Snow Leopard Media Server

[godspeed]

Hi,

I have a MBP 13" I use at work
I have a MBP 15" I use for travel
I have an Imac 24" at home
My wife has a MBP 13"
I have 2 X Apple TV's at home
I have an airport Extreme base station with an external 2TB HD

Currently I have external hard drives on the Imac that have all my movies, music, video edits, documents etc.

Each of the laptops also have itunes, not all the laptops have all the same music.

I want to move all my media to a server that will:

-Allow all my macs to connect to on the home network
-Allow all my macs to connect to from the internet
-Do all my video encoding
-For all files etc

My experience with "back to my Mac" has been hit and miss, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, the same can be said for Simplify Media.

If I bought a mac mini and installed Snow Leopard OS X (all my macs have SL) onto it and plugged all my HD's would this setup suffice? Does SL server use another protocol more advanced than back to my mac?

Also the new home feature on itunes 9 works well but it does not work over the internet. Would this be possible with SL server?

Sorry for my ignorance I just can't work out if SL server will suit my needs as a central media server for all my mac needs.

Thanks in advance.....

 

[pdjudd]

You don't need Snow Leopard server if all you are looking for is file sharing. Regular Snow Leopard can do that just fine.

 

[godspeed]

You don't need Snow Leopard server if all you are looking for is file sharing. Regular Snow Leopard can do that just fine.

But I want file sharing over the internet. How is this achieved? Back to my Mac does this when it works (but it doesn't always work)

My ISP does not give me a static IP, can I setup a VPN that will serve the purpose? Do I need SL server to do this?

I have tried services like no-ip, they work fine for vnc but I want file sharing on top.

 

[pdjudd]

But I want file sharing over the internet. How is this achieved? Back to my Mac does this when it works (but it doesn't always work)

My ISP does not give me a static IP, can I setup a VPN that will serve the purpose? Do I need SL server to do this?

I have tried services like no-ip, they work fine for vnc but I want file sharing on top.

You might want to look into dedicated hosting devices like the Pogo plug - any kind of file hosting over the internet is going to require a hosting solution of some kind and you will need some kind of a static IP address (for VPN) - again you don't need the server edition to do VPN.

 

[ingenious]

But I want file sharing over the internet. How is this achieved? Back to my Mac does this when it works (but it doesn't always work)

My ISP does not give me a static IP, can I setup a VPN that will serve the purpose? Do I need SL server to do this?

I have tried services like no-ip, they work fine for vnc but I want file sharing on top.

You could also try a time capsule or an airport router + external hard drive. MobileMe lets you access then over the internet... I know it's still BTMM, but usually Apple-branded routers work very well with it.

 

[Zortrium]

My ISP does not give me a static IP, can I setup a VPN that will serve the purpose? Do I need SL server to do this?

I have tried services like no-ip, they work fine for vnc but I want file sharing on top.

Domain names are cheap (<$1 a month) and there are plenty of free services that will map a domain name to a dynamic IP.