Buying a server

[Tommy L]

Hello!

Moving studio, need server.....

I currently operate 8 pc's in a network (workgroup). It works well.

I am moving studios and would like to start sharing a server with my business partner, he's on macs.

I have 2 workstations (W7) and 6 render nodes (XP64), but I may soon expand (I am 3d guy).

My buddy has 4 macs (he is 2d guy).

So we are looking at running around 15 machines on a network, with a dedicated server servicing both mac and pc.

The server would store the job files, run backburner and be the internet hub.

 

Questions:

1 Windows Server costs a fortune, is it necessary for networking more than 10 farm pcs, even if the server is a mac?

2 Can I use a PC server? I know nothing about mac and the other guy isnt too tech-savvy.

3 Is a mac server better in this situation?

4 Is it going to create problems having both mac and PC on the network?

5 I have an old dual P3 machine with a copy of windows server 2000 on it. It is operational and I guess I could just throw some better network card and HD's into the box in RAID....would that be satisfactory? Prob is, I dont have the license number, so if I ever have to re-install windows on that machine I would have to buy win server...

6 Could I continue with my workgroup, add one of my drives as a drive on my colleagues

 

I dont mind spending some money, I just dont really know where to start.

 

Help much appreciated,

Tom.

[AJLynn]

Tom, I don't have time to think out all your issues right now but I've been in the lost-the-product-key spot before and if you do some quick Googling, there are programs you can run on Windows that will display your Windows product key.

[MandelbrotJr]

Tom, you shouldn't need to spend much money given the HW you already have.

 

If you and your buddy need to work on the same files and implement some kind of pipeline it might make sense to convert one of your nodes into a file server, the cpu and ram usage of a file server is minimal so it won't degrade the rendering performance much.

Now the issue is that XP only accepts 10 concurrent inbound connections so you can't server more than 9 machines. The good news is that W7 has a 20 inbound connection limit so it can serve all of your network.

You just need to setup some shares at one of the W7 nodes turning it into a file server and point everything to it. Of course you'll need to soup up the storage, add some redundancy and implement SOLID backup strategy (RAID can never be counted as backup).

Here you have some tips on how to configure the OSX clients to access windows shares

 

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6127492.html

 

On your questions

 

1 Windows Server costs a fortune, is it necessary for networking more than 10 farm pcs, even if the server is a mac?

Neither a windows server or ANY kind of server is need for pure networking, you can keep everything IP based and share the stuff as I mentioned earlier. Now if you want centralized user administration, policy based permissions, etc etc then you'll need a true server.

 

2 Can I use a PC server? I know nothing about mac and the other guy isnt too tech-savvy.

Windows networking is based on Netbios (the basic stuff at least), nowadays every modern OS supports it out of the box. Again it depends if you just want to share files or build a full blown network.

 

3 Is a mac server better in this situation?

If you really really need a server I'd opt for a windows one, specially if you're not tech savvy.

 

4 Is it going to create problems having both mac and PC on the network?

Nope

 

5 I have an old dual P3 machine with a copy of windows server 2000 on it. It is operational and I guess I could just throw some better network card and HD's into the box in RAID....would that be satisfactory?

More than enough HW for a file server. You might want to invest is a HW RAID card if you're planning to drive a lot of throughput.

 

6 Could I continue with my work-group, add one of my drives as a drive on my colleagues

Yup, as I explained above OSX can natively access windows shares.

 

Let me know if you have any doubts

[MandelbrotJr]

BTW if you need to retrieve your W2K key, here you go, it's free

 

http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

[Tommy L]

Excellent, thanks for the help guys