Small Machines as Servers
on 01.28.05, 08:26am in embedded, mac, windows • comments (4)
This week, Cringely talks about the Mac Mini and its potential as a small server. Personally, I see this applying to both the PC and Mac worlds: Small form factor machines are great for servers.
From the article: "For us little guys, the Mac mini is the absolute perfect server. I’m hooking up two identical external drives to each Mac mini (total of four), each two set up as a RAID 1. (Each drive is slightly bigger than the mini.) The chances of losing data via disk failure are astronomically low this way. And if a motherboard crashes, I can swap in the other box — I have a $500 hot-backup OF THE WHOLE MACHINE. I have a complete server ‘closet’ that fits in less than a cubic foot. It’s quiet. It’s got a redundant RAID built-in. It’s easy to administer and set up. I share a monitor and keyboard with my main workstation, so I don’t have any extra clutter."
For the longest time, I had my website, media server and file storage running on a small box in the closet. It was completely silent, totally out of the way, and cheap to assemble:
- Asus Pundit ($135)
- 1.8ghz Celeron ($57)
- 512MB Ram ($62)
- 80GB HD ($62)
You can have a very capable, small, quiet server for $316.
JeffMc (January 28, 2005 @ 9:13 am)
I use my Mac mini as a replacement for the Linux server in the house. Plus i can now plug those 3 250GB LaCie drives into it, and unteather the Powerbook. Seems to work great. Just make usre you get a 512MB minimum memory config. The CPU speed is nto a big thing, unless you are using it as a computer server. I got the 1.42 Ghz version, because I have Xcode distribute the compiles.
Barry Dorrans (January 28, 2005 @ 10:23 am)
I’ve been thinking about a NAS for a while, I’ve been tempted by the Kuro box - http://www.revogear.com/ (add your own drive and away you go) until I saw Buffalo’s newest toy coming out next month.
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97&categoryid=19
1Tb NAS for an estimated $999
Hubba hubba!
Frank McPherson (January 31, 2005 @ 4:21 pm)
Steve, could one add things to the configuration to turn it into a Windows Media Center PC? BTW, I have a Linksys Network Storage Link sharing out an external 160 GB Maxtor drive acting as my main file server, which of course is mucho quieter than the PC server it replaced and which I built.
Steve (February 1, 2005 @ 7:18 am)
I’ve tried using the Pundit for MCE - the onboard video is too slow. It really needs an AGP card, otherwise it would make a killer MCE.