I am the IT director at a small school and we have several CDs that I want to house in one location but make available for installation over the network. Does anyone have a method for setting up a CD server on Windows Server 2k3? Also, is there an easy way to copy the disk data to the server for ease of installation.

I found when I came in that we have spent a ton of money buying new/addtional CDs for our classroom software because no one knew where another one was or if we even had one.

Thanks

It is especially important for you to ensure you do not put yourself or the school in legal jeopardy before you do anything. Note you have two different ball games when talking "CD server" and "copy the disk data to the server". Copying the disk data is "making copies" and depending on the license agreements you (the school) agreed to when you started to use those CDs, it may be illegal to make copies (not for backup purposes), especially if you intend to put those copies on different computers, or allow access to multiple users.

Many license agreements are very liberal when it comes to educational use, but you need to verify. If the district has a legal department - tap them. I also note that software installed on servers is often volume licensed by user count - that is, if 100 users need access, you pay for a 100 user license. And the fun part is, every company does it differently, and products in the same company use different licensing rules for different products. So for each title, know you limits.

A CD server is a computer with lots of optical drives installed, each with a CD inserted. It would be networked with and the drives all shared. You did not mention how many disks we are talking about - a tall tower PC case might hold 7 drives, more disks require proprietary systems. See CD-ROM DVD-ROM Jukeboxes and Optical libraries for Archiving (read this for general information only - I know nothing of this company and make no recommendations one way or the other).

I suspect the school district is not exactly flush with money. Setting up a CD server for a small network would not be difficult - but if this network connects to the Internet, security trumps all and I would consider contracting an IT specialist - guessing, with this being a small school, IT Director of the school is but one hat you wear, and an extensive practical background in IT networking and security is probably not on your resume.