My wife and I have a mixed Windows and Mac household. A couple years ago I purchased a HP MediaSmart server with Windows Home Server on it. HP provided software to get Time Machine on Leopard to work with the server. It was a pain to get working in Snow Leopard, but we did manage it. Now, it's completely busted in Lion, and the sparsebundle method to use a network share is also busted.
My question is, what should I do?
I'm not keen on the $300 entry fee for an Apple Time Capsule since I've already got this server and two N wifi access points. I would love it if there were a way to run an AFP server on the MediaSmart box, but the only options I've seen there are enterprise class and ridiculously expensive. I'm not opposed to putting Ubuntu on the MediaSmart if that helps since HP abandoned MediaSmart and Microsoft barely remembers it has a WHS product.
My fallback plan is to just buy a cheap external hard drive and use it. I don't like that because inevitably we won't get around to plugging it in on a regular basis and making backups.
Best Answer
Netatalk 2.2 supports AFP 3.3 and so Time Machine will work with it, but you'll need to use a POSIX host.
In case anyone is interested, I installed VMware Server on the MediaSmart box, downloaded and ran a copy of TurnKey Linux (the Core app), and installed and configured Netatalk on it. This will work for now until Apple breaks it again.