Small office file server options

Hi all,
I'm having a nightmare getting decent answers from the web and businesses about this, so thought I'd try the forum..
Here is our situation,
We are a small business with 2 mac mini's, 2 macbook laptops and another macbook pro laptop who is remote. (the remote laptop is not a deal breaker)
We are beginning to have a nightmare with file storage, everyone is saving their own work to their own workstation and it's becoming difficult to share files etc.
Basically, our requirements for a solution are:
- Sensible file server, allowing all on-site computers to use the server as a main file storage
- Something I can back all computers up with from time machine
- Useful to restrict certain users to certain files
- Useful to have external access to files when off site and via the likes of iPad etc.
I've looked in a NAS Raid drive and the OsX Lion Server and also the Time capsule and am just so confused at what to buy.
Although the calendar sharing options etc. on the server would be useful, we can also do this via icloud. It's mainly the file access that is such a problem.
I wonder whether a time capsule would be good enough as a file server - which we then back up to the cloud to secure the data.
I really need a definitive answers here as buying a server is a significant investment.
Please help!
Thanks

Time Capsule could be enough for your small business at the moment. But don't you want to look into the future a bit as well? Time Capsule is for sale with 2 and 3TB hard disks which will be really enough right now but upgrading the disk won't be easy (or won't work at all) .
A Mac Mini Server + Thunderbold external hard disk is much more expensive but you're more secure in the future. Diskspace is easily upgraded if nessersary and you're also having the power of OSX Lion Server on your Mac Mini Server.
I want to leave it here and will be awaiting your reply. How much do you want to spend?

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Kevin,
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Well, you're current method sounds pretty good. But if you want to user a file server, hey go ahead.
What you want to do when you centralize project files is to keep track of which one is the newest and becareful not to overwrite files with the same name. So you either have to set up individual spaces on the server (separate AFP/FTP folders maybe), or you'll need to run a file checkout service.
The individual space is cheaper, but it's not much of a difference from backing up to the network drive. Since you have Gigabit connections, you might even opt to save ALL the user files on the server instead of just the project files.
If you want to run a file checkout service, there's two approaches. You can run a service that can host any kind of file, or you can run a version control system for each kind of application (Photoshop, Word, etc.). Please notice, that as you read further and further along, the methods become more and more expensive and complicated. Once you get to this point, it will be necessary to purchase or build software in addition to the Mac OS X Server package.

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Hello all,
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I just want a simple file server option with fast access!!!
Lewis

RAID is not backup. Software RAID and hardware RAID are the same thing operation wise. The only difference is that you need your Mac Mini to do the managing and controlling of the RAID array as opposed to the dedicated RAID controller with the hardware option. With 2 drives on your server, you usually have 2 RAID choices -- Stripe (Raid 0) or Mirror (Raid 1). If you set up your Mini with software RAID 1, then what this does is whenever your first drive is being written with data, the second drive is mirrored with the same data. In the event of a boot drive failure, you can still boot from your second drive. You can achieve the same thing somewhat with Carbon Copy Cloner, but it is not as seamless as RAID 1. Raid 0 stripe mode essentially doubles your hard drive throughput, but because the Sandy Bridge Intel Core i series chip is a powerful and efficient CPU, there won't be a huge latency lag associated with previous software RAID setup.
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Mail changes extension of office files

hi,
when i try to join a .doc file in a message with mail, it automatically changes the extension of the file in a .docc or .doc1 file, even when i enable the "keep office files integrity" option (or something like that i don't use the english version).
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tanks

I found it! Why the extension changes.
It has to do with signatures!
When you place the PDF file just above the signature (or I guess inside), the extension changes name!
This is my signature:
Jonatan 'Kip' Kipowsky
0709-XX XX XX
[email protected]
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Cheryl Bowsher

Hi Cheryl,
Check version of Acrobat of all users, it should be same and updated, i.e. 11.0.6
Does your user get "Check In" option through web browser?
What is the version of SharePoint you are using and what is the exact workflow?
Regards,
Anoop

Setup Lion Server for use in Small Office of Windows & Mac Clients

I've purchased a Mac Mini Server with Lion Server installed to be used in my small office of less than 10 people.
The primary goal of this server is to used for File Sharing, bother locally, and remotely.
In the process of setting up Lion Server I have come across a couple things that I am confused about.
The first is Open Directory.
It is my understanding that this is not a necessary setup for the number of users in my office, however I set it up anyway as it appeared to be something that would be useful in the future.
I have come across information that states Lion Server will not be accessible for Windows users connected via Open Directory. Thus my inclination is to disable the service, and set up my users as local users.
My question is, for local and remote File Sharing, is there any benefit to using Open Directory?
The second has to do with Remote Access.
I am familiar with the notion of a VPN, but I need some clarification as to my remote access options.
When I go to setup my Server's hostname, I am presented with three options. 1) Host name for local network, 2) Host name for private network, and 3) Host name for Internet.
I have a domain name for my company's website, so I set up a subdomain (server.mycompany.com), asked my ISP for a Static WAN IP, and pointed thesubdomain to said IP using my DNS. Thus this appears to be option number 3; to allow users to connect to my server from the local network, as well as the Internet.
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Well, I spoke too soon. Lion Server is unstable, awkward and is far too limited to qualify as an Apple product. Even though there's quite a few enhancements, the omissions of technologies in the server 10.6 edition makes this "server" a no go for us.
Even after installing mysql, I still cannot run a Joomla website on Lion server as it should be done. The wiki's a nice thing to have, but isn't a "professional grade" solution. There's too much iOS as well.
With that said, I think it's a shame that apple would put customers through so much frustration and disappointment by releasing such a lame product. In order for us to use Lion server, we would have to be able to run a second (totally separate) instance of Apache. It also appears that server settings are changing to the extent that services become inaccessible as the system is running.

Advise about setting up a permissons on Lion server for a small office.

What is the common wisdom and advise about setting up permissions optimally for a small office using OS X Lion Server as a file server? I thought I had this solved by setting the ACL permissions so that all users and appropriate groups can read and write all files on the server. This works great until a new file is created. Then it appears that the POSIX umask kicks in and takes priority over the ACL permissions. I need to allow group write permissions on all new files. My options seem to be:
Make everyone an admin - not great for obvious security reasons
Change the umask for the whole machine - also security problems, though perhaps fewer than the everyone-an-admin route above
Write a folder action applescript to add group write permission on all new files. This works fine if you have a static number of folders With new folders it has the problem: How do new folders created by non-admin users get this folder action automatically applied to them - some cronjob to hunt down the new folders; an applesscrpt folder action that adds a folder action to all new folders (sounds recursively complicated)?
Have a cron job regularly do something like `chmod -R 664` on all files. This will break during those between the cracks times between when someone creates a new file and when the cronjob runs - not ideal.
Seems like this should be easier which makes me think I'm missing something obvious.
Any help great appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Good-heart's advice is certainly your first step, but if you've already done that and still have the problem you've described, you might have the 10.7.3 ACL bug, particularly if your users and groups are in an OD or AD rather than being local accounts on the server. The problem is that ACL's for directory accounts are incorrectly ignored, resulting in POSIX permissions coming into play.
I've descibed my workaround for this here;
https://discussions.apple.com/message/18037703
I haven't yet tried the other trick I've read about, which is to ensure your Share's data directories are at least one level down on the volume - there is a post here on the Communities that mentions this;
https://discussions.apple.com/message/18028746
I seem to remember that this helped with an earlier version of AFP, if using external firewire or usb storage.
Let us know if you find a fix, it seems a number of people have problems with this.
Regards,
Ian

Unable to open Office files on SharePoint 2010 sites on Windows Server 2008 R2

Setup: Windows SharePoint Server 2010 sp1 on Windows Server 2008 R2 (hosted on VMWare VSphere ESXi 5.1)
Secured using Domain SSL from GlobalSign.
Client OS: Windows 7 Professional 32bit & Windows XP SP3 32 bit
Browsers: IE10, IE9,IE8
Office: Office 2010, Office 2010 sp2 (both 32bit), Office 2007
Problem Description: Only recently, users started having issues with opening Office files (Word, Excel) on SharePoint sites. When you click on an Office file e.g. Word Document, it comes up with the option to select "Ready only" or "Edit"
and choosing either options and re-entering the login credentials results in the
application hanging. If you leave it for a while (about 5 minutes) sometimes the file opens and other times it gives the error "Could not open https://portal.com/XXX/XXX/Document.docx". Even when it opens, it's extremely
sluggish and can't do anything other than end it via Task Manager. Same with excel files.
This happens to all the users all different OS and browsers.
On XP Pro SP3 w/ IE8, when you click on the file, the login prompt keeps popping back up repeatedly and if you click cancel, the file loads up anyway but no way of saving back onto the SharePoint site.
IMPORTANT: One exception is when logged in as a Site Collection Administrator, it
works like a dream bizarrely!!!! Opens, Edits and saves back fine on the SharePoint site.
Have tried following:
1. Repaired Office 2010 Pro; Uninstalled/Re-installed Office 2010 Pro
2. Reset Browser, unticked automatically detect proxy settings.
3. Emptied OfficeOfflineCache on Client
4. Removed WebDAV from the SharePoint server
5. Added Antivirus folder exclusion (We use SEP 11) on the SharePoint Server
Note: PDF files opens fine for all users.
I would immensely appreciate if anybody has got any advice/pointers/suggestions. Desperately out of ideas at the moment.
regards,
Compter Sez No!

Hi,
According to your description, When you try to open a Microsoft Office document from a SharePoint 2010 site in a client application, the document opens slowly and you are prompted to enter your credentials multiple times.
This issue may be because of SharePoint Web Front End (WFE) server(s) has Antivirus software installed and the exceptions are not set correctly.
I recommend to remove the antivirus software or set the correct permissions for the antivirus software to resolve the issue.
To configure the antivirus exceptions, please follow the guidelines in the below articles:
KB943620:
Folders to exclude when you perform a file-level antivirus scan on a server operating system.
KB952167:
Certain folders may have to be excluded from antivirus scanning when you use a file-level antivirus program in SharePoint.
KB943556:
Recommended file and folder exclusions for Microsoft Forefront Client Security or Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010.
Best regards.
Thanks

Microsoft Office for Mac open recent File menu option causing AFP to crash

Hi all,
We have an Xserve running Mac OS X Server Leopard 10.5.8. The Xserve hosts three file shares for about 60 users. Our network is 99% Mac based running mostly 10.5.8 with a few 10.6.x. We have historically over the past several years had the AFP service become unreliable and crash frequently. Late last week the AFP service crashes constantly. The quick solution to getting it up and running is to delete the AFP.conf file in /etc.
We have troubleshot one cause of AFP crashing to the Open Recent... File menu option in Microsoft Office for Mac applications. That is, through some amount (haven't been able to narrow it down to how much) of opening documents on the share via the Open Recent menu the AFP service will crash.
Here's what's happening in the AppleFileServer .crash file:
Process: AppleFileServer [26065]
Path: /usr/sbin/AppleFileServer
Identifier: AppleFileServer
Version: ??? (???)
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [1]
Date/Time: 2010-04-12 13:25:54.666 -0700
OS Version: Mac OS X Server 10.5.8 (9L34)
Report Version: 6
Anonymous UUID: 273147DD-D725-4DAB-B403-95391FF85FE1
Exception Type: EXCBADACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERNPROTECTIONFAILURE at 0x0000000000000015
Crashed Thread: XX
******** blah *********
Thread XX Crashed:
0 AppleFileServer 0x0004bc15 operator+(OSException&) + 103513
1 AppleFileServer 0x00064988 operator+(OSException&) + 205260
2 AppleFileServer 0x0006da4e operator+(OSException&) + 242322
3 AppleFileServer 0x000711f3 operator+(OSException&) + 256567
4 AppleFileServer 0x00071446 operator+(OSException&) + 257162
5 AppleFileServer 0x00076686 operator+(OSException&) + 278218
6 AppleFileServer 0x000790d7 operator+(OSException&) + 289051
7 AppleFileServer 0x0004560c operator+(OSException&) + 77392
8 AppleFileServer 0x00044269 operator+(OSException&) + 72365
9 AppleFileServer 0x00044343 operator+(OSException&) + 72583
10 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9587c155 pthreadstart + 321
11 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9587c012 thread_start + 34
This is followed by a lot of these entries in AppleFileService.log file:
IP xx.xx.xx.xx - - [12/Apr/2010:13:25:54 -0800] "Login username" 0 0 0
IP xx.xx.xx.xx - - [12/Apr/2010:13:25:54 -0800] "No matching key: username" 1271103954 1271103943 1
** - - [12/Apr/2010:13:26:15 -0800] "Mounted Volume VOLUME1" 0 0 0
** - - [12/Apr/2010:13:26:15 -0800] "Mounted Volume VOLUME2" 1 0 0
** - - [12/Apr/2010:13:26:15 -0800] "DiskArbStart -" 0 0 0
Our solution is to have all our users turn off the open recent option in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Not an ideal solution but it may get the AFP service running "good enough."
Has anyone had an experience like this before or can anyone duplicate the AFP service crashing when trying to open documents on a share via the open recent menu? Any other ideas?
Thanks

Update.
I have been able to consistently reproduce a problem where the AFP service will crash if a file that a user has an alias to is moved to a folder and the user is denied access to .
1. On your Mac create an alias to a file or folder, that you have access to, that is stored on a share served via AFP. The alias can be in the Places section of a Finder window, on the Desktop, or anywhere an alias can be created. Lets call what the alias points to the target.
2. Move the target to a folder on the AFP share and deny the user or group Read & Write access to that folder.
3. Try accessing the target via the alias created in step 1.
The AFP service should crash.
Can anyone reproduce this crash scenario too?

On A Budget - Options for Using a File Server.

Hi - I have this relatively old 2008R2 file server (8GB memory and 25TB disk) I'd like to use as file storage for a SQL Server VM. The network is a 1GB switched configuration. The VM resides on relatively new hardware (Server 2012, SAS) but doesn't
have a lot of disk. I'd like to make a bunch of the file server space available for SQL Server Data (2008R2) - its a small network (10 users) that we want to load a bunch of glob data indexed by a few keywords as reference. Kind of like a
GIS database. My first thought is to create fixed vhdx file on the file server via Hyper-V manager, but this takes days to initialize for the size I'm thinking of (10TB). I created an expanding disk and it was pretty quick to create. I copied
a 4GB file over the net to the mounted (from the Hyper-V Host) vhdx file and it went pretty fast. I thought about using the iSCSI trick to attach it to the SQL VM (turning the file server into a SAN sort of?), but I'm wondering if this is overkill.
I'm just looking for a few suggestions. There is a lot of stuff out there, some of it conflicting, about storage configuration.
Thanks

Yes, upgrading....
I need to emphasize the budget thing. I will look into the iSCSI option. The VM is Server 2012.
We might be able to convert the 2008 server to Windows 8. It doesn't really do anything besides file shares and security is not a concern as we are not connected. Is that an option? Win8 supports SMB 3 I understand.
Yes you can do that. But... Older desktop versions of Windows were limited on amount of TCP connections they could handle obviously affecting usability and performance as a server. Not sure what's accurate for Windows 8 as MSFT has been changing this policy
back and forth all the time )) Check within MSFT licensing specialists before you do that.
P.S. I'd spawn FreeBSD or openSUSE with a Samba instead of a desktop version of Windows OS being used as a file server. IMHO.
Cheers,
Anton Kolomyeytsev [MVP]
StarWind Software Chief Architect
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Small office file server options

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