09-04-2008, 02:51 PM

Hello everyone
New here to the forum. I work at a company that has about 25 MACS and I've been chosen as the MAC support person, so my knowledge is very limited, but I do all the PC support here. So my questions are we need to join the MACS to our windows domain and provide an anti virus solution. we also use VNC for our PC support and I'm curious what others out there are using for remote support options. If someone could point me in the right direction to research how to join our MACS to the domain (i've been told we need an Xserver running Leopard), anti virus solution and remote support solution. Also, I am working on upgrading all the MACS to Office 2008 and we are having resource scheduling issues. None of the MACS can schedule a conference room. From the research I have done, there needs to be some settings changed on the Exchange Server. We are running Exchange 2003. Appreciate all the advice.

Thanks!

09-04-2008, 03:39 PM

I cannot answer all your questions but here goes

You can install antivirus, but there are no mac viruses, but it will intercept any windows nasties that come from PCs

You can go open source (ClamX) or use one of the commercial products like Sophos

VNC support is built in to the OS, its just hidden away and not called VNC.

http://www.macminicolo.net/Mac_VNC_tutor.html

That will let you set up each OS X machine as a VNC server

Office 2008 includes Entourage which has exchange support including mail, calendars and global address books, but others may know more

09-04-2008, 03:39 PM

Remote Support:

Apple Remote Desktop, or VNC is fine. There is also Team Viewer which would require a site license.

Domain:

Macs can access a windows domain without OS X server but will not have any group policy applied for obvious reasons. OS X server will aid in file storage of native mac formats as well as aid in desktop management. If the Macs are 10.5 you can use /Applications/Utilities/Directory Utility to bind the Macs to the Domain. Keep in mind that is the computer OU you are affecting.

Anti Virus:

Sophos, ClamX or eTrust

09-04-2008, 03:40 PM

Blimey MacsWork was giving great advice at exactly the same time