mac mini questions

[Kando]

The photo teacher at school is looking to get a storage solution that all of her classes can access while in school. Currently there are 6 imacs and 10 mac laptops, she is planning on getting more of both over the next couple of years. Right now there is a networked external hard drive, but it sometimes has problems when all of the computers are trying to access the photos at the same time.

Would a mac mini set up as a server be a better option?
Since the school system uses a proxy server for internet access, would it be possible for the teacher to access the mini from outside of the school?
Would there be a problem with the students accessing their work at the same time? What if the number of machines doubles?

Thanks for any answers or ideas.

[jamsen]

To use the Mac Mini as a web server you’ll need a few things. First, you’ll need to be able to reach the Mini from outside your network. You can accomplished this by getting a free account at DynDNS. You can also pick from a few free domains, most of them pretty terrible. You’ll then need to download and install their free IP updater client. This small app runs in the background and updates your dynamic IP to DynDNS. This way, when you type in your chosen domain name, your DynDNS account will always know to send the request to the correct IP and get the Mac Mini.

[Kando]

Found a solution that seems to work better than using a mini. With more research we found that you can only have 10 connections to a shared drive at one time. With 16 computers for the kids and the teacher the first 10 were fine and the last 7 were out of luck. The teacher bought Mac server and I installed it on the imac with the external drive. Now all of the computer can access the drive at once and the random printing problems seem to have been resolved too.

Talk about annoying, only 10 at a time!

Thanks for clearing up the mini question.