A Mac can tap into an OS X Server using any of the three services: AFP, SMB, or WebDAV. However, using AFP is going to be the most native means to access file servers of any ilk, including those running on OS X Server. When accessing shares from a Mac, you can specify which protocol to use in the address that is entered. If no protocol is specified, then OS X will by default use AFP (see, it is already the most native protocol).

The simplest way to connect to an AFP share is to use the sidebar from any Finder screen. In smaller networks, servers accessible to the client will appear (a result of Bonjour). Highlight the server and any network shares that are accessible to guests will appear, as well as buttons to Connect As… and Share the screen of the server (Figure 3-4). Click on Connect As… to establish a connection to the server, and when prompted, provide a valid username and password using the Registered User field. Use the “Remember this password in my keychain” checkbox to keep the password in the keychain of the current user’s profile. Then click on the Connect button and the list of shares in the Finder screen will change to include all the newly authenticated user has access to.

To connect to an AFP share manually, use the Go menu from the Finder and click on Connect to Server (or Command-K if you want to use keystrokes). At the Connect to Server screen, enter the name of the server in the Server Address field. Once entered, use the plus sign (“+”) to add the server into the list of Favorite Servers (very helpful to users that access the server frequently). Remove servers from the Favorite Servers list by highlighting them and then clicking on the Remove button. Once the entry is in the Favorites, click on the Connect button to establish a connection to the server.

Figure 3-4. Connecting to a share

Setting up Mac clients is about as easy as you get. But as mentioned earlier, Windows computers can connect to the Mac OS X Server as well, using SMB. To establish a connection from a Windows computer, let’s begin by clicking on the Windows icon (aka the Start menu) and then typing run in the Search programs and files field. Provided the Run program is the first item to appear in the list of found applications, click on it or simply hit the Enter key.

At the run dialog, provide the computer with the IP address or name of your server (if names don’t work you should always be able to just use the IP address) preceded by a \ as can be seen in Figure 3-5.

Figure 3-5. Connecting from Windows

If the computer finds the server, you will then be prompted for the username and password at the Network Password field. If you would like for the computer to remember the password, click on the Remember Password checkbox. Enter the username and password from the server that you would like to use and then click OK.

If the password works, you should then be looking at a list of shares that the account that authenticated has access to. If you are only connecting one time, you can go ahead and double-click to open each. However, if you will be connecting frequently, then go ahead and right-click on the share and select the option “To map a network drive.” At the Map Network Drive screen, choose a drive letter (usually toward the end of the alphabet is a good choice, as the letters at the beginning of the alphabet are typically used for disk drives connected directly to the computer). Once you have picked a drive letter, click on the Finish button. Then use the sidebar of any Windows Explorer screen to choose the newly mapped drive under the Computer section as seen in Figure 3-6.

Figure 3-6. Accessing a mapped drive

There are a number of AFP and/or SMB clients for the iPad and iPhone. But the future of iOS is all about WebDAV. WebDAV is a set of file sharing methods based on the same protocol that powers the Web: HTTP. Apple loves web standards (as you’ll notice when we look at iCal and Address Book servers), and seems to be dropping support for traditional file sharing protocols (e.g., FTP and NFS) in favor of newer web-based protocols, including WebDAV. Previously, we looked at setting up a share to work via WebDAV. Here, we will look at configuring an iPhone to access a WebDAV share.

While the future is bright for WebDAV, iOS doesn’t currently support WebDAV natively. In other words, you need “an app for that.” A quick search for WebDAV on the App Store in iOS results in a number of results. For this example, we’re going to use the free app, WebDAV Nav. To use it to connect to a share, do a search on the App Store, then download, install, and open WebDAV Nav. Once open, click on the plus sign (“+”) and then provide:

Figure 3-7. Connecting from an iPad with WebDAV NAV

Once ready, click Save to commit these changes. Then tap on the name of the server provided to see a list of shares and the data within the shares. You can then open files with apps and save files to the clipboard and paste them into the file server as needed.

Connecting to a file server from outside the network that server resides in can be as easy or as complicated as security policies allow. If you don’t mind connections being made directly to the server from outside of the firewall, then one need only forward a port (or some ports) from the IP that comes into the environment to the server. Doing so is a feature built into every router sold and is usually as easy as editing an access control list of some sort. But before doing so, it is important to know what ports need to be forwarded.

Apple servers can use a variety of ports. AFP, SMB, and WebDAV all use different ports because they are different protocols. By default, AFP uses port 548, SMB uses port 445, and WebDAV uses port 80. These aren’t constants though. For example, the AFP port can be changed to 549 using the following serveradmin command:

serveradmin settings afp:afpTCPPort = 549

For further information on which ports are used in various scenarios, see the Well Known TCP and UDP Ports Used By Apple Products knowledge base document TS1629.