Can't believe how many people here are using old macs for servers. As with most Apple products, there are several objectively better and cheaper options out there.
A Mac mini as a server, external hard drives? Additional nas'? Velcro and zip ties? Cmon these are terrible solutions
Look into unraid or freenas options, Dockers are the way forward in home servers. Runs on basically any old PC(my $60 old pentium Cpu will transcode 2x 1080 streams). Could build an entire new system (minus drives) for cheaper than the nas linked above
My unraid server runs everything you mentioned and more. Is more compatible across OS's (I use all 3) and essentially allows as many (mismatched) drives as your case can handle.
I have a 2012 i7 Mac mini server. I replaced 1 disk with an SSD and it is hooked up to a. Gigabit switch. This is hooked up to a 4 disk QNAP and the rest of the network.
The mini runs macos server, Sonaar, nzbd and it also runs dns.
It used to run Plex but I have moved that to PC running server 2016 essentials. It has a better cpu etc for transcoding. Plus I had the server for testing various scenarios for client systems. E.g. windows server running AD Mac mini running profile manager for Mac settings etc.
All works well, the Mac mini takes care of downloading shows etc and storing them on the QNAP.
if anything, the QNAP is the weak point. It is a dog when it comes to Mac networking, synology is much better, but I got the QNAP for free and it doesn’t cause any problems when streaming from it.
My setup is stupidly simple because I am simply stupid and don't have the slightest idea what I'm doing.
I have a RAID full of movies, TV shows and music. Since there's no way to connect that directly to the Apple TV, I have a Mac mini running iTunes with Home Sharing switched on to make that content accessible via the "Computer" tab on the old (Gen 3) Apple TV.
Since the RAID is big, I figured as long as it's connected I might as well use it as an "archive" for files we want to keep but don't need to access every day, like old photos, raw footage and other source files for editing projects, etc.
All of that works okay, but it's slower than it seems like it should be. Every time I access the RAID from either the Apple TV or my laptop, it takes a while to spin up and show any content. When I look at the RAID with a Finder window on my MacBook Pro (Shared/Mac Mini/RAID in the sidebar), it takes a while to figure out what's in any given folder and show me a list. There is no such delay when looking at folders on the local system drive in the mini itself.
File transfers are also slower than I would have expected. The RAID is a LaCie 4-Big USB3 set to RAID 10 (a mirrored pair of striped pairs). Blackmagic's Disk Speed test app shows the Mac mini reading/writing to the RAID at ~200MB/s. Not great, but acceptable. The same test accessing the RAID from my MacBook Pro manages only half that.
Everything is connected with CAT6 using an AirPort Extreme (latest generation) as router and a simple little LinkSys 5-port switch to add extra ports. I’m not sure what kind of speeds this SHOULD produce, but I gotta figure Gigabit ethernet is capable of more than 100 MB/s, no? The USB3 connection from the mini to the RAID can’t be the problem either, since transfers between the mini and the RAID are consistently over 200 MB/s.
The transfers I do are typically large, like 20-50 Gb, moving projects to/from the archive. Waiting twice as long as what the hardware seems capable of doing is a little frustrating, but I don’t have the skills to track down the bottleneck.
Great article! I haven't yet read all comments so sorry if I repeat what others have said already.
For iTunes "conversion", I strongly recommend iFlicks, which only converts the container to MP4, and converts video and audio streams only if necessary. For streaming video from the server, I am very satisfied of AirVideo HD (which only has iOS and tvOS clients). And for streaming, I am moving form iTunes to Infuse, which just plays everything without the need for any conversion (and also supports cloud base storage, which is also something I am moving to).
I use Remotix to remote access my Mac from my iPhone and iPad ans it is very efficient albeit not free. I have also put some custom security in place.
I had some Drobo S as primary storage and they are a real pain and totally unreliable, which is the opposite of why I purchased them. I just use them now for Time Machine (and switch them monthly between hot and cold).
The main use of my Mac mini is now as a backup for my cloud services (iCloud photos, Dropbox mainly)
I have a 2010 Mac mini server, with big modifications for audio quality. One modification I made is make a DIY Fusion drive from a 200GB in the internal SSD and a 8TB external FireWire 800 drive (2 4GB disks in a LaCie Big DIsk enclosure). With the limitation of FW800 being the fastest external port of this Mac (it only has USB2) this works very well to get large and not too slow storage.
Last point: my Mac mini and its predecessors have always been connected to a TV, but I ended up quickly preferring the Apple TV for watching media. I suspect that the fact that it only does that, and quite nothing else in the background, which is quite the opposite of the Mac mini, plays a big role in my preference.
Historically speaking… there was Workgroup Server 95
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Workgroup_Server
And it was not a Mac (mac OS 9 and earlier), but a Unix beast inside with Mac-like Graphical User Interface inside. As the current Mac, which is not truly a Mac (mac OS 9 and earlier) but Unix renamed as Mac.
Concerning external storage, nothing like Samsung Portable SSD T5 with 540 MB/s
http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/portable/t5.html
or
Sonnet Fusion Thunderbolt 3 PCIe Flash Drive with 2600 MB/s (read) & 1600 MB/s (writed) with Samsung 960 inside
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusiontb3pcieflashdrive.html
And for internal storage, Samsung 960 PRO with massive sequential R/W (read/write) speeds up to 3,500/2,100 MB/s and random R/W speeds up to 440/360K IOPS, respectively.
http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/960pro.html
Actually, the new iMac 27-inch Retina 5K Display (mid 2017) 2TB is APPLE SSD SM2048L, which seems similar to Samsung 960 Pro (sequential 3,500/2,100 MB/s & random 440/360K IOPS read/write).
I’ve done Windows Server, mac Server, Linux Server, FreeNAS Server, Rockstor Server and Synology Server over about 15 years.
i would say the best overall is Synology by far. You can google Xpenology which is a bootloader to use Synology OS (Synology DSM) on your own hardware. Their real hardware is great too, haven’t had any issues.
Synology has BTRFS running over mdadm RAID and it’s highly integrated. You can also install virtual machines which is great too. It has so many plugins too and also docker, you can run anything on these things.
I recommend this over FreeNAS because that uses ZFS and you can’t add single drives to expand a RAID 5/6 which most people find out too late.
Rockstor uses BTRFS for the filesystem and RAID and it’s not stable yet.
Windows, Mac and Linux OS’s still require logging into and managaing them, maintaining them etc They are not designed to be headless, don’t have reporting via email or notifications for system issues either, I would avoid them unless you absolutely need their functionality.
Can't believe how many people here are using old macs for servers. As with most Apple products, there are several objectively better and cheaper options out there.
A Mac mini as a server, external hard drives? Additional nas'? Velcro and zip ties? Cmon these are terrible solutions
Look into unraid or freenas options, Dockers are the way forward in home servers. Runs on basically any old PC(my $60 old pentium Cpu will transcode 2x 1080 streams). Could build an entire new system (minus drives) for cheaper than the nas linked above
My unraid server runs everything you mentioned and more. Is more compatible across OS's (I use all 3) and essentially allows as many (mismatched) drives as your case can handle.
Peace.
What NAS? This is all cascading hardware, once production equipment, turned into a server.
I agree that FreeNAS isn't bad, and I've used it for other projects, but all of my servers have been hardware destined to hand down to a relative. There is never one true way to an end destination.
Historically speaking… there was Workgroup Server 95
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Workgroup_Server
And it was not a Mac (mac OS 9 and earlier), but a Unix beast inside with Mac-like Graphical User Interface inside. As the current Mac, which is not truly a Mac (mac OS 9 and earlier) but Unix renamed as Mac.
Concerning external storage, nothing like Samsung Portable SSD T5 with 540 MB/s
http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/portable/t5.html
or
Sonnet Fusion Thunderbolt 3 PCIe Flash Drive with 2600 MB/s (read) & 1600 MB/s (writed) with Samsung 960 inside
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusiontb3pcieflashdrive.html
And for internal storage, Samsung 960 PRO with massive sequential R/W (read/write) speeds up to 3,500/2,100 MB/s and random R/W speeds up to 440/360K IOPS, respectively.
http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/960pro.html
Actually, the new iMac 27-inch Retina 5K Display (mid 2017) 2TB is APPLE SSD SM2048L, which seems similar to Samsung 960 Pro (sequential 3,500/2,100 MB/s & random 440/360K IOPS read/write).
Given the premise of the article, the Samsung drives you mention are terrible solutions.
There are no M.2 PCI-E slots in any Apple hardware, so that's right out. That, and the T5 is overkill for a home server, and is a very bad choice for mass storage dollars to GB. The two combined cost-wise can get you a populated NAS with a decent storage capacity, if you were so inclined.
The Sonnet drive is really nice for a production environment, but again, is super overkill -- and expensive -- for a home server.
Instead, get a 120GB SATA-3 SSD for the boot drive. No PCI-E slots required, and it will still boot the machine way faster than spinning iron.
My setup is stupidly simple because I am simply stupid and don't have the slightest idea what I'm doing.
I have a RAID full of movies, TV shows and music. Since there's no way to connect that directly to the Apple TV, I have a Mac mini running iTunes with Home Sharing switched on to make that content accessible via the "Computer" tab on the old (Gen 3) Apple TV.
Since the RAID is big, I figured as long as it's connected I might as well use it as an "archive" for files we want to keep but don't need to access every day, like old photos, raw footage and other source files for editing projects, etc.
All of that works okay, but it's slower than it seems like it should be. Every time I access the RAID from either the Apple TV or my laptop, it takes a while to spin up and show any content. When I look at the RAID with a Finder window on my MacBook Pro (Shared/Mac Mini/RAID in the sidebar), it takes a while to figure out what's in any given folder and show me a list. There is no such delay when looking at folders on the local system drive in the mini itself.
File transfers are also slower than I would have expected. The RAID is a LaCie 4-Big USB3 set to RAID 10 (a mirrored pair of striped pairs). Blackmagic's Disk Speed test app shows the Mac mini reading/writing to the RAID at ~200MB/s. Not great, but acceptable. The same test accessing the RAID from my MacBook Pro manages only half that.
Everything is connected with CAT6 using an AirPort Extreme (latest generation) as router and a simple little LinkSys 5-port switch to add extra ports. I’m not sure what kind of speeds this SHOULD produce, but I gotta figure Gigabit ethernet is capable of more than 100 MB/s, no? The USB3 connection from the mini to the RAID can’t be the problem either, since transfers between the mini and the RAID are consistently over 200 MB/s.
The transfers I do are typically large, like 20-50 Gb, moving projects to/from the archive. Waiting twice as long as what the hardware seems capable of doing is a little frustrating, but I don’t have the skills to track down the bottleneck.
Gigabit ethernet will deliver at maximum 125MB/sec, and in actuality somewhat less than that -- this is your bottleneck.
But, you're correct about "a while to spin up." That's exactly what the array is doing. If this is intolerable to you, there's a little utility called "keep drive spinning." I haven't used in in a while, so I can't speak to any impact it may have on a hard drive's life, but it will literally, keep them spinning all the time, in defiance of your macOS settings, and any drive firmware routines that may ignore your settings.
I love the setup and I've recently created my own server which is very like the one described. I have had a problem with my mac mini 2011 as when I run itunes or turn on plex and it starts streaming to my roku, the fan inside the imac goes up to 7500 or 8000 RPM's. Is this normal? I have 16gb memory, a ssd which houses the OS and an external usb 2.0 drive where I house all my stuff.
I just don't like the high rpms and I think it will fry the computer at some time. Does anyone else's mac mini does that?
You know someone needs an editor when several paragraphs into the story you get a paragraph that starts, "Then in about the winter of 2002..." And I thought Daniel Eran Dilger is the only one that can't write a concise story! Here's all you need to know, get a Synology DiskStation. It can do most everything mentioned in this story for a fraction of the cost and it can do some things better.
You know someone needs an editor when several paragraphs into the story you get a paragraph that starts, "Then in about the winter of 2002..." And I thought Daniel Eran Dilger is the only one that can't write a concise story! Here's all you need to know, get a Synology DiskStation. It can do most everything mentioned in this story for a fraction of the cost and it can do some things better.
That passage in question is 10 whole sentences in. Not a particularly arduous read to that point.
Anyway, I do like the Synology. A two-bay DS-218+ retails for $300. A 418 is $370-ish. It's a good solution if you don't have idle Mac hardware.
The old Mac mini shown here was retired production equipment -- which is the whole point of the article. I'd rather spend on drives.
You know someone needs an editor when several paragraphs into the story you get a paragraph that starts, "Then in about the winter of 2002..." And I thought Daniel Eran Dilger is the only one that can't write a concise story! Here's all you need to know, get a Synology DiskStation. It can do most everything mentioned in this story for a fraction of the cost and it can do some things better.
Your solution to utilizing current Mac HW is to not only abandon it all for a NAS, but also for AI to ignore all NAS solutions with their various pros and cons to pimp a single, expensive option for everyone? Do you work for Synology? What a reasonable and sound solution¡
I love the setup and I've recently created my own server which is very like the one described. I have had a problem with my mac mini 2011 as when I run itunes or turn on plex and it starts streaming to my roku, the fan inside the imac goes up to 7500 or 8000 RPM's. Is this normal? I have 16gb memory, a ssd which houses the OS and an external usb 2.0 drive where I house all my stuff.
I just don't like the high rpms and I think it will fry the computer at some time. Does anyone else's mac mini does that?
Plex is probably transcoding the video in question on the fly -- which explains the fan speed because the processor is under massive load. iTunes doesn't do that, so if the behavior is the same while you're playing iTunes video, there's something else going on.
I love the setup and I've recently created my own server which is very like the one described. I have had a problem with my mac mini 2011 as when I run itunes or turn on plex and it starts streaming to my roku, the fan inside the imac goes up to 7500 or 8000 RPM's. Is this normal? I have 16gb memory, a ssd which houses the OS and an external usb 2.0 drive where I house all my stuff.
I just don't like the high rpms and I think it will fry the computer at some time. Does anyone else's mac mini does that?
Plex is probably transcoding the video in question on the fly -- which explains the fan speed because the processor is under massive load. iTunes doesn't do that, so if the behavior is the same while you're playing iTunes video, there's something else going on.
Plex is robust but it has so many features that it can be daunting for even technical users so I typically don't recommend it if it's a Mac home unless there's a reason, like a lot of containers and/or codecs that aren't iTunes friendly. There are plenty of possible answers for disabling transcoding in Plex, but I think that the easiest is to adjust the setting on the device in question, but that may not be an option for more strict devices like the Apple TV.
I'm still waiting for Plex to update their Apple TV app so I can test streaming from my Plex Server setups on my Mac mini server and NAS with MKV/HEVC to my Apple TV 4K. So far, I've had no luck getting the Apple TV via iTunes play HEVC content that doesn't go through a very lengthly (like 12+ hours per video) re-encode, when I want to just use iVI to strip the MKV container and replace it with an MPEG-4 container, which it doesn't nearly instantly with MKV/AVC content in my testing.
Anyone here have advice on a rack mount drive enclosure for Mac? RAID isn’t necessary, though it would be nice.
I run Plex on a Mini for the enhanced transcoding. But all my MKVs live on the 8 drive Synology and there is lots of network overhead, as you can imagine.
I need at at least a 4 drive unit. But I’d take more. 4K, amiright?
Would like to direct connect to the Mini in my small rack closet to keep the whole setup tidy.
Some interesting apps in this article I haven't heard of however I agree with the others that a Synology or even PC hardware with FreeNAS are a better choice because Apple are giving all the indicators of killing off the ability to use Macs as home servers, e.g. no updates to the Mac mini in years, High Sierra removing Time Machine, File Sharing and some stats from the macOS server app.
I use Mac servers for essential services: email (imap and smtp), caldav, carddav, webdav, time machine, content caching, dns, dhcp, home automation (Indigo), webcam monitoring (SecuritySpy). Streaming media isn't in there.
To add videos to iTunes, I cannot recommend VideoDrive (www.aroonasoftware.com) enough. It’s great at converting and tagging all your video files. For conversion it uses HandBrake, and then it adds descriptions and artwork so your own videos look the same as videos purchased from the iTunes Store.
it also monitors an inbox folder for new video files you are downloading. And it supports a server setup and will move video files across the network.
I have been running it for years on my media server and still love it!
Comments
A Mac mini as a server, external hard drives? Additional nas'? Velcro and zip ties? Cmon these are terrible solutions
Look into unraid or freenas options, Dockers are the way forward in home servers. Runs on basically any old PC(my $60 old pentium Cpu will transcode 2x 1080 streams). Could build an entire new system (minus drives) for cheaper than the nas linked above
My unraid server runs everything you mentioned and more. Is more compatible across OS's (I use all 3) and essentially allows as many (mismatched) drives as your case can handle.
Peace.
The mini runs macos server, Sonaar, nzbd and it also runs dns.
It used to run Plex but I have moved that to PC running server 2016 essentials. It has a better cpu etc for transcoding. Plus I had the server for testing various scenarios for client systems. E.g. windows server running AD Mac mini running profile manager for Mac settings etc.
All works well, the Mac mini takes care of downloading shows etc and storing them on the QNAP.
if anything, the QNAP is the weak point. It is a dog when it comes to Mac networking, synology is much better, but I got the QNAP for free and it doesn’t cause any problems when streaming from it.
I haven't yet read all comments so sorry if I repeat what others have said already.
For iTunes "conversion", I strongly recommend iFlicks, which only converts the container to MP4, and converts video and audio streams only if necessary.
For streaming video from the server, I am very satisfied of AirVideo HD (which only has iOS and tvOS clients).
And for streaming, I am moving form iTunes to Infuse, which just plays everything without the need for any conversion (and also supports cloud base storage, which is also something I am moving to).
I use Remotix to remote access my Mac from my iPhone and iPad ans it is very efficient albeit not free. I have also put some custom security in place.
I had some Drobo S as primary storage and they are a real pain and totally unreliable, which is the opposite of why I purchased them.
I just use them now for Time Machine (and switch them monthly between hot and cold).
The main use of my Mac mini is now as a backup for my cloud services (iCloud photos, Dropbox mainly)
I have a 2010 Mac mini server, with big modifications for audio quality.
One modification I made is make a DIY Fusion drive from a 200GB in the internal SSD and a 8TB external FireWire 800 drive (2 4GB disks in a LaCie Big DIsk enclosure). With the limitation of FW800 being the fastest external port of this Mac (it only has USB2) this works very well to get large and not too slow storage.
Last point: my Mac mini and its predecessors have always been connected to a TV, but I ended up quickly preferring the Apple TV for watching media. I suspect that the fact that it only does that, and quite nothing else in the background, which is quite the opposite of the Mac mini, plays a big role in my preference.
i would say the best overall is Synology by far. You can google Xpenology which is a bootloader to use Synology OS (Synology DSM) on your own hardware. Their real hardware is great too, haven’t had any issues.
Synology has BTRFS running over mdadm RAID and it’s highly integrated. You can also install virtual machines which is great too. It has so many plugins too and also docker, you can run anything on these things.
I recommend this over FreeNAS because that uses ZFS and you can’t add single drives to expand a RAID 5/6 which most people find out too late.
Rockstor uses BTRFS for the filesystem and RAID and it’s not stable yet.
Windows, Mac and Linux OS’s still require logging into and managaing them, maintaining them etc They are not designed to be headless, don’t have reporting via email or notifications for system issues either, I would avoid them unless you absolutely need their functionality.
Given the premise of the article, the Samsung drives you mention are terrible solutions.
Gigabit ethernet will deliver at maximum 125MB/sec, and in actuality somewhat less than that -- this is your bottleneck.
I just don't like the high rpms and I think it will fry the computer at some time. Does anyone else's mac mini does that?
The old Mac mini shown here was retired production equipment -- which is the whole point of the article. I'd rather spend on drives.
I'm still waiting for Plex to update their Apple TV app so I can test streaming from my Plex Server setups on my Mac mini server and NAS with MKV/HEVC to my Apple TV 4K. So far, I've had no luck getting the Apple TV via iTunes play HEVC content that doesn't go through a very lengthly (like 12+ hours per video) re-encode, when I want to just use iVI to strip the MKV container and replace it with an MPEG-4 container, which it doesn't nearly instantly with MKV/AVC content in my testing.
I run Plex on a Mini for the enhanced transcoding. But all my MKVs live on the 8 drive Synology and there is lots of network overhead, as you can imagine.
I need at at least a 4 drive unit. But I’d take more. 4K, amiright?
Would like to direct connect to the Mini in my small rack closet to keep the whole setup tidy.
https://www.imore.com/changes-macos-server-54-high-sierra
(While Time Machine and File Sharing are no longer configured in the Server app, they are available in System Preferences.)
it also monitors an inbox folder for new video files you are downloading. And it supports a server setup and will move video files across the network.
I have been running it for years on my media server and still love it!