SPARK Case Study
The Creative Industries Centre on the Wolverhampton Science Park has been kitted out with state-of-the-art Microsoft and Apple technology.
This ground-breaking initiative is designed to ignite creative entrepreneurs in the Midlands area of the United Kingdom.
The Best of all Worlds
The Server Platform
Using Microsoft Server 2003 for the network makes a lot of sense. The main benefits of Server 2003 are the stability of the product, increased performance on the same hardware, remote desktop for support and shadow copy for data which puts clients in control of their data.
The Client Platform
We needed best-of-breed clients and software so we selected Windows XP and Apple OS X Panther 10.3 to maximise user productivity and choice.
Software running on the clients includes Macromedia Studio 2004, Adobe Studio, Office XP and Office X, Quark XPress, Final Cut Pro, MAYA Complete and AVID Express Pro.
The Challenge
The challenge was to integrate the mixture of Mac and Windows operating systems for file, print, scanner and security with as little overhead in management and support as possible.
We also needed to recharge clients for their usage of expensive print and server resources.
After extensive research we identified several software solutions that would work well together.
Integration of the OS
ADmitMac from Thursby software is used to seamlessly integrate the Mac's into Active Directory and for file and print access between Mac and Windows based systems.
Clients can log onto any computer and gain their familiar desktop (Mac/Windows) delivered to their computer using a combination of Windows and Mac functionality linked by ADmitMac and Server 2003.
Effective and Efficient
We recharge clients for their usage of print through Print Manager Plus software - this allows us to recharge our clients for use of expensive print facilities.
Using Server 2003/8 we allocate disk quotas to clients enabling us to manage and control usage of disk resources.
Backup and Recovery
We use state-of-the-art imaging technology using Symantec Backup Exec Recovery Server as the first line of data and server restoration in the event of computer failure. Secondary backup is maintained using more traditional tape backup.
This solution allows us to make data available to business users within one minute of an incident with complete restoration of servers within 2 hours (hardware permitting).
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