New server, sw, fw install, mix of PC's and Macs - advice needed

my neighbor has a small biz he just started up. they have been running off a Mac airport. 10-15 users. they have a mix of pc's and Macs. he wants me to put in a server, firewall and switch.

im ordering an HP Proliant, HP Pro curve unmanaged switch and a Sonicwall TZ-210.

they have been operating without any domain, so will that screw up things on their mac laptops when i create one and add the users? i dont know anything about Mac profiles. how about connecting to the 2K8 server? just add the apple talk protocol and everything's the same as Windows?

i forget about dns on the initial server set up, will that configure itself once i download root hints or do i need info from the ISP.

any other issues you think i may run into?

thanks

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Comments

qcomer

tdean wrote: »

my neighbor has a small biz he just started up. they have been running off a Mac airport. 10-15 users. they have a mix of pc's and Macs. he wants me to put in a server, firewall and switch.

im ordering an HP Proliant, HP Pro curve unmanaged switch and a Sonicwall TZ-210.

they have been operating without any domain, so will that screw up things on their mac laptops when i create one and add the users? i dont know anything about Mac profiles. how about connecting to the 2K8 server? just add the apple talk protocol and everything's the same as Windows?

i forget about dns on the initial server set up, will that configure itself once i download root hints or do i need info from the ISP.

any other issues you think i may run into?

thanks

Check out www.apple-scripts.com . to help with the OSX side. you shouldnt have any issues, just copy their stuff over from their local profile to their new profile.

There is also a script on that site that will make an alias on their desktop to their share on the server.

tdean

qcomer wrote: »

Check out www.apple-scripts.com . to help with the OSX side. you shouldnt have any issues, just copy their stuff over from their local profile to their new profile.

There is also a script on that site that will make an alias on their desktop to their share on the server.

thanks, i will check that out. are mac profiles located in the same directories as windows? i've never even turned a mac on before.

Hyper-Me

OSX.3 and up will bind to an AD domain natively, although you really have zero control of it. It will let them log on with their domain credentials, though.

As said before, copy their old profile over to their domain profile once theyve logged in. The file strutures are nothing alike in OSX.

You dont have to worry with the root hints in DNS. Any updating they need is done via Windows Updates. Just make sure your server is patched fully before putting it into production and you'll be fine.

qcomer

tdean wrote: »

thanks, i will check that out. are mac profiles located in the same directories as windows? i've never even turned a mac on before.

Profiles on OSX for local users are stored in root of the HDD at /Users/username

There is also a way to create a "default user" much like on windows xp. I believe there is some info on the www.apple-scripts.com site.

I work for a school district that previously used a mixture of Open Directory (OSX LDAP) and Active Directory, this summer we are porting over to all Active Directory and binding the Macs to it so I am doing alot of research at this time.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

The guy Dominic on apple-scripts is very good with this kind of stuff and very knowledgable.