Latest Features

How do we improve upon the industry's most trusted solution for seamless file sharing and printing between Mac desktops and Windows servers? Find out with ExtremeZ-IP 6.0.

ExtremeZ-IP 6.0 offers an even greater set of innovative, customer-centric solutions to Mac/Windows compatibility, connectivity and scalability along with the performance youve come to expect. ExtremeZ-IP 6.0 brings native Microsoft DFS support to Mac OS X 10.4 and later, a key request of many organizations that are deploying Macs in the enterprise. ExtremeZ-IP 6.0 supports DFS Namespaces by providing the full virtual DFS Namespace access to Mac clients in a seamless, intuitive manner.

Version 6.0 also supports Apples innovative Network Spotlight full content searching feature that was introduced in Mac OS X 10.5. Mac users connected to an ExtremeZ-IP 6.0 file server can type a phrase and immediately get back a list of all the files on the server that contain that phrase. This allows users to find the files they need for without having to waste time and money looking through 100s or 1,000s of files.

ExtremeZ-IP 6.0 is available to any customer with a current Maintenance & Support or Enterprise License contract.

Support for Microsoft DFS Namespaces and Home Directories

Native Microsoft DFS Namespace support has been one of the most requested features for ExtremeZ-IP. As Macs are more accepted in the IT environment, it is essential that they fully support and integrate with the Microsoft DFS infrastructure that is already in place.

There are many benefits that come with using DFS such as:

• Providing end users with a single view into the file sharing space.
• Providing replication and failover in the case of server failure.
• Distributing data geographically so that users get better performance by working with local copies.
• Giving administrators the flexibility to reconfigure their file server infrastructure without retraining users.

As companies with Macs look to deploy DFS in order to improve the manageability, reliability, and performance of their file server infrastructure, ExtremeZ-IP, support for DFS is critical to providing "compatibility without compromise":

• Provides full virtual DFS Namespace access to Mac clients in a seamless and intuitive manner on Mac OS X 10.4 and later.
• Supports full DFS replication and site costing.
• Provides support for Mac clients to DFS-based network or portable home directories when authenticating against Active Directory at login (DFS Home Directory support requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later).
• Supports DFS referrals to both AFP (ExtremeZ-IP) servers or native SMB servers for mixed environments.
• Only solution on the market that allows you to maintain AFP file sharing protocol in a DFS environment.
• Supports Windows 2008 clusters.

*ExtremeZ-IP DFS Virtual Root support is only available in the ExtremeZ-IP "Enterprise Solutions" class licenses; Unlimited-Client, Cluster or Enterprise License (ELP). However, any license of ExtremeZ-IP can be a DFS target. Click here to request an ELP quote.

Supports Apples Innovative Network Spotlight

With the explosion of documents and files that are stored on file servers, users have a difficult time finding the information they need to get their work done. Users may spend a significant amount of time looking for a particular file. This is especially true with modern, media rich workflows, where there are many files and the files are large.

Apple and Microsoft have each come up with solutions to this problem – Network Spotlight for the Mac, and Windows Search from Microsoft. But to date, there has not been a way for Mac users to easily and quickly find their files on a Windows file server by searching for the content of those files.

Mac users connected to an ExtremeZ-IP file server can type a phrase and immediately get back a list of all the files on the server that contain that phrase. Full content searching is accomplished in ExtremeZ-IP by bringing the best of both worlds together for the user – Network Spotlight on the Mac, and Windows Search on the server.

• Only Windows Server solution on the market that allows full content searching from the Mac to a Windows-based file share.
• Allows users to find the files they need without wasting time browsing through 100s or 1,000s of files.
• Leverages enterprise-class security of Windows Search.

* Windows Cluster does not support Windows Search

* Requires activation of Microsoft Windows Search on the file server; please contact Group Logic if you want to index more than 1,000,000 files on a server.