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Mac Mini Server... Good for Media Center?

brdnboy said:
my word of advice if you end up going with the server mini is to either read up on RAID before configuring the drives, or if you are familiar just consider your options. It sounds like you like the server because it has extra capacity but in reality you should probably mirror the two internal drives for data security. if you choose not to mirror the drives, make sure you have a good external backup system in place, as you now have 2x the chance of a drive failure internally.
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What are the RAID options? RAID 0 & 1? Can the mini server also be configured to have two independant 500GB drives?
 
Well that's good you get all the options available. Software RAID hummm, I've not heard to many good things about that. I'm a little surprised that there isn't any kind of HW controller for that.

I really like the idea of a 7200rpm drive in the mini. Why wouldn't apple offer a 7200 RPM option as an upgrade? Boggles my mind!😕
 
bzollinger said:
Well that's good you get all the options available. Software RAID hummm, I've not heard to many good things about that. I'm a little surprised that there isn't any kind of HW controller for that.

I really like the idea of a 7200rpm drive in the mini. Why wouldn't apple offer a 7200 RPM option as an upgrade? Boggles my mind!😕
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Back in the G3 days, software RAID1 might have had a slight negative impact on performance. But with the processors available today, I can't tell the difference between a dedicated card doing RAID1 and software doing RAID1. RAID5 might be a different story - but truthfully on one interface offloading the RAID1 processing to a dedicated card really won't show much performance gain when compared to having your CPU do the processing.
 
bzollinger said:
Well that's good you get all the options available. Software RAID hummm, I've not heard to many good things about that. I'm a little surprised that there isn't any kind of HW controller for that.

I really like the idea of a 7200rpm drive in the mini. Why wouldn't apple offer a 7200 RPM option as an upgrade? Boggles my mind!😕
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There are several threads if you're interested about software RAID vs hardware RAID
 
In the enterprise server world I work in the RAID controllers have backup batteries and 256-512MB cache on them for data integrity. I know the mini is far from an enterprise server, so I suppose software RAID1 is good enough.

I'm more miffed about having a 500GB upgrade to the base mini, but it only being a 5400RPM option. It's not like the thing is going to be running on battery like a MBP or MBA!
 
bzollinger said:
In the enterprise server world I work in the RAID controllers have backup batteries and 256-512MB cache on them for data integrity. I know the mini is far from an enterprise server, so I suppose software RAID1 is good enough.

I'm more miffed about having a 500GB upgrade to the base mini, but it only being a 5400RPM option. It's not like the thing is going to be running on battery like a MBP or MBA!
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The cache on array controllers is really there in case of power failure, so that extra data can be written to disk when the server power is returned. The newer controllers are now using flash cache, so there is no battery. 🙂
 
belvdr said:
The cache on array controllers is really there in case of power failure, so that extra data can be written to disk when the server power is returned. The newer controllers are now using flash cache, so there is no battery. 🙂
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Which is great! But none of those options are available in the mini server. However I guess it shouldn't take much of a UPS to keep it up and running long enough to finish writing to disk then shut it down in the event of a power outage.
 
I use server day in and day out (on my workstations and my last macbook - this one is too new for the 10.6 regular dvd). To save a few bucks, if you can get NetBoot working from your other mac then you may never need a dvd rom for it as you can reinstall it over the network. There are guides for configuring the NetBoot service on OSX Client.

I may be purchasing the same model to do the same job you! Should save on power as right now my PS3 Slim is the HTPC and it is a hog for power.
 
let us know what you think of the mini being used as a htpc, if you end up following through with the project. i'm curious to see the outcome.
 
I bought the mac mini server over the weekend and hooked it up via hdmi to my plasma tv. I have a wireless keyboard and mouse, but prefer to manage it from my macbook pro using screen sharing. The server edition is a great. It has all the features of the client addition, plus it lets you set up a webserver, a quicktime broadcast server, etc if you ever want to stream your videos on the internet.

The apple remote works great with the server and you can use the remote with plex or with front row just fine.

The terrabyte of storage makes it a better deal than the client version of the mini in my opinion. I kept my drives two drives. I don't see the need to show everything in one volume, since all of the apps I use to organize and play the content allow me to specify specific folder where the content is anyway.

I am ripping my dvds using my old macbook air superdrive. It works great with ripit.
 
Is there a way to install windows 7 on the mac mini server? I hear it does not have bootcamp, so how could I do it?

I dont want to use Parallels or any similar software. I want a partition with windows 7.
 
Sensamic said:
Is there a way to install windows 7 on the mac mini server? I hear it does not have bootcamp, so how could I do it?

I dont want to use Parallels or any similar software. I want a partition with windows 7.
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I think you have to install regular 10.6 to get the Dual Boot abilities.

Just for my two cents, I have been using an Intel Core Solo Mac Mini which I upgrade to a 1.66ghz Core Duo as my Media Center for over 2 years now and I can play HD content no problem.

That being said I do not play 1080 anything, its always 720. For blu-ray I use my Playstation 3 slim.

I'm getting my Mac Mini Server later this week, early next week and I don't see why it won't be able to play HD content.

Honestly I don't see why people are so picky from 720 to 1080 . . . but maybe its just me, I mean I watch Classic Doctor Who that I digitized from VHS tapes which was 250 lines and I still enjoy them on my 32" LCD TV, don't see a need to re-buy all the stories on DVDs.

Again just my two cents . . .

-iGrant
 
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