Mac Mini as OSX Server + GlobalSan iSCSI
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Agree with @coliver avoid QNAP. Support issues.
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@ntoxicator said:
Gotcha. Yeah, Personally I've always used Synology Diskstations or their Rackstation products.
Looking for other TB DAS units.. Promise has some nice units. But not seeing any that are empty without disks.
Synology, ReadyNAS, ReadyDATA, Drobo and maybe Buffalo only. Look at no one else. Promise, Lacie, QNAP... these are not business class devices. You don't want that kind of stuff in your shop.
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Drobo makes a good DAS product as well but last time I looked at them they were a bit lacking in performance.
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@ntoxicator said:
Ive always stayed away from Drobo. i'll check into them again as well
This is specifically their sweet spot. Five bay, Thunderbolt connected DAS.
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Do you need it to be run by the Mac Mini? I'm pretty sure the ReadyNAS does NFS storage which Macs can mount natively with a little program or script. They run a Debian fork under the hood and have Dropbox in their app marketplace as well.
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@coliver said:
Drobo makes a good DAS product as well but last time I looked at them they were a bit lacking in performance.
Depends on the performance that you are looking at. Their read performance is awesome if you have an SSD cache added in. Write is pretty slow.
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Like mac OSX server app to keep everything simple. As with the built in OpenDirectory and such.
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@coliver said:
Do you need it to be run by the Mac Mini? I'm pretty sure the ReadyNAS does NFS storage which Macs can mount natively with a little program or script. They run a Debian fork under the hood and have Dropbox in their app marketplace as well.
It does but it lacks vfs_fruit so for a large scale Mac environment it is not idea, yet.
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@ntoxicator I've had Apple's OpenDirectory corrupt on me both places I've implemented it. I dont like it at all. (Granted that was about 6 years ago)
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@coliver said:
Do you need it to be run by the Mac Mini? I'm pretty sure the ReadyNAS does NFS storage which Macs can mount natively with a little program or script. They run a Debian fork under the hood and have Dropbox in their app marketplace as well.
NFS on OS X has its own quirks and is not as reliable as on other Unix systems. And you can forget about Spotlight searches without the use of OS X Server.
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Why are you looking at a local solution instead of a cloud one? Wouldn't a cloud one work better for multi locations?
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Plan was to have a volume/disk attached to Mac Mini running the Server app. in el capitan its nice! alot of changes and merged to a single app... more rounded & polished per say.
But all shares would be SMB (as apple moving away from AFP) and also WebDav share option
Formatted as HFS+ ofcourse -
ease of use and drives auto map to login.
These are not brighest computer users. Trying to KISS
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Also I know the limitation on the share being formatted as HFS+
Compatible with Apple eco-system. but not linux or windows. due to filesystem. the plan was have the Dropbox app be on the Mac mini and re-publish the files globally. and then only certain computers would need dropbox installed if person needs access to the company files for read/write
all suggestions welcome for cloud solutions though!
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@ntoxicator said:
Also I know the limitation on the share being formatted as HFS+
Compatible with Apple eco-system. but not linux or windows. due to filesystem. the plan was have the Dropbox app be on the Mac mini and re-publish the files globally. and then only certain computers would need dropbox installed if person needs access to the company files for read/write
all suggestions welcome for cloud solutions though!
SMB from HFS+ will still allow sharing outside of the Mac world.
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Nothing is perfect for systems. Unless straight Linux server. But then have limitations or script your own and use open source projects
can I setup linux server for Samba shares? Absolutely. Will it work? Sure...
Will there be limitations.. absolutely.
Looking to simplify their network and not have a phone call each day.
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What about read/write capability though?
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I guess I just need to be babysat some more.. lol
I appreciate everyone's input here. ALOT of opinions and knowledge shared together.
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@ntoxicator said:
Nothing is perfect for systems. Unless straight Linux server. But then have limitations or script your own and use open source projects
can I setup linux server for Samba shares? Absolutely. Will it work? Sure...
Will there be limitations.. absolutely.
Looking to simplify their network and not have a phone call each day.
Actually, in theory, a Linux server can beat the Mac Mini server in every way. More reliable, lower cost, high performance. Other than your effort in setting it up, which might alone be easier, there is a good chance that it would beat the Mac Mini in every way.
