Looking for help in setting up home network

[trifona]

We've had a 2007(!!!) iMac soldiering on uninterrupted all these years. We finally upgraded to a new Mac but instead of replacing the old girl with a new iMac we decided to add some portability; enter the new 2019 16" i9 MBP that I'm typing on.

We intend to keep the old iMAC up and running in the home office. Right now it's connected to a dedicated time machine backup drive.

Wondering if it makes sense to setup all of our docs and media content onto a dedicated network drive that both the iMac, MBP, and AppleTV can access, and how to coordinate backups of both Macs either via TimeMachine of another protocol.

I've got a decade of computing to catch-up to and I have no idea what kind of setups and hardware are the preferred goto these days.

 

[techwarrior]

So, in general, ATV can access iTunes on Macs (or PCs), but not directly to network shares. There are apps, like Plex, Infuse and others that can access shared drives\folders without iTunes.

A shared iTunes library can be stored on a network, or attached drive, but iTunes needs to be running on one of the Macs for ATV to access content. If your content is not too extensive, keep it on one of the Macs and\or attached drives and set the library to the shared drive\folder in the other Mac. Tun on iTunes Home Sharing to make the library accessible across the LAN.

File sharing between Macs is simple enough, no burning need for NAS. The file sharing in Mac allows USB connected drives to be shared if internal storage is inadequate.

The easiest way to do backups to a network drive is with Airport Extreme or Time Capsule. These are discontinued so you would have to look for used or refurb units. Some routers support USB drives with Time machine support. Or, you can go with a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device like sinology, QNAP or others.