Mac Mini Server - Storage Options

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dmw16

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 29, 2004
Messages
141
Right now I am running an Intel SS4200 as my home file server, but since we've recently gotten rid of the last PC in our house I am thinking of switching to a Mac Mini to handle server duties.

The drive inside the mini won't do for holding my data so I am thinking that a RAID enclosure is the way to go. What would everyone suggest? I don't want to go too crazy price wise, but I'd like to have the option to run RAID5 and hold at least 4 drives.

Thanks.

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New Question:
I've opted for the Mac Mini Server and now I'm pondering backup storage options.

Often accessed data will be on the 2x500GB drives in the server bbut I want that data safe on another drive.

Option #1a
2 drive enclosure with 2x2TB drives in raid1.

Option #1b
Same as above but with the drive enclosure drives as independent volumes with one used to time machine the data in the server and the second used for additional storage for lesser used data.

Option #2
just get a 1TB Time Capsule. This is less storage but may be a lot easier.

I am leaning toasted 1B.

Thoughts?
 
Last edited:
dmw16 said:
Right now I am running an Intel SS4200 as my home file server, but since we've recently gotten rid of the last PC in our house I am thinking of switching to a Mac Mini to handle server duties.

The drive inside the mini won't do for holding my data so I am thinking that a RAID enclosure is the way to go. What would everyone suggest? I don't want to go too crazy price wise, but I'd like to have the option to run RAID5 and hold at least 4 drives.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

A drobo would be perfect, not sure what your budget is. The drobo is fast, and small and quiet.

I'm sure there are other products out there, Qnap is nice, but the drobo plays nicer and is better built.

Mac mini's are so nice! I'm actually working on a G41.42 right now adding 1gig of ram to start doing some more learning with osx server.

j'
 
eddieclayton said:
I have a buddy at work that's been using the OWC Mercury Pro QX2 and he likes it so far. I've been thinking about using one of my mini's and picking up the same enclosure. It's not too bad price wise if you bring your own drives (it's $299 empty).

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/
Click to expand...

I am leaning towards this unit. I was originally going to try to make my Intel SS4200 work but it continues to disappoint and not really provide the stability I want.

The thing with the QX2 is that I need to populate it with whatever drives I think I'm going to want right off the bat so that I can run RAID5. Not wanting to limit myself that probably means 1.5-2TB drives and getting 4 of those isn't going to be cheap.
 
dmw16 said:
I am leaning towards this unit. I was originally going to try to make my Intel SS4200 work but it continues to disappoint and not really provide the stability I want.

The thing with the QX2 is that I need to populate it with whatever drives I think I'm going to want right off the bat so that I can run RAID5. Not wanting to limit myself that probably means 1.5-2TB drives and getting 4 of those isn't going to be cheap.
Click to expand...

Sure it can be cheap for drives, just depends what models and size, if you want eh box to be efficient then you could get the WD green series, but if you want performance and heat get the black addition's.

green 1.5
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136495

green 2.0
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136494
 
Honestly, the Mini sucks for this purpose. I looked hard at trying to make a Mini my home NAS but the connectivity just isn't there. You end up buying an expensive external RAID enclosure. The SATA ports on these systems won't do a port multiplier so you have to buy an expensive intelligent external enclosure and then connect it via FireWire.... Put an E-SATA on the Mini and support multipliers and I'd buy one in a second.

And stay away from Drobo. Slow..unreliable.
 
NetJunkie said:
Honestly, the Mini sucks for this purpose. I looked hard at trying to make a Mini my home NAS but the connectivity just isn't there. You end up buying an expensive external RAID enclosure. The SATA ports on these systems won't do a port multiplier so you have to buy an expensive intelligent external enclosure and then connect it via FireWire.... Put an E-SATA on the Mini and support multipliers and I'd buy one in a second.

And stay away from Drobo. Slow..unreliable.
Click to expand...

There is a user on here who's has a mini server with a lot of storage and seems to be happy with it. However, the draw of the mini is the fact that it runs OSX and it isn't a Pro of XServe which are totally out of my budget.
 
dmw16 said:
There is a user on here who's has a mini server with a lot of storage and seems to be happy with it. However, the draw of the mini is the fact that it runs OSX and it isn't a Pro of XServe which are totally out of my budget.
Click to expand...

mac mini is perfect for a small business or home environment.

I have one sitting beside me running 10.4 server, runs great, nothing heavy on it, and have a 1tb fw400 drive connected to it. It's a play tool nothing special tho.

Trying to figure out how to setup the wiki and other things for internal playing at home.
 
I am thinking that I may need to move to a Mac Mini or similar because I don't think I can stream video to my AppleTV (new type) using the FireFly Media Server software that I have running on WHS.
 
I'm thinking about pulling the trigger on that QX2 unit and using it with one of my older mini's (1.2GHz G4) just to backup....my backup server. Might be a neat little setup to mess around with.
 
eddieclayton said:
I'm thinking about pulling the trigger on that QX2 unit and using it with one of my older mini's (1.2GHz G4) just to backup....my backup server. Might be a neat little setup to mess around with.
Click to expand...

I was digging the Drobo till I started reading reviews that were less than flattering. I am now leaning towards the QX2. I liked the fact that (in theory) the Drobo is constantly expandable where something like the QX2 requires that I populate it with all my drives up front.

The QX2 would probably be primary storage for a lot of my data and then put most-often accessed files on the internal drive of the Mini.
 
eddieclayton said:
I'm thinking about pulling the trigger on that QX2 unit and using it with one of my older mini's (1.2GHz G4) just to backup....my backup server. Might be a neat little setup to mess around with.
Click to expand...

I have two QX2 units, each populated with four 2TB drives. And they are a mirror of each other. I have 6TB of usable, redundant space. I can survive up to 5 out of 8 hard drive failures without losing data.

The enclosures run quietly, and I've had no problems in the few months I've owned them. There are a total of eight 2TB drives in the enclosures, all WD green power drives. But I had a mixture of other drives in there before, and the enclosures seemed to accept them just fine. I'm quite happy with them.
 
santaliqueur said:
I have two QX2 units, each populated with four 2TB drives. And they are a mirror of each other. I have 6TB of usable, redundant space. I can survive up to 5 out of 8 hard drive failures without losing data.

The enclosures run quietly, and I've had no problems in the few months I've owned them. There are a total of eight 2TB drives in the enclosures, all WD green power drives. But I had a mixture of other drives in there before, and the enclosures seemed to accept them just fine. I'm quite happy with them.
Click to expand...

Are they connected directly to your computer or are they served from a file server?
 
santaliqueur said:
I have two QX2 units, each populated with four 2TB drives. And they are a mirror of each other. I have 6TB of usable, redundant space. I can survive up to 5 out of 8 hard drive failures without losing data.

The enclosures run quietly, and I've had no problems in the few months I've owned them. There are a total of eight 2TB drives in the enclosures, all WD green power drives. But I had a mixture of other drives in there before, and the enclosures seemed to accept them just fine. I'm quite happy with them.
Click to expand...

Very cool setup, are you using OS X's software RAID to do the mirror? My current fileserver is a quad core intel (Q6600) running Leopard Server (got it for $25 from a coworker), thinking about using the G4 mini in its place since that should use a bit less power. Currently testing power consumption of the current server, seems to be about 105W at idle.
 
eddieclayton said:
Very cool setup, are you using OS X's software RAID to do the mirror?
Click to expand...

I'd be curious to know this too. I was looking at some of OWC's 2 drive enclosures and they don't support RAID1, but instead each drive can be a separate volume to OS X which I would then RAID from within the software.
 
I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the QX2, I'll post back with some thoughts on it after it arrives and I've gotten it all setup. Looking forward to using this in place of my big quad core box, should be much more power efficient (the mini is only drawing 12-16 watts)...my old setup is almost 200.
 
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