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IT Admin on MBP 13"

PLjelly

PLjelly

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 21, 2019
7
3
Gdańsk, Poland
Hey everyone !!

I'm looking for a new MacBook Pro w/touchbar to my daily job as a IT admin/IT specialist I have doubts about what RAM should I choose... 8GB vs 16GB?

Is enough 8GB to use apps for developing?

I will use things like virtual machine (rarely) only for testing scripts, most of the time i will use RDP connections to win machines and TeamViewer.

Does anyone have any experience using mac to administrate?

I know.... as IT guy i should now which one to choose but i used a lot windows ultrabooks etc. so this will by my first MacBook.

Thanks for reply!
 
Look 8GB is more than enough most of the time.

I use a Windows and Ubuntu VM and my memory pressure is usually at 80-85%. Only upgrade to 16GB if you are indeed gonna use it.

I'm an It Specialist and work as a SAP Basis, hence requiring 2 VMs.
 
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Yeah, 8GB is plenty, unless you need to go crazy with docker or VMs. It’s also enough for development tools (depending on what you do).
 
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I thought that 8GB will not be enough ...
My daily use programs:
Wireshark
Winbox
VMware vSphare
VMware Workstation
TeamViewer
RDP
UniFi
WinSCP
IP Scanner's
And sometimes SketchUp
And obviously Office :)
 
PLjelly said:
I thought that 8GB will not be enough ...
My daily use programs:
Wireshark
Winbox
VMware vSphare
VMware Workstation
TeamViewer
RDP
UniFi
WinSCP
IP Scanner's
And sometimes SketchUp
And obviously Office :)
Click to expand...

Want an honest opinion? Go with 8Gb and save the cash and try to use it for the first 5 days. If you have any memory pressure at 95% exchange for the model with 16GB.

Just don’t forget to buy directly from a Apple.

Like I said I have a Windows VM using 3GB and a Ubuntu one with 2GB.. Leaving the rest for Mac OS.

I connect 2 dual 4k displays to it and it runs fine despite hiccups due to the iGPU.

I’m one of the few people here in this forum that pushes its base i5 dual core, 8GB package to the absolute limit and I have very few issues.

I do however have to keep fans at 60% while doing all of this otherwise temps rise up above 50c
 
macOS is pretty heavy on RAM usage.. get 16 GB because you can’t upgrade RAM on 13”.. shame on Apple
 
PLjelly said:
I thought that 8GB will not be enough ...
My daily use programs:
Wireshark
Winbox
VMware vSphare
VMware Workstation
TeamViewer
RDP
UniFi
WinSCP
IP Scanner's
And sometimes SketchUp
And obviously Office :)
Click to expand...


I would get 16 GB, reason, future proofing your Mac, it's also better for resale.
I have 2 Macs (actually 5 but 3 of them are retired), both with 16 GB, my daily driver is a Mac Mini, right now 11 GB is used and I am not an IT guy nor a very heavy User, I do use plenty of tabs in Safari, sometimes 50 or more.

MrGunnyPT said:
Want an honest opinion? Go with 8Gb and save the cash and try to use it for the first 5 days. If you have any memory pressure at 95% exchange for the model with 16GB.

Just don’t forget to buy directly from a Apple.

Like I said I have a Windows VM using 3GB and a Ubuntu one with 2GB.. Leaving the rest for Mac OS.

I connect 2 dual 4k displays to it and it runs fine despite hiccups due to the iGPU.

I’m one of the few people here in this forum that pushes its base i5 dual core, 8GB package to the absolute limit and I have very few issues.

I do however have to keep fans at 60% while doing all of this otherwise temps rise up above 50c
Click to expand...

Memory management is done really well in macOS, so 8 GB would do, but 16 GB would be better in a professional job.
The reason you might think 8 GB is enough is because of SSD's in macs, writing to VM is much faster on an SSD instead of a HD, that makes it less obvious that you need more RAM.
My opinion is that 16 GB would be better, for the reasons I said above...faster, resale and future proofing.
 
Last edited:
8GB is fine for that workload. If you’re paying for the system, go with 8GB. If employer is paying for it, Mac’s it out.
 
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15” is a little bit too big for me
I finished up buying MBP 13” i5 4x 1.4 GHz, 16 GB of RAM and 256 SSD (touchbar and 2TB 3 ports) i hope that 256 SSD + 2TB iCloud + 4TB of Nas will be enought
 
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