Hi guys,
I administer a small but well-resourced network for a business of about 15x users. We have two servers:
a) A Mac Mini Server 2.53Ghz/4Gb/2x500Gb discs (in a Raid 1 set) with about 420Gb Free, running OS X Server v10.6.4 . Although it's our 'main file server', the box doesn't really do much other than some file serving, holding an OD Master record of usernames, iCal serving, DHCP + DNS for the network, scheduling a CarbonCopyCloner backup, and managing a VPN connection.
b) A 'Server' which is really just an ordinary Mac Mini 2.26Ghz/4Gb/160Gb HDD with 80Gb free. This box hosts a few databases thanks to a FileMaker Server program , but again does little else.
What we want to do is build an in-house mail server within the next couple of months. (as most of our staff currently have IMAP accounts hosted at the inadequate GMail..).
The way I want to do this is by setting up a linux VM using VirtualBox, and then configure PostFix + Dovecot. Before you cringe!! - I *know* that I could do basically the same thing within OS X Server itself... it's because of the educational purposes of setting up & maintaining a proper linux server, that I want to go down the VM path.
So, my question is: which box would be better in setting the VM up on?
On one hand, I'm very concerned about 'single point of failure' - and therefore I'm hesitant to set up a VM on the main server. My gut feeling is hence to make use of the FileMaker machine ('machine b'), because if the main server decided to go down, then users could still access their mailboxes assuming that manual IPs were set or another DHCP server put in place.
On the other hand, 'machine a' has all the hardDisk space we'd need (my guess is we've got about 150Gb of mail betwwen our users). It's also Raid 1, which is a nice bonus.
Then again, with the price of external disks so stupidly cheap, we could buy an external 1Tb thing (or even a small SAN), connect it to Machine B, and have it hold the mailboxes for us?
Any thoughts? Another option is to drop the VM idea altogether, and install X11 & then postfix etc. directly onto Machine B's Mac OS ?
It's also worth mentioning that further down the track, we are thinking about maybe also moving our website onto an internally hosted web server. Similar questions I'm sure Will of course arise...
thanks,
-scott-
I administer a small but well-resourced network for a business of about 15x users. We have two servers:
a) A Mac Mini Server 2.53Ghz/4Gb/2x500Gb discs (in a Raid 1 set) with about 420Gb Free, running OS X Server v10.6.4 . Although it's our 'main file server', the box doesn't really do much other than some file serving, holding an OD Master record of usernames, iCal serving, DHCP + DNS for the network, scheduling a CarbonCopyCloner backup, and managing a VPN connection.
b) A 'Server' which is really just an ordinary Mac Mini 2.26Ghz/4Gb/160Gb HDD with 80Gb free. This box hosts a few databases thanks to a FileMaker Server program , but again does little else.
What we want to do is build an in-house mail server within the next couple of months. (as most of our staff currently have IMAP accounts hosted at the inadequate GMail..).
The way I want to do this is by setting up a linux VM using VirtualBox, and then configure PostFix + Dovecot. Before you cringe!! - I *know* that I could do basically the same thing within OS X Server itself... it's because of the educational purposes of setting up & maintaining a proper linux server, that I want to go down the VM path.
So, my question is: which box would be better in setting the VM up on?
On one hand, I'm very concerned about 'single point of failure' - and therefore I'm hesitant to set up a VM on the main server. My gut feeling is hence to make use of the FileMaker machine ('machine b'), because if the main server decided to go down, then users could still access their mailboxes assuming that manual IPs were set or another DHCP server put in place.
On the other hand, 'machine a' has all the hardDisk space we'd need (my guess is we've got about 150Gb of mail betwwen our users). It's also Raid 1, which is a nice bonus.
Then again, with the price of external disks so stupidly cheap, we could buy an external 1Tb thing (or even a small SAN), connect it to Machine B, and have it hold the mailboxes for us?
Any thoughts? Another option is to drop the VM idea altogether, and install X11 & then postfix etc. directly onto Machine B's Mac OS ?
It's also worth mentioning that further down the track, we are thinking about maybe also moving our website onto an internally hosted web server. Similar questions I'm sure Will of course arise...
thanks,
-scott-
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