Everybody Staze…

In late January, I was able to upgrade my server to a Mac Mini Server. This is a pretty sweet little box. 2 500GB HDs, 4GB of ram, Intel C2D 2.53ghz. No optical drive, but that’s fine with me, since you can use remote drive, or purchase one of the USB optical drives for the MacBook Air.

Initial setup was quite easy, once I found a copy of “Remote Install” to run on my PowerMac G5. This utility is basically “NetBoot” in an extremely simple interface. It allows the Mini Server to netboot the install DVD. I then changed the HDs to be in a RAID1, and installed 10.6. That took a bit, but other than that, it was quite painless.

bonnie++ reports look like:
/usr/local/sbin/bonnie++ -d / -s 8G -u root:wheel -qfb
server.example.com,8G,,,58807,12,27984,5,,,110101,8,212.3,0,16,12352,59,+++++,+++,
8137,47,543,5,+++++,+++,231,3

Which, isn’t bad at all for dual 5200rpm drives. The machine shipped with two Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02.

Upgrading from the previous server (a Powerbook G4, 1.67ghz, 2GB of RAM, and a single 80GB HD) to this new machine was, to put it simply, breathtaking. The average load on this new machine is consistently less than 0.05, yet on the old PB, it was often upwards of 0.50. So, by that regard, about 10x the performance (realistically, probably more like 6-8x as fast). =) Also, there is a noticeable improvement in performance of the Drobo. I’m pretty sure the FW800 port on the Powerbook is flakey. Added bonus is the 64-bit nature of the new machine… which is really quite nice (really the main time I’ve encountered it is playing with bigint’s in PHP). Also means I can upgrade the ram to 8GB when the prices come down on DDR3 SO-DIMMs.

Add to that the fact that I can now run 10.6, and am not suck with the PPC OS’s, it’s great.

The only thing Apple could have done better? Remove the Mini-DVI port and add a second gig-E port. If they did that, I could probably start using these things at work rather than Xserves. =) Especially if I had an iSCSI SAN.

The machine is very quite. I can only hear the HD’s access occasionally. The fan is near silent. The Mini really is one of the greatest computers Apple has ever designed/made. Other than the dumb single RAM slot the PPC mini’s had, they all have been great machines. I still have a 1st Generation Mac Mini running strong (1.25ghz G4, 1GB RAM, single 80GB HD, 10.5.8 client) at work (it runs Intermapper to monitor various devices around the building. Works great).

Verdict: 9.0/10. Only changes would be the second gig-E port, and it would be sweet if you could buy without the OS (if this was for work, I wouldn’t need even MORE copies of 10.6 (already have spares)). I’d give it a full 10, but I can’t think of anything that’s perfect. =)

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment.

*Image lifted from Apple website.

Not sure if anyone knows, but previous to now, my server hosting this site was a Powerbook G4, 1.67ghz, with 2GB of ram, and an 80GB HD.

It ran 10.5 Server, and all and all, ran it pretty well. I was using Marc Liyanage’s PHP build (http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/PHP/), and that worked fairly well. Though, the 5.3.0 install was kinda odd. This computer also served as my weather station machine, file server, power monitor, etc.

Anyway, it worked, but it was rather slow to do any real crunching on (like elaborate SQL queries, etc). Or for that matter, running mod_deflate on my site. And while it’s power usage was pretty low, and it had a built-in UPS (it’s battery) it wasn’t as good as it could be. Also, had to add Cardbus USB card to add additional ports, and making any kind of timelapse movies from my webcam images was out of the question. So, it worked, but it was pretty loaded (load averaged about 20-40%).

So, all that in mind, Tara and I have been selling random crap on eBay the last few weeks, and managed to build up enough between that,

and me cashing out some vacation from work, to buy a brand new Mac Mini Server (also traded in my old personal powerbook for some store credit).

All and all, it’s sweet. It’s significantly faster, smaller, uses less power, and is more apt to be a server than an old powerbook. =) Sure, the picture to the left makes it look pretty messy (power supply, Keyspan USB-Serial adapter, serial cable from that to weather station), usb cable to webcam, usb cable to TED, firewire to Drobo), but I’m going to clean that up and put it all up on shelves above my desk. And yeah, the pictures in the background are of me as a kid.

Load average on the new system, about 2-4%. Not to mention, the RAM doubling in the new system (with the actual potential to go to 8GB at some point in the future. And being able to run 10.6 server, and I would imagine, 10.7 server as well (whenever it ships). It’s a speedy machine. I RAID1′d the two drives, so I’m not nearly as worried about a drive crashing at this point.

And since I never really talked about it, the Drobo is pretty nice as well. It’s not as fast as it could be, but that’s really not much of an issue. It’s mainly for storing media that we watch on the PS3, or laptops. So it’s doesn’t need to be a rocket, it just needs to work, and be reliable. Right now I’ve got two WD15EADS drives (1.5TB “Green” drives). They’re pretty nice, though I worry about the head parking overly aggressively. As you can see, it’s about 70% full, so I’ll probably buy another drive in the nearish future which will give me 3TB of storage. Not too bad given my homegrown only had 1TB. I’ll do more of a write up on the Drobo in the next week or two. I wanted to wait to write it up until I got the new server, as it acted kinda odd sometimes when it was hooked to the old Powerbook.

Here’s to a new week.