Standalone windows services as opposed to Domain Member

Question

Hi
I know very little about windows networking, and have a basic question.
I have a school network with mostly macs, and a 10.4 server. There is also a windows server on the network that someone else comes in to maintain that supplies all the windows needs, but they know very little about macs.
All I want to do is allow access to a shared folder between teachers and students on the mac server to the teachers that use windows machines.
I am wondering if I should should use the Standalone Windows server option or the Domain member role in the windows server section of Server Admin?
I have briefly tried the standalone option, and it works fine, but am not sure if it will cause disruption to the windows machines and I should use the Domain Member role.
Apples OSX server guide only mentions how to set things up in relation to other Mac servers, not windows servers on the same network.
Any help would be appreciated.
thanks
G5 2.3G   Mac OS X (10.4)  

Answer 1

>I wondered if I used the Standalone server option whether it may cause any kaos in the windows camp.
Well, in my experience, there's always some chaos in the Windows camp, but that's not the point here
If you're assigning users the same username and password on both the Windows and Mac directories then you shouldn't have much of a problem. If course, this means that you need to add accounts in both places, delete accounts in both places and when you change passwords, change them in both places. If you're happy to deal with that then there's no problem in keeping the Mac as standalone.
On the other hand you could join the Mac to the Windows directory and then the Mac would automatically use the user credentials defined on the Windows server. You'd only need to add users in one place, change passwords in one place, etc., etc.
Whichever way you're happy with is fine.