Mini Server Raid-0 Upgrade...

whyrichard said:

Hello,

I am in the process of upgrading my old Mac Mini Server (2.53ghz, 4 gigs ram) with new hard drives.

I am thinking of getting two 1 terabyte 2.5" hard drives and setting them up in a Raid-0 configuration.

A few questions:
-Is this a good idea for a server?

-How much of an improvement will there be in speed?

-What is the easiest / safest way to preform this upgrade while avoiding starting from scratch?

-Hard Drive suggestions? Normally I would get a Western Digital, but Hitachi's and Samsung's are getting good reviews on NewEgg...

THANKS FOR ANY SUGGESTIONS!!!

r.

Click to expand...

Striping two laptop drives is pretty silly, IMO. The speed of those drives is low and you'd be better off buying an external RAID array with 3.5" drives or just a higher capacity SSD.

whyrichard said:

What about:

Internal SSD for bootdisk (say about 80gb)
External RAID-0 3.5" HD's...

What external RAID hardware do I need for this?

THANKS!

r.

Click to expand...

That is similar to what I have. I have a 2012 with Fusion drive and a 4 bay RAID 5 array.

As far as what to get, that's more a matter of budget than anything. I got my http://www.stardom.com.tw/deckraid_4_feature.html
from http://macsales.com for $200 which is absurdly low. I am very happy with it. I also set up 2 of the new Promise Thunderbolt units which are very nice and very pricey.

whyrichard said:

So... would you all recommend an internal bootdisk SSD (80gb) and an external RAID0 Array?

This would be a sweet spot for speed on a 2.53ghz mini server?

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR GREAT ADVICE AS ALWAYS!

r

Click to expand...

It really depends on what you're trying to do. A SSD boot drive is always a good thing, if you can. As far as storage speed goes, it depends on what you're doing. I do audio and I use RAID 5. It's not as fast, but it's safe. And after losing a great deal of work when a drive failed, safe was what I was after.

If you do RAID 0, I highly suggest a good backup strategy. One drive dies and your array is FUBAR.

whyrichard said:

Agreed.

I would be using a time capsule for a constant time machine backup. I would also have an offsite backup for emergencies.... good plan, ya?

always painful to loose work...

we are a design/sculpture/architecture studio. our files are 3d modeling files approaching 100gb's.... 3 macs on ethernet...

r.

Click to expand...

Will files be shared between users, or simply stored on the server for individual use?

whyrichard said:

Hello,

I am in the process of upgrading my old Mac Mini Server (2.53ghz, 4 gigs ram) with new hard drives.

I am thinking of getting two 1 terabyte 2.5" hard drives and setting them up in a Raid-0 configuration.

A few questions:
-Is this a good idea for a server?

-How much of an improvement will there be in speed?

-What is the easiest / safest way to preform this upgrade while avoiding starting from scratch?

-Hard Drive suggestions? Normally I would get a Western Digital, but Hitachi's and Samsung's are getting good reviews on NewEgg...

THANKS FOR ANY SUGGESTIONS!!!

r.

Click to expand...

RAID 0 would never be a good idea for a server. RAID 1, 5, 6 or 10 would be the optimal RAID option. In a Mac mini, internally you would be limited to RAID 1.

monkeybagel said:

RAID 0 would never be a good idea for a server. RAID 1, 5, 6 or 10 would be the optimal RAID option. In a Mac mini, internally you would be limited to RAID 1.

Click to expand...

I agree never a good idea. I disagree that you can only do RAID 1. Disk Utility allows RAID 0, I've done it.

whyrichard said:

The files will be shared on the server. 3 users accessing them, but with little opportunity for conflicts.

I was thinking of raid0 for maximum speed... but if no one recommends raid 0 what are my external raid options that maximize speed?

I thought that since internally I am limited to 2.5" hd's that an external raid enclosure would be faster due to the ability of being able to use 3.5" disks...?

r.

Click to expand...

When I had a Mac Pro I used a nested RAID setup. I had a mirror of 1TB stripes. So ((500)-R0-(500)-R1-(500)R0(500)) if that bad diagram makes sense. I always get confused as to whether that's RAID10 or RAID01 or if they're the same.

whyrichard said:

So...


... I got a "G Speed Q", 4tb arranged in a RAID-5 config, hooked up to the mac mini server through firewire 800.

When hooked up to ethernet, speed tests are not so different from the internal 5200 drive:

Opening a 127mb file with rhino:
-16 seconds from the mini internal 5200 rpm HD
-15 seconds from the g-drive.

Surprised! my question is:
to quote jack... so... "is this as good as it gets?"

thanks,
r.

Click to expand...

If you're going to use FW800, yeah. Why would you hook multiple drives up to an interface that's slower than the interface of a single modern drive?

whyrichard said:

is there a way to connect the gdrive to the mini any faster? it supports esata and comes with the cables... can i hook into the mini using esata?

r.

Click to expand...

If your Mini is one with USB 3.0 (a 2012 model) then you can get a USB 3.0 to eSATA adapter for about $20.

mus0r said:

Striping two laptop drives is pretty silly, IMO. The speed of those drives is low and you'd be better off buying an external RAID array with 3.5" drives or just a higher capacity SSD.

Click to expand...

How does he connect the external raid at decent speeds? He has an 'old' Mac mini so I am guessing no USB 3. Also you can get 7200 1tb drives 2.5" drives.

monkeybagel said:

RAID 0 would never be a good idea for a server. RAID 1, 5, 6 or 10 would be the optimal RAID option. In a Mac mini, internally you would be limited to RAID 1.

Click to expand...

In general I would agree with you but here is something to think about -

A single drive may fail and of course a striped set of drives may fail. Either way, one has to consider doing backups. In this case, if a single drive is used for booting, OS and perhaps apps, it could always fail. A striped set of drives is the same in that if a drive fails, it is no different than a single drive failing. The question remains if and when a drive or a drive in a striped set will fail. Ultimately, it would require replacement in either scenarios.

I have had a striped pair of drives in a Mini that was extremely fast (2xSSD) and one drive failed. I was able to use a backup and restore to one good SSD drive and continue working. The key was having the back up available and luckily, no data was lost due to timing of drive failure. The disadvantage of striped drives is two fold - 1) ease of replacement: requires a small amount more work to get drives in and out and 2) the arguable notion of two drives are riskier than one for drive failure.

Over time, I prefer to have a single drive in my system and all other drives external when possible. The only exception is with a Mac Pro as the sleds are rather easy to get to and "repair" is usually quick.

So for the original sub-thread on internal drives within this thread - nothing wrong with striped drives as long as you have a good back up plan and consider the efforts required to replace drives as part of your plan (money and time and labour).

opinio said:

How does he connect the external raid at decent speeds? He has an 'old' Mac mini so I am guessing no USB 3. Also you can get 7200 1tb drives 2.5" drives.

Click to expand...

You get a NAS and connect it via Gigabit Ethernet.

Also, replacing the 5400RPM boot drive with an SSD might be a good idea.

phrehdd said:

So for the original sub-thread on internal drives within this thread - nothing wrong with striped drives as long as you have a good back up plan and consider the efforts required to replace drives as part of your plan (money and time and labour).

Click to expand...

That would be the main point there. With the other RAID formats, there would be zero downtime, where with RAID0 you are guaranteed downtime, even with a perfect backup.

Giuly said:

You get a NAS and connect it via Gigabit Ethernet.

SSD might be a good idea.

Click to expand...

Unless you aggregate the Gigabit with a second TB Gigabit adapter (as well as have a switch and NAS and network that supports aggregation), in otherwords run dual Gigabit to all devices) then I don't consider a Gigabit NAS that much faster than Firewire 800. If you want the full speed from two 7200rpm drives in an external RAID enclosure (on RAID-0) then you need to either run it via USB 3.0, or TB, or TB to eSata. The drives will bottle neck on a NAS. I dont see the OP has any of these options (USB3.0 or eSATA) short of buying a Belkin TB Hub to get USB3.0 (which is only running at half USB 3.0 speeds) or Lacie TB to eSata Hub.

He is better to buy two HGST 7200rpm 2.5" drives and run them on his SataIII internal connections or a HGST drive again with a 960GB SSD in a fusion setup. Both give him 2TB size volume at a minimum 250MB/s speed. I get around 130MB/s out of my HGST 7200 2.5" drive (by its self).

I get 109MB/s max over my Gigabit connection and around 200 when running IEEE 802.3ad (aggregated Dual Gigabit). I don't have a NAS, but I am guessing that would be the speed between the NAS enclosure and the mini.

All I am saying is that a NAS would not be reasonable in speed relative to USB 3.0, eSATA, internal SATA or TB. So the OP should go internal unless he has those options.

Your gear is old and outdated for the gear you attached it to>

I am sorry I missed this thread. you can't speed it up very much but you have a few saves. If you know how to set your gear back to the snow leopard osx it came with then update to snow leopard 10.6.8.


you can sell your machine off on ebay. this is assuming that you run lion or mountain lion right now and do not need snow leopard.


your mini can run:

snow leopard, lion, mountain lion.

it can run windows vista, windows 7 ,windows 8 and linux. if you sell the mini on ebay configured with 10.6.8 and the oem dvds it will sell for a lot of money.


then buy this gear.


http://store.apple.com/us/product/F...ith-lion-server-20ghz-quad-core-intel-core-i7


this will run far faster and more efficiently then your equipment. it will allow for a faster connection to the new gear you purchased.


when you advertise the older gear list all the osx that it can run.


Of course if you need snow leopard none of my advice is worth a thing. what did you pay for the g speed ? $799.95 if you did see if you can return it for this


http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-list...olp_refurbished?ie=UTF8&condition=refurbished

this machine will destroy your g speed machine. hooked up to a 2011 that i linked you will double your speeds.

your cost would be about 100 to 150 more for the pegasus then the g- speed. the g speed is old tech.

the server mini i linked would be around 800 with tax but i think your mini can get more then 600 on ebay due to all the osx's it can run. that is 200 more. if you did the 2 moves you may pay 300 more but your gear would be really quick. also the pegasus can swap 1 drive for an ssd and boot if it is hooked up to the 2011 mini.

opinio said:

He is better to buy two HGST 7200rpm 2.5" drives and run them on his SataIII internal connections or a HGST drive again with a 960GB SSD in a fusion setup. Both give him 2TB size volume at a minimum 250MB/s speed. I get around 130MB/s out of my HGST 7200 2.5" drive (by its self).

Click to expand...

A RAID0 of some 128GB SSDs is faster than this for small block sizes. And you should be able to fuse this with an external (RAID of) hard drives via FW800 as well.

Also, a 2009 Mac Mini doesn't have internal SATA-III, it's SATA-II, but you can always do the eSATA mod to route out something faster than 1GBit/s.

My 2 cents...

Are you just sharing docs and thinking of a RAID for backup purposes or is this a mission critical device that can never be down?

If you are doing it for data backup I would invest in a newer mini and just get an external drive and use time machine (as well as an online backup service).

Unless you are running a business on it (online sales site, 24hr database etc) this RAID might be overkill.