Server settings

Apple’s OS X Server app enables you to easily configure its services – generally, you only need to make a few choices about how a service runs and then flick a switch to turn it on.

By their nature, the Time Machine and Caching services – the two services that are most applicable to home use – might require a large amount of disk space, so on each one’s settings page you’ll find an option to choose a different drive on which to store their data.

There’s also an option to relocate data for other services which don’t explicitly provide one on their page. To do this, click the server’s name at the top of the Server app’s left pane, click the Settings tab in the right pane, and then click the Edit button to the right of Service Data. When you choose another drive here, your server will temporarily shut down its services and then copy existing data to the new location, so if you need to migrate data to a new disk, choose your time wisely to avoid disruption to people who depend on the server.

Although OS X Server makes it simple to get services such as Caching and Time Machine up and running, you might need to do extra reading to configure it if your network setup is more esoteric. Apple’s Advanced Administration guide (http://bit.ly/mf_ advancedserver) can help with that.