Mac as my office server

[vail3r]

I've currently got an old windows computer using Drive Pool as my file server in my office. I bought a MacBook last year and it's been great to occasionally take it to the garden or kitchen etc to work from and still be able to access everything.


One slight annoyance is that I can't get windows to share a printer with my Mac at all, I've tried everything and it just doesn't work and I've also has problems with the SMB shares being weird too. I've done a quick test with my old iMac and it all works perfectly so it got me wondering if I should switch to using a Mac. The only issue would be drive pool not being available for Mac. I'm not actually bothered about the drives being pooled too much although it's nice so I wondered if I could just set it up and use Carbon Copy Cloner to create my backups once a week or so.

Any thoughts?


All I want it to do is:

Work as my file server
be able to create backups of certain files between drives
be on pretty much 24/7 to backup to backblaze
used a Plex media server
sharing my printers so I can print from the other room is an added bonus

 

[ChrisD.]

Surely something such as Unraid, or a NAS would be much better for this?

Also what printers do you have? Mine is a few years old and just sits on Wi-Fi, I can print to it from any device also on Wi-Fi.

 

[vail3r]

Surely something such as Unraid, or a NAS would be much better for this?

Also what printers do you have? Mine is a few years old and just sits on Wi-Fi, I can print to it from any device also on Wi-Fi.

I have 8 printers in my office, 5 of them have ethernet ports so are on the network but 3 of them don't and they tend to be the one's I'd want to print to from another room. It's not the end of the world but it would just simplify things if I didn't have to come to my office and plug in to print everytime. Pretty outside of what most people have

I've never really had good experience with a NAS working well for me. Connection issues and raid not working were what made me switch to using a PC and a 5 bay enclosure.

I also currently RD into my windows PC and start uploads for we transfer etc directly from there rather than my laptop.

 

[visibleman]

Simple answer, no.
As @ChrisD. mentions, you would be better off with a NAS like Synology or QNap or, using Unraid/TrueNAS on your own hardware as Mac's now aren't particularly geared to act as servers especially if you need storage - you would have to use a DAS or external drives.

...I've also has problems with the SMB shares being weird too.

That's Apple's implementation of SMB (or CIFS), which is bad at best. AFP is the better bet but Apple have be phasing AFP out since Catalina and it isn't supported under MacOS file sharing - you can still connect to AFP shares (no idea how long that will stay) but MacOS's File Sharing doesn't support AFP shares.

I have 8 printers in my office, 5 of them have ethernet ports so are on the network but 3 of them don't and they tend to be the one's I'd want to print to from another room.

You need a print server for your USB printers to make them available via the network. Most NAS' support CUPS (MacOS uses it for it's printer sharing) which will likely solve the problem, otherwise there is print server hardware you can use.

 

[MrWhippy]

Surely you can make a print server out of a raspberry pi?

 

[visibleman]

Surely you can make a print server out of a raspberry pi?

Typically you would use CUPS, so anything like a RPI, (most) NAS or x86 system would do the trick. Although CUPS isn't the easiest of things to configure especially if it doesn't support your printer out-the-box.

Otherwise you should be able to share between Windows and MacOS and vice versa; you just need to set the printer under the LDP service.

 

[Quartz]

I have 8 printers in my office, 5 of them have ethernet ports so are on the network but 3 of them don't and they tend to be the one's I'd want to print to from another room.

Have you considered separating the file serving from the print sharing? Get an old NUC or cheap Windows box and just share the printers. For the file serving, look at a NAS - look at TrueNAS is you're building your own.