File shares for Mac users

The main file shares on our network are currently hosted by old Apple XServes. I had planned to replace some of these with Windows shares as I have better hardware available but have been told this is likely to cause issues with some of our Mac users.

What sort of issues am I likely to run into and what are the recommended ways of hosting general file storage in a mixed OS (Windows, OSX, occasionally linux) environment?

Solution 1:

To connect to Windows share most Linux distros uses the Samba implementation of the SMB protocol.

Apple uses their own SMB implementation derived from FreeBSD smbfs in OS X. Mac OS X 10.5 supports SMB singing, having to turn off digitally sign all communications in Windows server 2003 will only be needed for 10.4 and below.

I use both everyday to connect to windows shares and never have a bit of trouble.

Solution 2:

On the Macs in question it's worthwhile to note that you should try and disable the creation of .DS_Store files on network shares if you have not done this already. (Details at MacOSXHints.com)

Additionally you should be aware that over SMB you will notice ._FILENAME files created - this is how OS X maintains the resource fork data and such on other file systems. This can cause an issue for someone on a Windows based machine if they try to open up the wrong file.

It's possible to have the server not allow these files (in smb.conf you can set veto_files=._*) but where it is in Windows Server 2003 I'm unsure but I believe using this article from TechRepublic should prove a worthwhile starting point.

Solution 3:

Windows 2003 and up have a feature (which is enabled on Group Policy under Security Options) that will digitally sign all communications on the Microsoft network server. That will prevent Mac OS X clients from accessing shares on a Windows 2003(+).

If you can live with the security 'downgrade' that turning that off would represent, I do not see any other issues at all.