Xgrid? xsan? dns? help?

Question

this is a school project and were trying to set up a system in which we have a client machine recording the podcasts that are then sent to the server to be stored, this is all done over a local network
i actually have a few questions..
do we need xgrid with our installation as we are only using one machine?
what is xsan? and what are OPTIONAL cluster files? does that mean i don't need them, yet they are in the system requirements?
and how do i properly configure dns? apples admin guide is pretty sketchy and hard to understand. I also tried the host command as stated in another forum but i got an error "Host xx.xx.xxx.xx.in-addr.arpa not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)" when typing in host then the address and "Host comp.local.dns not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)" when typing in host then the computer name
thanks in advance
Message was edited by: EarlOfMarch

Answer 1

I've followed the instructions in apple's pdf:
http://images.apple.com/server/macosx/docs/PodcastProducer_Adminv10.5.pdf
and it worked very nicely for me.
You can set up podcast producer service on one machine without any xsans, or adittional grid nodes.
That one machine will run the xgrid service and act as both an agent and controller.
(My podcast server runs the following services:
DNS
Mail
Web
Podcast producer and
Xgrid
as per the instructions in the PDF.)
Instructions inside tell you how to properly set up a brand new DNS. However, this DNS will only work locally on that machine, meaning if you call it podcast.yourschool.edu other machines on the network may not necessarily be able to find it. You'll need to ask your IT admins to add the entry to their DNS. (But that's for later.)
Read the PDF first, then sit at your machine and do as it instructs.
It would be ideal if you could do this on a very freshly installed OS, to make sure you can get your DNS set up, and then set up OD. DNS is crucial for Kerberos, and that is crucial for podcast producer.
Hope that helps.