i am looking for a new mac pro. I was wondering who the mac pro server is for? What benefits are there from using the mac osx server? I have a few websites on a VPS, but I don't think a Mac Pro could handle it. Maybe it would be nice to have iTunes on a server so the house computers could all access? I guess I just dont fully understand it.
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Mac Pro Server
- Thread starter sammyman
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http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/
I don't think you need a server Mac Pro to share your iTunes library. Just enable Home Sharing and/or file sharing from a regular Mac
I don't think you need a server Mac Pro to share your iTunes library. Just enable Home Sharing and/or file sharing from a regular Mac
Home sharing pretty much sucks because you can't use any nice features like genius on the other computers.
As I said in my first post, I have a bunch of websites. I pay about $45 / month for a VPS. If I could get a mac pro and save money on the VPS, it COULD be worth it. However, I don't have any experience with osx servers, so my gut feeling is that my sites are way too big and the mac pro wouldn't handle it.
Another thing that I think could be cool is dropping mobile me, and using the osx server to keep all the computers in our house synced. I am already switching over to dropbox to replace idisk, google caldav to replace calendars, but I still haven't figured out how I will keep contacts synced everywhere. Some of the server features look nice.
I've got no idea how big your sites are, but they must be massive to saturate the performance of a quad XEON with 8GB of RAM and considering that you pay only $45 a month, I bet that your rented VPS has considerably less performance. Just ask your provider about the performance of that server if you really want to go that route. That should clear things up.
The problem I see is not the performance of the system, rather than your broadband connection. You say that you'd have to host a lot of "big" sites. From what I read from this, is that they generate a lot of traffic. Keep in mind that your broadband connection has to be able to handle this traffic (in terms of upload). If you have a broadband plan that covers large amounts of uploads (which most home packages don't) at a decent speed, than forget what I've just said.
If not, then you're probably better with keeping your VPS.
But it is not only the broadband connection that has to be considered when planing to host several sites. Availability and backup also come in my mind. That, plus the $3000 for the MP Server almost render your plans non beneficial.
Take a look at the Mini Server. From what I've read from your posts, the MP would be more than overkill for such tasks.
I appreciate the comments. Yes I have a VPS. I have comcast, so uploads are not that great. The only reason I was interested in the Mac pro server, is because I am looking at buying a Mac pro right now anyways. It is for my wife since she is a professional photographer. I think we are panning on the 3.33 6-core machine. Thanks for all the responses.
If you take the base Mac Pro machine, and upgraded the RAM and added the second hard drive to make it the base Server, you ARE actually cheaper than the server (plus you get the Snow Leopard server software, $499, for "free"). The upgrade to six core is $1200 for both, so this seems to be a way to get a Mac Pro at a discount.
Wow! Didn't realize what you were saying at first. However, now I understand. If you configure a standard 3.33Ghz 6-core machine with the same server settings (8gb ram + 1tb in bay 2), it will cost $4224, vs $4199 for the same computer with the server osx! Not much of a savings, but you do get the server osx for free.