Mac Mini web server
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Mar 21, 2007, 09:03 PM
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muka5001 Junior Member Join: Mar 2007 Posts: 4 |
Mac Mini web server We currently have 3 Dell rack optimised webservers in a local data center, however the center in now up to capacity and we have no room for expansion. The servers are running a lot of services between them including DNS Server, HTTP Server, FTP Server, POP & SMTP, PHP & MYSQL so we are cautious about loading them up with more services. We are looking to use Mac Minis as enterprise web server running Mac OSX as the host and Win2k Server under Parallels desktop. This may sound crazy but there is some method in the madness. Firstly the Dells take up a lot of space and power, for each Dell we replace we can have at least 6 Mac Mini Servers in its place. Secondly we can dedicate a single service per MacMini and if a failure occures we can redeploy quickly, so what we loose in Raid5 redundency on the Dells we mitigate with loss of one service (not multiple as current with Dells) and being able to fix and rapidly redeploy the OS. We've been testing for about a week running Win2K and Mailenable Pro on two MacMinis with relative success. The MacMinis are setup to run Windows networking in Bridge mode on the wired ethernet and the host Mac OSX network is assiged to Airport, this gives us flexibility to connect using PCAnywhere on the Win2K OS and Apple Remote Desktop on Mac OSX, if a problem occures with Win2k and it crashes, theoretically we can connect on Apple Remote Desktop and restart the Virtual environment. I was wondering if anyone else out there had similar experiences, clearly we could do all this in Bootcamp but its much easier and more flexible with Parallels, our only concern at present is future longterm reliability I'd be really interested to hear constructive comments / experiences |
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Mar 22, 2007, 12:03 AM
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logandzwon Junior Member Join: Jun 2006 Posts: 27 |
A couple of things here, 1st off, 6 minis that tightly together generate a lot of heat. Second, a mini is more than 1 rack unit high, plus you need a shelf to put them on. In other words, you're looking at 6 minis per 2U. Second thing, security, stability, etc... What I mean is that paralells can't run as a background service, meaning a user must be logged on, meaning to automatically run at start-up you must have automatic log-on as a user with enough privileges to start up your VMs, (and delete/modifiy them.) You can set-up some kinda auto start the screen saver with a password, but isn't really good enough security for a production system. Third, the minis actually pack quite a bit of power. You can have mutiple VMs running per machine, so you could actually run 2-3 vms on each machine, giving you 18 windows VM in 2U. Then mesh all your services to be load-balanced/fail-over between mutiple VMs and machines. You could have mutiple system failures and still not lose any traffic. But again, I wouldn't run this till someone has a stable VM server that runs as a backround process like VMware server. On top of that, you can everything you mentioned in OS X nativly Either threw the ApplePorts or with OS X server. DNS Server = Bind 9, HTTP Server = apache 1.3 (I think), FTP Server, POP & SMTP (either sendmail or postfix I forget), PHP 4.4.4 & MYSQL (I think version 3) are all built-in to OS X server too. |
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Mar 22, 2007, 12:45 AM
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unused_user_name Senior Member Join: Jun 2006 Posts: 501 |
I would be careful about stacking a bunch of minis in a rack in a server room. They really were designed to have at least 4 of 6 sides open to air for cooling. If you do rack them make sure to get something like CoreDuoTemp to keep track of how how they get. If you are going apple, you should check out the Xserves. They were designed to be put in a rack. One more thing: why not run your services under OSX (or maybe linux?). I don't see anything in your list that requires the use of windows. If you are buying apple hardware anyway, why not expirament with running your services directly from OSX? __________________ MacBookPro C2D 2.4Ghz, 4gb RAM, 200gb Disk, 1tb USB2 Disk 2x Win XP Pro VM, 512mb RAM, 30gb Disk Win 2k VM, 265 mb RAM, 20 gb Disk Fedora 7 VM, 512mb RAM, 20gb Disk Red Hat Enterprise Linux (64 bit) VM, 512mb RAM, 20gb Disk Minix VM, 128mb RAM, 200mb Disk |
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Mar 22, 2007, 05:14 AM
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muka5001 Junior Member Join: Mar 2007 Posts: 4 |
Thanks, i appreciate your feedback. I would love to transition everything over to Mac OSX Server but unfortunaltley we have some complex web related services that we have developed using windows based API's and libraries that are driven by php (these are currently not available on OSX platform) so we are pretty much stuck with Windows for the http, mail and ftp services. I take your points on security and heat. We actually have 6u at our disposal, its a bottom shelf of a rack and the power packs could go under the rack. The data center is climate controlled obviously, but more than that, they have air cooled racks with built in fans so I'm hoping this won't be a problem. From a security perspective we are subletting the space from a much larger company that owns the rack, in short we can trust them and its a locked cabinet. I also agree the best option would be to run windows in bootcamp but XP PRO is not an option as IIS is not an enterprise version only accepts 10 inbound connectsions and we simply can't afford 2003 server, which leaves us with Win2k which we are more than happy with, but installing this on bootcamp is, i believe difficult and there are no firm drivers supported. I'd be interested in inforarmation on this tho' i've trawled the net and found little. Getting back to the main point, running Win2k Server under Parallels, my primary concern is stability, so far in our testing the mini's seem fine, we have had one lockup in windows which seemed to be after installing parallels tools but nothing since, and nothing to lock the Mac OSX environment. I'm wondering if its worth having the tools installed at all, we can live without video card support. The mac is set to autologin, and under sys prefs, accounts, i've set a login item to launch the alias for the win2k server virtualised environment, unfortunately this causes a dialog box error (sorry can't remember the actual error), i'm assuming its because the VM is trying to launch before Parallels services have started up?? I think if there is a delay it will launch. I hadn't thought of using Xserves running multiple VM's, its a great idea, however would this not be limited to two VM's per server, 1 per ethernet port or is there a way around that? |
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Mar 22, 2007, 11:37 AM
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dkp Senior Member Join: May 2006 Posts: 1,415 |
I don't see a role for OS X at all in this. The Mac Mini is a nice little computer but the consumer oriented virtualizing tools available for it would rule it out a data center implementation, at least for me. You would be better off with stackable 1U Intel servers built for the purpose: remote access, redundant power, networking, NAS/SAN support, LOM, etc. These can run OTS virtualizing software that is built for the purpose and that runs without requiring a logged in user session. This rules out Xservers because there's not proper virtualizing support available for OS X in this configuration (IMHO). Not that I haven't begged Parallels enough :) |
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Mar 22, 2007, 12:28 PM
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Eru Ithildur Senior Member Join: Jan 2007 Posts: 2,046 |
Quote:
What type of Dells do you have? The Tower 'servers', or real rack-mounted servers? Minis are similar to the towers, just a whole heck of a lot smaller (this, of course, has its pluses and minuses). If you are looking for an Apple solution, as was reccomended earlier, look at the XServe. Or you can do a hybrid if you really want to get Apple in. Or you can just upgrade. :P What do you want from an Apple that you wouldn't have from Windows? Ease of use? Lower cost once you are set on high-end equipment? Or just the name? |
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