Apple

Zinnato, Ronald NAVAIR wrote:

Ever thought of using a NAS instead? I think it would be much cheaper.

Oh, and should you go the MacPro route, you might want to make sure your
eSATA card from your G5 will work in it. Mine didn't.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Emery [mailto:email@hidden] Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 10:45
To: email@hidden
Cc: Rich Hilliard; Mark Maier; Valentine, Colin M.
Subject: [Fed-Talk] Opinions solicited: FW800 mini vs MacPro for home
server?

I'd like to tap the collected wisdom of this group: The G5 that I've been
running Leopard Server on has been a problematic machine from the beginning.
Now it's not booting (it 'boings', but nothing ever comes up on the
monitor), and I think it's (past) time to replace it. This machine's
primary use is as a file server. The home accounts are all Server Mobile
accounts, so I don't depend on the server for directly serving home
directories. But I do depend on it for reliable large data set storage
(e.g. photos...) and for 2-stage backup for the laptops/home machines.
(Laptop does mobile synch to server, then server does TimeMachine backup.)

The choices are (a) Mini + FW800 external RAID case or (b) Mac Pro
Mini: Advantages: Cheap! Disadvantages: FW800 is slower than eSATA or internal drives. Pro: Advantages: can hold 4 drives internally. can reuse my eSATA card from the G5. Disadvantages: Cost (and paying for horsepower I don't need.)
The Pro+FW RAID case is about $750, vs more than $2k for a Mac Pro. (And if I go with the Mini, I'll have a 2 drive eSATA enclosure and a
4-channel eSATA card to sell...)

Your thoughts very welcome!
dave

p.s. there are times when I think everyone but me has some sort of
corporate/govt/educational discount with Apple :-(

--
David Emery, DSCI, supporting PdM FCS (BCT) SW Integration
703 298 3473 (office/cell), 703 272 7496 (fax)