Personal use of Mac OSX Server

JanFredrikB said:

But what can I do with Mac OS X Server? What are the main features?

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I believe it is fairly well said here.

My experience;

If you have more than one mac at home and live a digitally intensive life, the mac server immediately fills in the gap of availability of information on any machine.

There are other things too, but this aspect was a real pleasure for me when I setup my mini server.

Im also intrigued by what Lion Server can offer me.

In my house we have a Mac Pro, 2 x iPhones, 2 x iPads, 3 x Apple TVs and a Macbook Air

Would it be any benefit to me??

kultschar said:

Im also intrigued by what Lion Server can offer me.

In my house we have a Mac Pro, 2 x iPhones, 2 x iPads, 3 x Apple TVs and a Macbook Air

Would it be any benefit to me??

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Nobody can tell you; you need to research this based on your needs. It makes no difference what equipment you currently have.

Go to the server page and browse the features it offers. If it has something you'd like to do, then proceed.

kultschar said:

Im also intrigued by what Lion Server can offer me.

In my house we have a Mac Pro, 2 x iPhones, 2 x iPads, 3 x Apple TVs and a Macbook Air

Would it be any benefit to me??

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I to ask the same thing. I have just partitioned my hard drive and installed Lion server to try to get a better understanding. Currently I have a 24" iMac that holds my life on it including my business (photography) I have an external 1TB off it that holds all my music and videos. I then have a 13" macbook, a 15" Macbook Pro, An Apple TV Gen 1, Apple TV Gen 2, 2 X iphone 4's and I have just pre ordered an ipad2. I am currently looking at purchasing a 27" iMac soon but keeping the 24" as the server for the house.

I can understand how it can benefit one or two users utilising a server but I'm really keen to understand what I can do with this set up, what benefits I can utilise from server set up in the home with this hardware.

kultschar said:

In my house we have a Mac Pro, 2 x iPhones, 2 x iPads, 3 x Apple TVs and a Macbook Air

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A first reaction would also comment on the fact that a server becomes useful if you have more than a few "computers". In this case 2 seems a low number.

Use Case

I run 10.5 Server at home, nothing very complicated....

10.5 Server runs on an ageing iBook, with 6TB storage. The iBook runs iTunes with Home Sharing enabled and feeds my AppleTV, iPad and any of the other Macs ( 2xiMac, 2xMBP, 1xPowerBook ) in the house ( though this could be done by anything, tbh ). The iBook also exports several shares so that all files are stored in a central point.

The Server also handles all DHCP / DNS, as well as being as a web caching proxy.

The iBook will be replaced as soon as the Mini's are refreshed with i-based CPU's, and Lion is released.....

IscariotJ said:

I run 10.5 Server at home, nothing very complicated....

10.5 Server runs on an ageing iBook, with 6TB storage. The iBook runs iTunes with Home Sharing enabled and feeds my AppleTV, iPad and any of the other Macs ( 2xiMac, 2xMBP, 1xPowerBook ) in the house ( though this could be done by anything, tbh ). The iBook also exports several shares so that all files are stored in a central point.

The Server also handles all DHCP / DNS, as well as being as a web caching proxy.

The iBook will be replaced as soon as the Mini's are refreshed with i-based CPU's, and Lion is released.....

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You think that they will start placing in the same chips they are using in their I-devices into server based models?

keep in mind the mac mini has only one ethernet port so you need it in back of a fairly good fire wall access port (buffalo with dd-wrt firmware).

i also has a dual hard drive, set this up as a raid 01

I had thought about getting a mini and using it as a server. Calander, contacts, itunes. Mail(after figuring out my ISP workarounds).

I just need to also be able to connect to it all via a webpage remotely like I do with gmail.

We have an ipad and 2 ipod touches now. I'm looking to get my wife an iphone for her birthday and pick up a new 27" imac.

Also still reading up to see what other cool things I can do with it.

I wonder if I could use it for remote time machine backups?

archer75 said:

I wonder if I could use it for remote time machine backups?

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I've enabled VPN. If you manually connect to the TimeMachine drive on the server (manually, since BonJour doesn't work over VPN) you can do a remote time machine backup. But it will be hideously slow. I've run Chronosync to synchronize folders over VPN -- it's slow as well. The problem is the slow "up" speed of residential Internet service.

My home mini + Snow Leopard Server story

talmy said:

I've enabled VPN. If you manually connect to the TimeMachine drive on the server (manually, since BonJour doesn't work over VPN) you can do a remote time machine backup. But it will be hideously slow. I've run Chronosync to synchronize folders over VPN -- it's slow as well. The problem is the slow "up" speed of residential Internet service.

My home mini + Snow Leopard Server story

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Thanks for sharing. I was reading it through and you said you disabled DHCP?DNS on the actiontec so you could use the mini and google's DNS servers?

I have an actiontec router as well and am able to set it to use openDNS servers without issue. Just a couple of clicks and it was done.

Right now I have 2 HTPC's, 1 ipad, 2 ipod touches, 2 laptops, a desktop and a 16tb WHS box housing my movie collection.
May soon add an old Dell desktop for my daughter and possibly an imac.

Thinking about using a mini to hold my documents, music, photos, ebooks, itunes library, etc and keeping my WHS server solely for movies and turn it on as needed. But leave the mini on 24/7.

archer75 said:

Thanks for sharing. I was reading it through and you said you disabled DHCP?DNS on the actiontec so you could use the mini and google's DNS servers?

I have an actiontec router as well and am able to set it to use openDNS servers without issue. Just a couple of clicks and it was done.

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I couldn't find a way to change my Actiontec to assign any other than Frontier's (formerly Verizon's) DNS server address with its DHCP server. Running my own DHCP server on the mini allowed not only using DNS on the mini (which I found the extra level of caching to improve performance) but also let me use Google's DNS.

talmy said:

I couldn't find a way to change my Actiontec to assign any other than Frontier's (formerly Verizon's) DNS server address with its DHCP server. Running my own DHCP server on the mini allowed not only using DNS on the mini (which I found the extra level of caching to improve performance) but also let me use Google's DNS.

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Yes, I have Frontier. I'm in Oregon too.

On the router config page, I clicked on my network. Followed by network connections on the left.

Then I click the icon in the action column across from Broadband Connection (coax)

Then click the settings button.

Then you have a drop down box for DNS Server and I change that to "Use the following DNS Server Addresses". Then you'll have boxes appear where you can enter two DNS servers.
Hit apply and you're done.

Aha! Boy was that hidden away. In any case, I don't need it now.

talmy said:

Aha! Boy was that hidden away. In any case, I don't need it now.

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Yep, they sure did bury it. Took me a while to find it. And a couple of weeks ago frontier made some DNS change and switched the router back to their servers and I had to change it back to openDNS again.