 

[alFR]

Yeah,you'd need to keep both the Mini and the iMac up to date if you wanted your media on both. Couple of possible solutions for that:

• Chronosync - could sync your photo and iTunes libraries between the 2 machines
• iCloud (when it appears) - should sync your photos (photostream) and iTunes purchases between the 2 machines. You'd still eed to manually update movies you rip yourself, but that's probably a major issue - itunes Match should sort out your CD rips (assuming your country has it!).

You could pair the iOS devices to either machine - if you had home sharing turned on on both machines they could see both the iMac and mini libraries.