How to set up an Xserve

spookyspooky
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hi,



I was wondering if anyone out there can help out a networking newbie!!



we have 15 G4 400s running os 9 that are connected to the college's ethernet backbone. the college runs a novell network. the macs are effectively standalones in that they do not use the college servers but have access to the internet (each mac has a fixed IP address). can anyone advise me of a tutorial or point me in the right direction so that I can achieve the following:



1) Connect all the macs to an Xserve and an Xraid so that we can file share and store on the Xraid

2) maintain a copy of a clean os installation that we can simply copy over if a student messes up a machine's installation!

3) allow all the macs access to the internet (i'm told this involves switches and routers or router cards)

4) allow me to set access and priveliges for students on an individual basis



take it slow guys - I'm a real newbie to this and while the college may just squeeze up enough cash for the hardware they definitely won't stretch to training costs



thanx in advance

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    Have you read over the documentation that Apple offers online? Most of your questions are answered there. To be specific:



    1. File Services Administration

    2. This could either be Netboot or something like RsyncX. There are a lot of options.

    3. This depends a lot on what you are looking to accomplish. In the simplest case you are just looking to have the server used as a gateway, this is trivial even with MacOS X (non-server). If you are looking at filtering content, then you have to be more specific on your goals, as there are a lot of different solutions.

    4. Open Directory Administration. Very easy to admin once you get the feel for it.



    All of this does require some time to play with so that you get a good handle on what you are doing before you start to go into production with it. There are lots of non-obvious (but after the fact easy) things to deal with.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    spookyspooky Posts: 504member
    Thanx for the pointers Karl - plenty for me to read thru!!



    There was one other thing I'd also like to be able to do. I'd like for my students to create web pages and host them on a server. However college policy means that we are not allowed to host on the college's server and we are not allowed to use external servers (a result of mad paranoia among the corporate heads).

    can I set up the xserve to also function as a web server to our macs and allow cgi and php on it?



    thanx once again in advance
  • Reply 3 of 3
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    Once again, even MacOS X (non-server) is perfectly capable of being a web server with PHP and CGI (although I would recommend against CGI... to amy security concerns unless you really know what you are doing). Server allows for some easier admining. For the uploading process, well there the water gets a bit murky, as there are a lot of ways of setting that up.
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