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New Mac pro as web server or go with a PC?

twoodcc

twoodcc

macrumors P6
Original poster
Feb 3, 2005
15,307
26
Right side of wrong
I have a 2006 first gen Mac pro, and it has been great. Its starting to show its age, and I'm thinking of getting a new Mac pro. The primary use would be a web server and web development for my personal use (but still priceless information), and I would probably use it for normal activity also.

Now I have an i7 pc running Ubuntu right now as my server. I switched from my Mac pro bc I thought it would be faster - but I'm now finding out that it isn't working so well. I'm just using it on my home network, and it's constantly saying that the server stopped responding or it's not there, and then in spurts it will work very fast.

Any ideas on what's going on here?

How would the 2.4 ghz 8-core Mac pro stack up against my old Mac pro and my i7 920 4-core pc?

Thanks in advance
 
Why do you need i7 power for a webserver that is just on your LAN? I have a box with a Pentium 4 2.8C and 2GB of ram running Archlinux w/ sabnzbd, sickbeard, couchpotato, irssi in screen connected to 6 servers, apache w/ mysql/php, proftpd, and serves 8TB of tv shows/movies/etc to my jailbroken AppleTV over Samba. Never skips a beat or lags.

Are you wired or wireless? What webserver? Anything in the system logs? Does the whole connection drop for the webserver when it times out? How is the SMART status on the hard drives in the server?
 
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I have a wireless network with 3 airport extremes throughout the house.

I stream lots of video, and I run scripts on some sites for testing. I go through terabytes of data per month.

I use apache and php/MySQL.
 
It sounds like you're having wireless connection issues with the server, have you tried connecting it to one of the Airports via wire?
 
the server is connected to one of the airports via an ethernet cable.

it's crazy really. i have no idea what the problem is, but i'm running ubuntu 11.04, and i'm using dhcp with manual ip address. i don't know if it's some setting in there or what. but i'm already in the process of transferring everything back to my mac pro for now. (of course that will take over 16 hours to do)
 
This definitely sounds like bandwidth is the bottleneck rather than the CPU. A wired network, preferably with gigabit, should fix the issues. Even if you can't do that permanently, at least you can then investigate wireless issues such as channels, antenna placement, etc.
 
gglockner said:
This definitely sounds like bandwidth is the bottleneck rather than the CPU. A wired network, preferably with gigabit, should fix the issues. Even if you can't do that permanently, at least you can then investigate wireless issues such as channels, antenna placement, etc.
Click to expand...

well that could be it. i have moved stuff around while i was going from the mac to the pc. and now i've moved stuff back to the mac pro. so now i'll see how everything works for me.

i'm running lion server now on the mac pro. we'll see how it does
 
I agree the problem may be with a possible networking bottleneck in your wireless setup. Gigabit ethernet is still way above and beyond 802.11n speeds.

'n' should be fast enough to stream even HD video, however, so definitely check the antennae placement.
 
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papoopeepoo said:
I agree the problem may be with a possible networking bottleneck in your wireless setup. Gigabit ethernet is still way above and beyond 802.11n speeds.

'n' should be fast enough to stream even HD video, however, so definitely check the antennae placement.
Click to expand...

In theory, yes. But back in the real world it's usually not.
 
You know, I thought about it and I had a really similar issue with my fileserver. It would cause the ATV2 to buffer, not serve sites from Apache, and not allow me to SSH in to the box while it either par2 checks usenet downloads or unrars a usenet download.

I racked my brain and couldn't figure it out but after taking a look with `iostat` it turns out I was maxing out the root hard drive and causing the process wait time to shoot through the ***** roof. Worth looking into if you've got anything hard drive intensive going.
 
theSeb said:
In theory, yes. But back in the real world it's usually not.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Walls, large metallic items like major appliances, interference from other wireless devices - these all affect network performance. Wireless is great, but for best speed and reliability, wired is the best choice.

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RedReplicant said:
You know, I thought about it and I had a really similar issue with my fileserver....it turns out I was maxing out the root hard drive and causing the process wait time to shoot through the ***** roof.
Click to expand...

Good points. Test by shutting down all other processes, and disable Time Machine as well.
 
I just use an Ubuntu VM on my Mac Pro for a webserver... doubt you'd need a whole Mac Pro just for the webserver, unless its running huge databases and performing massive server side tasks.
 
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