Apple Server software on a MacPro?

[RMPrepress]

Yes we are using 3 Netgear GS724T switches connected to a Cisco ISA570.
All static IP addresses throughout the entire building except for 3-4 laptops that are DHCP.

The copying of files is from a share to a share on the server.

[Ear]

Seems legit.

[Joe]

Copying to/from the same hard drive is going to be slower than copying form one drive to another but 15 seconds for a 15 mb file does seem excessive. Does it down it if you are the server copying it or only when using a Mac to copy from one share to the other? I think if you are at the Mac doing the copying it still has to traverse the network while doing the copy at the server would be a straight disk to disk copy.

[Possum]

Another thing to consider might be the inherent waste of money in using a MacPro with two expensive graphics cards in it that really won't be used much in server land. Unless you're talking about one of the older ones that you can tinker with, of course.

[Farabomb]

They actually sell rackmount Mac servers.

or at least they used to.

ETA: Only mention I found of a 1U server on apple's site was dated 2002. Guess they don't offer them anymore.

[Possum]

Yeah, they got out of the server business. The software is available in the App Store, I think. 

[Joe]

Yeah they haven't made the XServe in quite some time.

[RMPrepress]

That was 15 minutes to copy that 15mb folder, that is an extreme case but similar issues happen to often.

I was thinking of buying a higher end used MacPro from say 2012 and beefing up the storage with 2 or 3 SSD's from OWC and loading Yosemite on there along with the Server software from the Apple App Store....a lot cheaper than buying a Windows server!

[Farabomb]

That is the first time I've ever heard that a windows box would be more expensive than a Mac box. I don't think it's possible.

Buy a WS or server class MB, good PSU, a SSD for the system, a nice chunk of RAM, cheap case and some 15k drives for storage and RAID them for speed and redundancy. I can't see how that's more expensive than any Mac box with server specs.

[Joe]

I dunno. You can get a pretty decent Dell server (NEW) for the price of a refurbished MacPro.

[andyfest]

That was 15 minutes to copy that 15mb folder, that is an extreme case but similar issues happen to often.

I was thinking of buying a higher end used MacPro from say 2012 and beefing up the storage with 2 or 3 SSD's from OWC and loading Yosemite on there along with the Server software from the Apple App Store....a lot cheaper than buying a Windows server!

We switched from a Windows server to a Mac XServe to run our Nexus RIP back in '08. It's really just a beefed up Mac Pro running the XServe software. No regrets here - it's blazing fast and we have had no issues with it.

[mwc]

my solution for redundancy for our OSX server was to purchase 2- identical modern mac-minis (w/thunderbolt and SSD's). They have more than enough horsepower to serve all our files, w/5 to 10 people working files off the server all day long. (the redundant mini is my workstation, but I can fire up the server account that I set up, plug in our raid, and be back in business in case of a power supply or SSD failure...
Previous had a Xserve G4 with the Xraid box...it was a beast and it lasted a good 10years (only retired because the 'old' os on the xserve would not connect properly to Win7/Win8 boxes in our environment)

If you need a 1U option, there are many rackmount kits for the minis

[RMPrepress]

Thanks for all the replies....I think in 2015 we will make a switch to a 12 Core 2012 Mac Pro with 32GB RAM running OSX Server, time will tell.

[mattbeals]

32GB of RAM and 12 cores for a file server? What else do you plan on doing? Realistically the Dell hardware you have is good for several more years with a little bit of maintenance. Shut it down every once and a while and blow it out with shop air. Put it on a good APCC UPS with power conditioning (outputs a good noise free/clean 60Hz sine wave). So, you have a single drive that is the OS drive and a simple mirror that is the RAID. I'd say that's bit dangerous, but at least there is a mirror on the data. If you have 750GB of data on the server, and a 600GB RAID, then you have less than 600GB on the RAID for the data and at least 100GB of live data on the OS drive.

If you are having delays reading or writing there are a couple of things that could be at play. It could be PitStop Server is busy doing something and eating up CPU and I/O time. How many concurrent processes of PitStop Server are you running? With gigabit networks it is hard to saturate the connection on both ends. The server is competing for I/O with your read/write requests, anything anyone else is doing, anything that OS is doing, anything that PitStop Server is doing. Copying lots of small files across a network is a very inefficient thing to do. Copying a few large files is much more efficient. Jumbo frames may offer some relief, but really a TOE (TCP Offload Engine) would likely give you better results.  TOE cards take the duty of the network I/O off the CPU's and handle it all on the NIC itself. If the mirror is heavily fragmented you could also be wasting cycles looking for free blocks to fill up.

It may be the case that you can find a Mac Pro, several SSD's and a ton of RAM for a great price. But I think that for the role the machine plays it is quite capable of handling the load. I'd look at moving PitStop Server to a new home before I look at switching my server. It's a pain the arse to switch servers and platforms.

I'd save the money (new server and time spent) if it were me. Don't forget, just because there is new(ish) CAT 6 cable doesn't mean that there are not inefficiencies being introduced from the network itself. CAT 6 for CAT 6 speeds cannot just be dropped in. There is a science to installing cables, punch downs, jacks, etc. to minimize the interference/noise that can cause network performance degradation.