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So when oh when will there be a "Missing Manual" or a "Dummies" book about all the ways to use a Mac Mini Server at home? (email, WebDAV, wiki, central iTunes repository for AppleTV and iOS devices, etc etc)

Um...not to be too smarmy, but why? i mean you can do the iTunes thing without needing Mac OS X Server. the rest is overkill.

I'm not familiar with the Mac Mini w. Snow Leopard server at all but I'm confused here. You say there's no optical drive but one of your pictures seems to suggest there is an optical drive based on the slot on the front and there's another picture (the one with the monitor) that doesn't?

Misprint?

My personal favorite use for the Mac Mini Server is as a NetInstall server. It sits on my network and any Mac can reach it at any time to grab an image. The amount of power needed to host and deploy images is minimal if you are only doing that with the server, so the Mac Mini fits the bill perfectly. Now to get DeployStudio working with those dreaded PCs so that I can broadcast images to them as well...

I've been running Server on Minis since the original Mini and Tiger Server. Server has come A LONG WAY since Tiger for ease of installation, and once you get it set up properly, keeping it going is easy. BUT, you have to get it set up, and in particular DNS must be -perfect- or the rest of Server won't work right.

I have 2 in the SOHO. One is the external web server for a couple of domains, and the other is the internal server that handles Mobile accounts and related backup. I have an OWC Qx2 4-bay RAID (5 in my case) hanging off the FW800 port.

What Mini Servers need is eSATA. Otherwise, this is a great machine if you want to establish a web presence/web services. I'd suggest paying someone to do the initial set-up, it cost me about $200 and was worth it.

The objection about only one ethernet can be mitigated by getting a USB to Ethernet adapter (MB442Z/A), provided you don't require faster than 100Mb/s; handy for bridging between networks.

The objection about not having an optical drive isn't a huge problem. If you have either a Windows XP SP3 (or later) or a Mac OS X 10.4.11 (or later) system you can share it's optical drive over the network to the Mac mini server. The software is built-in Mac OS X 10.5 or later and you can download it for Windows http://preview.tinyurl.com/28dnclb or Mac OS X prior to 10.5 http://preview.tinyurl.com/2eazh8l

Alternatively, under $100 will get you an external USB connected optical drive.

Kyle_Varnell, on 11 August 2010 - 04:17 AM, said:

If you look at http://www.apple.com/macmini/server/ you can see that there is no optical drive.

If you scroll down, they make a point of telling you that you can use the MacBook Air SuperDrive with the Mac mini server.

The *regular* Mac mini has a SuperDrive, but the server version does not, presumably because the server has two internal hard drives and there wasn't space to add a SD.

Personally except for the (very rare) software package these days, I don't even use the SuperDrive on my iMac unless I'm watching a movie, which isn't exactly something you should be doing on your server.

drdreric, on 11 August 2010 - 04:06 AM, said:

Hi, but there is a "Duumys" book ... http://www.amazon.co...81530585&sr=8-1 and it is OK.
Otherwise you have many books related to this OS ... http://www.amazon.co...1.78_189&fsc=-1

I think, that this a great server, but you must know that there are limits.
For small to medium networks is just fine!

We bought one about a month ago for internal use - less than 10 users. So far it's great. Have FMPro Server running on it as well as several other in house applications. The only issue so far is that it looks to be a NIGHTMARE to get calendar serving set up correctly. From what I've read, Apple has dropped the "ease of use" ball on getting calendaring going. You have to go into Terminal and a bunch of other stuff. What a pain.

The other thing they are great for is small development groups doing collaborative development. Running subversion along with apache tomcat/apache webserver/MySQL works great on these small boxes for development/testing (all are included and managed with the management utilities very cleanly. Way cheaper than an xserve for that purpose.

We do run xserves for our time-machine servers only because they are backing up up terabytes of stuff, and are mutlihoming on the ethernets into multiple raids, which the mini wouldn't do, but in a small office hang an external raid on FW-800 and time machine works great (works better than filesharing a raid/drive off a non-server mac particularly for a group).

All that being said. it is important to remember that just because it looks like a mac-mini, when you are running server, you have to remember you are configuring a unix server. There are many ways to screw it up and misconfigure it (getting virtual apache servers, svn and opendirectory to play nice was really rough).

John,
This article is written in such a negative tone, I wonder why you give the mini server 4.5 mice. All your comments compare this server to "traditional" servers. I ran a system with several original Xserves with Xserve RAID and I believe the only time I replaced a power supply was on the RAID. These servers are still running (8 yrs). I did have some disk problems but only a couple of times. As for requiring an optical drive, I can deal with that. I've never used more than one ethernet port on any Mac, the gigabit port is fine. These servers are loaded with disk space and RAM and can serve as very good, multipurpose servers. A lot of times, a full Xserve is overkill. For the price, especially with unlimited clients, this beats any Windows server hands down. It's also easier to run than a Linux server. Distribute your load between one to several and you have a very capable server farm in a small amount of space.

Interesting, the non-server mini review talked about not using 7200 rpm drives because they would be too hot for the mini yet the server uses two 7200 drives. Interesting.

rob53, on 11 August 2010 - 05:51 AM, said:

The regular mini has a big flat optical drive which has a huge effect on heat dissipation. Without the optical drive in the mini server, heat dissipation is greater allowing for the hotter 7200RPM drives.