Setting up Lightroom2 on large network?

[Messiah Khan]

I wonder if any of you guys/girls can figure this one for me. I want to run Lightroom 2 in our digital lab here at uni, both for teaching and student/staff use. There will be about 30-40 Mac Pros all set up on the network, with 100+ users all wanting to a access their images and library file as easy as possible. Problem is, Lightroom won't let you save the Lrcat file on a network drive! Even though I could have fibrechannel direct to a dedicated server, the program won't let me. Is there any way around this?

Or is there any ideas of how to set the system up so it is as easy and reliable as possible. I could ask everyone to use external hardrives/memory sticks to save the library file to, but if this gets corrupted, there is no backup (Unlike the RAID and timed backup of a server). Or the file could be used locally, then manually uploaded and downloaded from the server each time they log on, but this is really annoying and fiddly. Id really like a system where the users can log on to their account (Which connects via Active Directory if that has any relevance), load up lightroom and be faced with their images and their catalogue, no matter which computer they are on. Any ideas?

 

[Goliath]

What type of server are you using?

 

[ichabod crane]

I read somewhere that lightroom requires the Lrcat file to be located on a local drive which I guess doesn't help. I did find this blog which has a work around but its a little clumsy Lightroom 2 On a network and he also mentions the same as you in using a pen drive!

 

[Mint_Sauce]

Does LR3 Beta allow network saving? If it's purely for people playing around and learning LR then this could be an option?

EDIT: Apparently no; the beta has no network support.

 

[GeX]

anyway of tricking the OS into thinking that the drives are local instead of networked?

what about letting them use it locally, and then as part of a log off script - have it copy the lib file onto the server for safe keeping - then when they log back on, it copies it back to the local machine?