How to set up an Xserve
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
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
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.
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