mac Xserve or Mac mini

[fmow]

Comparing 2009 xserve to mac mini for hosting. 

 

Maybe it’s an anachronism to go with Xserve at the moment, and certainly the ports leave much to be desired, but I can find the 2009 2.26 four core zeon at $999, wich seems like a great price. 

 

Is there anyone that would opt for the xserve as opposed to a mac mini for a 50 strong company db with 5-6 concurrent connections? Thanks. 

 

[Wim Decorte]

You can find a mid 2010 Mac Pro for that price I think which may be a better bet.

[Steven H. Blackwell]

Some question as to whether the X-Serve, definitely the superior machine here, can run a recent enough OS for FileMaker® Server 13.

 

 

Steven

[CreativeDataPro]

I agree with Mr. Blackwell: Stick with the server-grade hardware. An Xserve maxes out at Mac OS X 10.7.5, which is acceptable for FMS13.

I'd recommend going with the Xserve, using 7200RPM+ (or SSD, if you can swing it), and adding as much RAM as your budget allows (ideally 12GB+).

[Steven H. Blackwell]

OS 10.7.x is not a supported OS for FileMaker Server 13.

 

Please see:

 

http://www.filemaker.com/products/filemaker-server/server-13-specifications.html

 

Steven

[Claus Lavendt]

You should be able to run 10.8 on xServer.

Though, regarding to disk speed, you should be aware that xServe only Works with SATA-I or SATA-II downscaled.

This means that the bus handling the dataflow between the disk and the machine is more slow than the SATA-III disks that is used today.

Basically, SATA-I runs with 1,5GB speed, SATA-II runs with 3GB speed and SATA-III runs with 6GB speed.

There is a lot of arguments for and against using an xServe vs. Mac Mini.

I agree with Wim that you should look for a MacPro as you get newer architecture. So far as I know, they run with SATA-III interface, which is better than what you find in xServe. With FileMaker, RAM and disk speed is important. The more the better.

[fmow]

That was my main qualm too, the i/o bus bottleneck due to older sata versions. And at least ssds can and do saturate them. 

 

I am running it off a dual core mini from last year, but I 'll go at least to four cores, and hopefully apple will come up with a new mini soon, with pci slots for drives. 

 

Thanks to all who contributing, as it's obvious I will probably not go with the server. 

[bruceR]

Instead you will wait for something that will never exist.

[Amazin1]

We are currently running FM12 Server on a 2007 era Mac Pro. Based on the requirements FM13 seems to have and our expanded FM databases, I am looking to run FM13 Server on a brand new Mac Pro (yes, the new little black anodized jewel). Any thoughts as to what configuration we should get. Will the SSD cause issues with FM Server? Will we be able to put the data on a Thunderbolt external drive or leave it reside in the SSD? I assume we will be able to run back-up scripts that will save back-ups to an external drive as we are able to do now. Mr. Blackwell and Mr. Decorte in particular -- any thoughts?

[Wim Decorte]

 I am looking to run FM13 Server on a brand new Mac Pro (yes, the new little black anodized jewel). Any thoughts as to what configuration we should get

 

That's simply asking for too much.  Time will tell so the question is: do you want to be the guinea pig?

 

When it comes to servers I would go with slightly older but proven stable technology.  Depending on your deployment it simply does not pay to incur downtime because of some potential gains of an unproven technology.

 

SSDs have been suffering from a very real performance drop-off, not sure what the new Mac Pro SSDs will be like, or how the new model will handle the heat generated by heavy use,...  too many unknowns at this point.

[John May - Point In Space]

2009 Xserves will run all the way up through the current 10.9 Mavericks Server OS.  Unless you're using SSDs, SATA II vs. III is a moot point.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with the 2009 Xserves, IMHO, and their performance is still comparable with today's machines.  Xeons haven't really come all that far in the past few years.  I definitely wouldn't consider using a new Mac Pro just yet.

 

- John

[fmow]

I am going to go with a mini anyway, I wish I could get both and test them... . 

 

I am going with the mini more because of idea of the database residing somewhere compact, than anything else. 

 

If an xserve circa 2009 can last me 3 years in my usage scenario  and server maybe at most 10 concurrent go/client/webdirect connections at most, but do that kicking ass (not just without a hickup) maybe I am game. But then I have worries about apple and, well, apple (meant to say filemaker) for the support of the product 2 years from now. 

[Richard Fincher]

Interesting discussion, comparing 2009 Xserve and Mac Mini Server. We decommission our servers after three years in the Datacentre and by that stage, some of them are already showing "domed" electrolytic capacitors on the motherboards (although some do not). This can lead to hardware crashing if they no longer operate within tolerance. The longest we've run a server is 1440 days. If I was going to put in a 2009 vintage server into a Datacentre, I'd want to have a good look over the motherboard first - as well as talking to a repair shop about what tends to blow first (eg psu?). And using brand new drives would be a must I would have thought.

I've read that the drives in Mac minis are not fast rpm or data throughput. I wonder how a Mac mini would perform if connected to a SAN via the gigabit Ethernet port. You could then just keep the internal drives for the OS and use the SAN for the data partition. Also, I gather that Mac Minis previously listed as being 8GB Max, can now be reliably expanded to 16 GB if you're careful about exactly which memory modules you use.

When you say you can get an Xserve for $999, is that off eBay, or do you know a reputable recycled hardware vendor?

[fmow]

Hi Richard, and thanks for sharing your experiences, very interesting read. Yeap the most recent mac minis designated by apple as 8gb are fully capable of 16gb, and without being particularly careful for ram. I have two systems like that both with crucial ram of average latency and they 've been humming along, knock on wood, with gusto and no problems. 

 

The mini gets hit by the rpm limit of the 2.5" interface, but recent wd hard drives pretty much imho do away with that, and you can always use thunderbolt for external storage. Actually both my system and my data is on thunderbolt, and soon it will be daisy chained by thunderbolt on different tb drive enclosures. 

 

I think actually it was available via owc, other world computing, which is as reputable as they come, but I wrote ebay as that detail wasn't really necessary and I wasn't looking to advertise these guys. 

 

As an aside I 've taken good hid about ssd's wearing out as per advice in this thread, and to do away as much as I could with the problem, I 've set up a raid of sorts with a hard drive and a couple of ssds that I will be rotating during the year to avoid that the ssd's take a considerable hit. Then in a year or so I will retire the ssds to the other array I 'll have (I currently have two time capsules on the network for back ups of all purposes, performed nightly) just for back up, and kind of repeat the procedure then on. Hope it works out. 

[Richard Fincher]

Hi - I found my original reference online for where it said you can run 16 GB, and it actually was OWC who said this!

All roads lead to Rome?!  http://blog.macsales.com/16302-some-2010-mac-owners-can-get-more-ram-than-they-thought

 

I might just do this.  Crucial Memory Scanner says 8GB Max.  

 

My SAN uses 1000 MBits ethernet with NFS at the moment, so could mount this on the Mac, although a second NIC is recommended for this (Mini only has one)  So maybe Thunderbolt would be better, although none of my other non-Apple infrastructure uses Thunderbolt.

[fmow]

Owc, is indeed some kind of Mac Rome! Ignore the scanner. There really is not problem or bug imho with this system, once in the past it was reported that it might cause problems with the latest acd, so that's pretty much all you have to bear in mind. The motherboards are clearly designed to run at 16gb at the latencies apple suggest, and they have not been capped whatsoever by apple. If you ever see some need for it you can also have an internal fusion drive for some other minor purpose, as the mini supports that via OS X retroactively, there are ample details on the web. 

 

It's true thunderbolt has taken its sweet time to pick up, and maybe it may turn out to be some kind of firewire, so it's something to think about, at the moment I personally feel it's the way to go, but I am not familiar with the san and ethernet alternative. Also bear in mind that the new mac mini, hopefully by June the 2nd, might bring tb 2, but the 2010 one has a perfectly fine thunderbolt 1.

[Richard Fincher]

I researched adding a thunderbolt card to my SAN, but it didn't work out (Linux drivers too embryonic). However, on a thunderbolt Mac mini, I guess you could use a thunderbolt- to-gigabit-Ethernet adapter to provide a second NIC for SAN connectivity.

[Josh Ormond]

This may just be me...but I am very leery of housing the data for a database on an external drive. It just ads another layer of potential interruption. An external drive has so many potential fail-points ( from someone bumping the unit and disconnecting it or breaking it, to critters chewing the wires, to higher potential movement of the wire and internal wire breakage ).

 

Any interruption while a write is happening can be exponentially bad for the database and file.

 

I researched adding a thunderbolt card to my SAN, but it didn't work out (Linux drivers too embryonic). However, on a thunderbolt Mac mini, I guess you could use a thunderbolt- to-gigabit-Ethernet adapter to provide a second NIC for SAN connectivity.

[Richard Fincher]

Josh -agree totally with you when it's an office environment. But a Datacentre is a highly controlled and physically secure environment, and many companies have now built secure server rooms which aim to deliver similar benefits to datacentres.

[Brian C]

We have replaced our Xserves with Mini Serves with dual SSDs and we use an expansion chassis from Sonnet which works rather nicely for adding what the Mini lacks.

 

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/xmacminiserver.html

 

About the only thing that is missing now is a redundant power supply.

[Josh Ormond]

Yeah, I might be overly paranoid. My distrust is mostly in the connections. When connections are built to specifically be removed and re-plugged, I don't usually trust them for live production environments ( not just FM, but with any file usage ).  An exception being if they are mounted to a single frame to ensure that if something moves, they move together.

 

Josh -agree totally with you when it's an office environment. But a Datacentre is a highly controlled and physically secure environment, and many companies have now built secure server rooms which aim to deliver similar benefits to datacentres.

[Richard Fincher]

Hot-swappable Hard disks, hardware RAID, two NICs, IPMI/lights-out management, dual CPUs, >16GB RAM .........

Have located what appears to be a reputable s/h reconditioned Xserve vendor in Ipswich, if any UK/EU members are interested, message me

[Richard Fincher]

That Sonnet thing is really interesting though, thanks for the tip!!

[Brian C]

Yes I do miss Hot-swapable drives, however all is not lost if you can afford a separate rack mounted raid.

 

Apple is due to release a new Mini any day now so anyone thinking about using them might want to wait. That being said the current 2.3GHz/2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 Mac Mini configured with 16GB of SDRAM and 2x256GB SSDs is certainly no slouch from a performance stand point. The Sonnet gives you the missing Ethernet Port and some additional expansion. Plus you get Thunderbolt , USB 3.0 and HDMI out.

 

FileMaker's biggest bottleneck has always been I/O for the Drives which is why SSDs are so much better from a performance standpoint. But this is also true for any database platform really. WebDirect on the other hand benefits directly from a better processor and lots of RAM (or so I believe).

 

I know a lot of mac based server farms are using Minis these days because they are so cheap.  They just swap out the entire unit if something goes wrong.  Others are using the new Mac Pro if the processing power is really crucial.

[Richard Fincher]

Thanks for the long and informative post. I'd wondered if anyone would do such a rack-kit for the new "trash can" Mac Pro.

[mathur999]

So I have 5 Mac Minis running in a server environment with FileMaker Server. The oldest is 18 months and the newest 1 month. The oldest is a Quad core i7 with 16 gigs of RAM, Dual SSD and an external USB 3.0 RAID for backup and a Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter for dual gigabit ethernet. The remaining units have 8 gigs of RAM. 

 

The units are in a medical environment so not a lot of heavy load but the have all been rock solid. Most are running Mac OS 10.8 with two just switched over to 10.9including the oldest one without a hitch. They are more than fast and have given no trouble. They are placed on a server shelf in a large rack with APC UPS backup rack mounted. Temperature is controlled in the environment.

 

Arun

[Richard Fincher]

On this topic, I was reading recently an article which said that the 2012 Mac Minis were actually better than the 2014 Mac Minis for certain applications. Flexibility of RAM expansion seemed to be the main criterion.