Hi. I'm thinking about using my good old MacPro 5,1 as a Time Machine backup server in my network. Can you recommend this? Will it be woke-up when one of the other Macs try you start a backup? Thanks for any help and advice in advance.
I have never been able to get my MacPros to wake on network access, but I do run a lot of software which might interfere. Why don't you try it out? Just be aware that a 5,1 is an energy hog.
But the MM uses like 6W when idle so it wasn't a big deal. I don't think I'd want to keep a cheesegrater on 24x7 just for occasional file server duty.
Even picking up an older AirPort Extreme (not to use as router) with a USB hard drive attached may be a more reliable solution if you cannot find a compatible network attached drive.
I don't know how you guys are configuring things, but I've run (and still run) Time Machine service on everything from Mac Minis to XServes to every model of Mac Pro in enterprise environments and they've never skipped a beat. This is usually as a convenience feature in conjunction with CCC or other backup solution.
My experience is that wake on lan issues are actually caused by some combination of Finder & bon jour screwing up. Use static IPs and everything works as advertised.
Do your own math on power costs - the price and satisfaction of working with what you have may well offset a bit of savings.