Migrating network from Linux to Apple

Question

I am new to the Apple world (first post ) and I would like advice on the best way to reconfigure my network from a Linux based "do-it-yourself" to an easier Apple happy network, reusing as much exsisting hardware as possible.  I have 150GB of media data excluding the many DVD's I want to digitize (this should easily exceed 500GB once completed) so it is available to all apple devices.  I have a 500GB HDD Mac mini, small USB 500GB HDD, Linux server with 2 x 500GB HDDs, my old gaming Windows PC with a 500GB HDD, and various apple products that access the media.  The mac mini will be the central Apple media computer but I want to back it up using Time Machine and need to store the movies on an external disk in a way that does not break the media sharing, like Apple TV.
My questions are,
1. Should I store the extra movies on the 500GB USB HDD and then use the Linux server as a SAMBA share for Time Machine, or vice versa?
2. Given the hardware I have, how would you set-up the home network? 
Again, my goals are to provide an immediate back-up (time machine) and a 3rd back-up that protects against fire, flood, or natural disaster.  I want to avoid issues where I am writing scripts again.  I am an engineer that is used to manually configuring all of this but am also getting older am having less patience.  This is what caused me to buy the Mac Mini in the first place. 
Thank you in advance for detailed advice/discussion,
-AR

Answer 1

Hi,
You should be OK to do this since export/import works well cross-platform, providing you are on roughly the same version of the database - I doubt that you would have any major problems from 9.2.0.4 to 9.2.0.7.
If you are doing a full export/import and you are relying on the import to create tablespaces and datafiles, then you will need to make sure that your HP server has the same filesystem layout or you will get failures.
What I have tended to do when doing migrations like this is to pre-create the database on the target server (i.e. create the database and all the tablespaces and datafiles) and then import the relevant user schemas (you might want a first pass which is a full import but without inserting data so that all users get created). Assuming that your database is in good shape and no user objects are owned by SYS or SYSTEM, it should be fine.
Probably the best advice I can give is to make sure that you give yourself time to run through (i.e. practice) the migration a few times so that you are sure of the process before doing it 'for real'.
Cheers,
R