10.6.6 - Core i3-550 - OSX86 Server

[Livestrong2109]

Specs:
Mother Board: GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3
CPU: Intel Core i3-550 Clarkdale 3.2GHz
Ram: (2X2GB)-8GB DDR3 1333MHZ OCZ
Video: Nvidia 8400GT <- (Yea I bought the wrong Mboard... whats the point of the Clarkdale now.)
Case: 12 HD-Bay Rack Mount
Hard Drives:
SATA1: 250GB 2.5mm 5400RPM WD
SATA2: 1TB 3.5mm 5400RPM Samsung Green
SATA3: 1TB 3.5mm 5400RPM Samsung Green
SATA4: 1TB 3.5mm 5400RPM Samsung Green
SATA4: 750GB 3.5mm 5400RPM Samsung Green

Optical Drives:
SATA5: DVD-RAM DL+- DVD Burner
PATA1: DVD-ROM DL+- DVD Burner
PATA2: DVD-ROM DL+- DVD Burner
EIDE: 2.5mm Floppy Drive <--(Why I couldn't tell you. I just felt like it..! )

Details:
I built this little rig to be power efficient and handed it the job of serving files, FTP, Apache, PS3 Media Server, Web Design, ECT. Its a great rig and while not the craziest thing on earth it does the job of providing me with a $400 rack mounted OSX server. The cause for the 2.5mm boot disk was to save power and reduce heat. All drives power off when not in use, and I figured a 2.5mm drive running most of the time would save me some money. The Power supply is rated 80% Gold.

So far it has a 50 day uptime and hasn't crashed once. Which is more than I can say for my power hungry MacPro G5 that just crapped out. It can be some what laggy on some apps but I blame it on my unwillingness to install an video injector and the use of a 2.5mm drive with long seek times.

Anyone looking to build a mac server I highly recommend this build. Just use a Motherboard with Onboard VGA matched with a Clarkdale. If you go with a Lynnfield you will need a Dedicated graphic processor, but you gain a faster memory controller and added L3 Catch. There is however also Sandybridge but make sure you have a build with the corrected chipset as the first batch have SATA Integrity Issues.

 

[Vendetta]

Its a great rig and while not the craziest thing on earth it does the job of providing me with a $400 rack mounted OSX server.

But SL Server is $499. :?

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC588 ... TkwNDE3ODA

Anyone looking to build a mac server I highly recommend this build. Just use a Motherboard with Onboard VGA matched with a Clarkdale. If you go with a Lynnfield you will need a Dedicated graphic processor, but you gain a faster memory controller and added L3 Catch.

Integrated graphics don't work with Hackintosh.

 

[steev182]

So it's $899 (if the OP is using OSX Server, OSX can do all of those tasks without needing to be the server version) for a rack mount server with 3.75TB storage compared to $999 for a Mac Mini server with 2 500GB disks.

I don't see much point in 3 Optical drives, but apart from that, it sounds like a good home server.

 

[Stork]

So what makes this better than a NAS? I have a Synology 110j and can do all of that. It's very Mac friendly. Although it's single disk system, I have a 2TB WD20EARS hard drive in it. It serves my web page (externally and internally), files, Time Machine/Capsule backup, music and video. It cost me $250 including the hard drive a year ago. Multiple disk NAS's run about $150 per disk capability w/o the disks (it's not linear, but close). A Synology 411+ (street) cost $650 plus disks.

Check the Small Net Builder site for reviews on NAS's. You'd be surprised what you can do with the Synology, QNAP and other NAS's.

 

[Vendetta]

Not to mention that server capabilities will apparently be built into the standard edition of Lion.

 

[mystery2006]

For a high-speed server I'd recommend using an Areca SAS/SATA RAID controller (supported natively by SL) like the ARC-1231ML, the ARC-1680 or the newer ARC-1880. I have an ARC-1680ix-8 in my Mac Pro (2008) and it's extremly fast (transfer speed up to 1 Gbyte/s with 4 Seagate 15.000 rpm SAS drives).

If you have a manageable switch supporting link aggregation, adding a Sonnet Presto Gigabit Server NIC card is also a very good idea. I'm using link aggregation with the Mac Pro and my ReadyNAS 2100 and it really makes a difference.

Compared to a NAS with similar storage capacity and performance, a custom build server is more flexible, offers better expandibility, is usually (a lot) cheaper when you go to high capacity storage and has a nicer managing interface (Mac OS X Server).

On the other hand, it takes a lot more space (if you don't use a 1U rackmount chassis).

Roland