Question on Mac and Server 2003 connectivity - Non tech question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Adam Raff
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Adam Raff

Good Day,

I am looking for some info that can help me out.

We are running a full Windows 2003 network with all of our clients as WinXP.
We have two Mac that are running OS 10.3 or higher. We have at this time
the Mac services running but we are just have problems with characters not
being recognized or other issues when it comes to the Mac. This problem has
been from the get go when I came on board about two years ago. The Volume
that the Mac uses is huge about 450 gig of data.

I have spoken to Microsoft on a few occasions and it just seems that the Mac
services just is not cut out or have not been updated for a long time.

So what I am looking for is a third party service that I can install on our
server that will support our needs.

The Mac people have both Mac and PC's and they use both so they work with
the same files on both systems. What we need is the following

The ability to share files between the Mac and PC without corruption of
characters.
Printer would be nice

The program needs to be simple to install works well with 2003 and SP1 when
installed (stable)

If anybody has any suggestions or input would be much appreciated.

Thank You
Adam Raff
 
Hi Adam!

My comments are inline.


Adam Raff said:
Good Day,

I am looking for some info that can help me out.

We are running a full Windows 2003 network with all of our clients as WinXP.
We have two Mac that are running OS 10.3 or higher. We have at this time
the Mac services running but we are just have problems with characters not
being recognized or other issues when it comes to the Mac. This problem has
been from the get go when I came on board about two years ago. The Volume
that the Mac uses is huge about 450 gig of data.

I have spoken to Microsoft on a few occasions and it just seems that the Mac
services just is not cut out or have not been updated for a long time.
Click to expand...

File Services for Macintosh use the older AFP 2.2 file sharing protocol
while Mac OS X uses AFP 3.x. This is not likely to change with any
future updates from Microsoft.
So what I am looking for is a third party service that I can install on our
server that will support our needs.

The Mac people have both Mac and PC's and they use both so they work with
the same files on both systems. What we need is the following

The ability to share files between the Mac and PC without corruption of
characters.
Printer would be nice
Click to expand...

Characters and/or files aren't getting corrupt. There are some
incompatibilities between Macs and Windows. This is just a given.
The program needs to be simple to install works well with 2003 and SP1 when
installed (stable)
Click to expand...

Two thoughts. If you have relatively few Macs, I suggest you try Dave
from http://www.thursby.com. This will make your Mac appear as a Windows
machine on your network and provide you the compatibility you're looking
for.

If you have several Macs, then you might look at using ExtremeZ-IP from
http://www.grouplogic.com. This is AFP 3.x server software that runs
instead of the Windows File Services for Macintosh. It addresses most
compatibility issues with Mac OS X clients. If you continue to use
characters in the file names generated by your Macs that Windows doesn't
like, it won't address that issue.

Both of these pieces of software support printing.

Hope this helps! bill
 
Hi Bill,

Will Longhorn server have any kind of Services for Mac or is Microsoft
abandoning SFM for SMB for mac connectivity

Thanks
Pat
 
Pat said:
Hi Bill,

Will Longhorn server have any kind of Services for Mac or is Microsoft
abandoning SFM for SMB for mac connectivity
Click to expand...

Hi Pat!

To the best of my knowledge, Microsoft has published nothing publicly
about its plans for Macintosh support in Longhorn.

Given that Mac OS X is now about six years old and Microsoft has done
nothing to make its server software more compatible in two full versions
of Windows Server (2000 and 2003), I see no trend that Longhorn will be
any better. I wouldn't be surprised that they abandon this feature
altogether since Group Logic seems to be gaining ground in filling this
niche.

If you are part of an organization that can participate in the Longhorn
Server beta testing, then I suggest you look into this to learn what you
can. Unfortunately, I'm sure that anyone who is a beta tester would be
under NDA to say anything publicly.

Hope this helps! bill
 
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