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Any Mini Server Owners Here?

M

maghemi

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 7, 2009
317
0
Melbourne Australia
Are there any mini owners here?

I'm thinking about getting one of these. I was thinking about trying to find a second hand 1st gen intel xserve, but they're like trying to find a needle in a hay stack, and when you do find one, you get stung big time for them.

I want it basically to use as a central store for Time Machine backups (with external Firewire drives etc), Email stuff, and File Serving. I'm sure there would be lots more I could do with it once I learn how to use SL:Server.

Financially they make sense once you try and buy a standard mini and then buy SL:Server. But from a usage point of view are they any good?

I'd like to hear from owners what they think of them.
 
maghemi said:
Are there any mini owners here?

I'm thinking about getting one of these. I was thinking about trying to find a second hand 1st gen intel xserve, but they're like trying to find a needle in a hay stack, and when you do find one, you get stung big time for them.

I want it basically to use as a central store for Time Machine backups (with external Firewire drives etc), Email stuff, and File Serving. I'm sure there would be lots more I could do with it once I learn how to use SL:Server.

Financially they make sense once you try and buy a standard mini and then buy SL:Server. But from a usage point of view are they any good?

I'd like to hear from owners what they think of them.
Click to expand...
You don't need os x server for serving files at home and centralizing time machine. Normal os x will do exactly the same. Are you planning to use mini as your own e-mail server? I would not recommend it. It is far too risky to run e-mail service in just one server.
 
I use two 1TB Seagate FreeAgent Desk (mac ver) on FW800 daisy chained. One is for client time machine, one for server time machine.

This is just a home setup... wifey and I each have uMBP's and three kids share an iMac. Two iPhones, two iPod Touches, Apple TV, AEBS... all Apple ecosystem. We all enjoy our digital cameras and like to share. We share about 58 GB music, 240 GB movies, App store stuff.

This server will replace my dot mac and the wife's family dot mac.... (250/yr) and so far as I can tell, the only part of dot mac that I will be without is the "find my iPhone" feature.

We registered our own domain for web and I'm running the email server. Services and shared documents are on the boot Server HD, all music, movies stream/share off of the 2nd hard drive.

Upon boot, it auto logs on to a standard account and starts iTunes and iPhoto, both as family shares. I have a card reader attached to the server and dump all pictures from five cameras strait to the server, available to everybody. I make any iTunes purchases thru the server's iTunes and from there they go anywhere we need.

All the iTunes and iPhoto stuff can be done with SL client and doesn't take any special advantage of SL Server.

So... performance is relative and I'm not stressing the FW800 interface much. Time Machine backups don't care.

I had been wanting to learn SL Server for professional reasons and Apple came out with this product at just the right time for me.

This thing has really helped free up a bunch of my time doing family data schlepping chores... I like it alot.

YMMV, FWIW, JM02 and so on.
 
iPave said:
You don't need os x server for serving files at home and centralizing time machine.
Click to expand...

No I know that, but I was reading up on the features in the server version, and there are some that I'd like to have a play with that could be handy for us.

Are you planning to use mini as your own e-mail server? I would not recommend it.
Click to expand...

No I wouldn't be running it as our own email server. But I'd like to try and centralise email storage on the network as it were.
 
I bought one.

My primary goals were to centralize time machine backups - works great, and to set up share calendaring - hasn't worked so well.

SL Server is more difficult to use than standard SL, that is for sure.

The machine itself is very nice, though not having eSATA irritates me.

I hung an OWC raid unit off it and have 4TB for file storage.

I would love to hear more about how you're using it to replace your .me accounts. I have read about setting up web server using dynamic IP addressing, but it seems over my head.

I bought SL server for dummies, but even that gets confusing about setting up web server.

But my main reason to purchase was to have a small machine that could be left on and would back up my wife's MPB over the wireless and my kids computers as well. For that, it's worked beautifully. Overkill, but I value simplicity and reliability over price.
 
I want to use my Mini for networked time machine backups as well. I have a Drobo and sharing everything. How do I set it up?
 
Well if you have the server os installed, it's in the time machine pane of server preferences.

If you're just running regular leopard/SL then you have to set up file sharing and then on your other machine browse and select the shared disk.
 
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