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Run Mac desktops virtually on PC servers
Authored by: Zeitkind on Oct 12, '08 12:29:38AM

That simply looks like some kind of a NAS/SAN solution with home directories on a VM'ed server. Like server based profiles with Windows/AD (working since NT) or simular with OD or any Unix with ~/ on a NFS-share. Not new, not hot, just the way many enterprise networks work for ages.

I prefer iSCSI solutions instead. Get a SAN and transfer the users home dirs to iSCSI servers or use netboot with OS X servers. The only "cloud" I see is the dust to hide the real way it works.



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Run Mac desktops virtually on PC servers
Authored by: artyg on Oct 13, '08 08:04:04AM

Your comments are almost surprising considering you wrote this:

"Beware: iSCSI is quite new and many people had/have problems using it, but a drive shared like this can be used for TimeMachine" in your previous iSCSI "hint"

I was one of those that had trouble getting iSCSI to work on a Mac. Guess what, this (virtual appliance) worked in about 20 minutes.

Perhaps you also believe it is cheaper and easier to setup and administrate iSCSI?

I don't.



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Run Mac desktops virtually on PC servers
Authored by: Zeitkind on Oct 13, '08 02:50:20PM

Well, I then used a beta version of the free iSCSI driver from GlobalSAN. If you buy a complete solution, you'll also have support and some kind of guarantee that it works. iSCSI isn't that new in professional environments, but sure in SOHO's. So if you use eg. FreeNAS and the free driver, well, I won't recommend putting critical business data on it, simply because it's not really tested by many users for now.

The free GlobalSAN-driver I use is stable for me now for months running on Intel and PPC 10.5.5 against a CentOS 5.2



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