[LarryInASquared]

Hello-

I've been tasked to gather information on how folks in Windows environments/networks integrate and support you Mac clients. We have a mixed bag of Leopard and Tiger O/S machines. Our network is primarily Windows-based.

What infrastructure and or software do you folks use to support Macs in windows environments? Do you have a Mac server?

We use McAfee clients and a server in our environment? Anyone else use McAfee this way, on you Macs?

Who are your primary (business component) Mac users and what apps do they use the most?

Our users are primarily graphic designers and video producers.

Any insight as to what works well with you will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-Larry

[Simon]

What do you want those Macs to be able to do?

Email works out of the box.
Web browsing (including DNS, DHCP, etc.) works out of the box.
Connecting to SMB shares on Windows (or Linux) boxes works out of the box.
Printing usually works out of the box. If not -> Gutenprint.

What special thing do want those Macs to do that they can't already do? They're Macs. They were designed to co-exist with other systems. One substantial difference that separates Mac OS and Linux from Windows (which always assumes it's either alone or dictating the terms to anybody else).

[LarryInASquared]

Anyone with experiance in using ExtremeZ-IP as opposed to SFM on the Windows file sharing servers?

I've also found something called AdmitMac for Active Directory functionality.

[olePigeon]

Generally it's a good idea to have a Mac server set up as Active Directory (Open Directory) Master as an intermediary for all your Mac clients. It should integrate fairly easily and replicate your AD setup. I haven't had much experience with 10.6 Server or clients on a Windows environment, but I know with 10.4 and 10.5, user policies didn't translate very well without the OS X Server.

If you use Altiris or LANDesk management, they will utilize an OS X Server for client management & imaging, otherwise you can buy a copy of Apple Remote Desktop Administrator for all your management needs.

I'd also recommend Deploy Studio for imaging Macintosh computers.

[LarryInASquared]

Thanks for that info! It is some useful stuff.

We have an issue with Mac file forks being stripped off by the Windows file servers. Would you recommend anything to remedy that?

This is one of the main issues we have here with our Macs.

We do use Altiris here so we have that covered.

We will look into Deploy Studio.

[olePigeon]

Apparently ExtremeZ-IP does a good job at preserving legacy Mac files on a Windows Server share.

Edit: It occurred to me that ExtremeZ-IP will be useless to any Mac running 10.6, as Apple has done away with the old Apple Fileshare Protocol.

[LarryInASquared]

Thanks for that bit of information. It seems we would find ExtremeZ-IP useless for us.