Mac Mini as small + quiet + headless personal web server?

TommyWillB

TommyWillB

Registered
That other "Mac Mini as a server ?" thread has veered too far away from my finite questions... so I'd like to try again by focusing on some very specific questions (hopefully avoiding tangents, etc.):

Background:

1) I use my mac for a personal Internet-facing web site that
. a) get's less than 100 hits a day. (Correction 100 "page views".)
. b) is a glorified photo album (<2GB of images so far)
. c) uses some basic PHP scripting & header/footer includes
. d) has mimimal Apache conf tweaks (mostly play/learning related)

2) My current Mac is an 867mhz QuickSilver G4 w/ a firewire LaCie external 200GB drive.

My Requirements:

1) I want to move my Apache web site off my G4, and onto it's own mini-like (or cube-like) thing. (Apple Mac OS X... not Wintel, Linux nor some other 'nix.)
. a) I will not move any of my other day to day computer usage onto this machine.
. b) I would operate this machine headless and access the machine via Apple File Sharing + SSH

2) My biggest complaint is that the G4 + drives are too loud @ night when we are sleeping in the next room... so I want near silence!

3) I keep this computer on 24/7 in a closed bedroom (to keep the kities away), so I need something that will keep cool... quietly.

4) Most of the hits to my site are from modem-based family mebers... My mac is connected to the Internet via DSL connection w/ 782mb(k?) download and 512mb (k?) upload. (Obviously the "up" is the important part for web serving.)


My Questions:

1) How quiet is the mini... really!
(I can never judge this in the Apple store because there are billion people there!)

2) Considering I'm just talking about running the OS + Apache what are the chances of VM swapping if there is only 256MB of RAM? ... vs. upgrading to 512MB? i.e. should I waste money on the extral 256MB?

(My current httpd is only taking about 25MB of RAM, but I can't quite fiure out how to calculate what OS X is taking.)

3) Will heat really be an issue when used for such a lightweight purpose? even in a closed bedroom?

4) As long as I'm not going to hit VM much, I'm thinking the slow drive speed is not a real issue... Right?
(For comparison, how fast were the drives on the old cube's?)

(I'm not worried about actually filling up 40GB... so I didn't ask any questions about that...)

5) What other issues should I seriously consider before buying this?
 
I think that mini would be ideal for a small, low power consumption machine. I doubt it will heat up that hot with that little usage. You probably could get by with 256Mb of ram but you'd be better off with 512. As mentioned in other threads the network will most likely be the limiting factor.
 
WeeZer51402 said:
...You probably could get by with 256Mb of ram but you'd be better off with 512...
Click to expand...
Is this just a generic comment or do you actually think I could exceed 256MG of real RAM and then hit VM?
WeeZer51402 said:
...As mentioned in other threads the network will most likely be the limiting factor.
Click to expand...
I presume you mean the speed of DSL uploads being the limiting factor an not some networking compromise within the Mini itself?

BTW, I didn't mention that I'm hooked up to a 10/100 hub, but that's moot since even 10 is faster than the DSL. ;)
 
I think if you have a working tower, you could spend some money to make it quieter.. often just cleaning it will make the fans quieter.. i believe there are sites that detail how to replace fans with quieter ones...

as i said in the other thread. the load created by this use, will in no way strangle the connection or your machine. i suggest the extra (not sure what you mean about external..?) ram, as a machine NEVER has too much RAM...

hope this helps : )
 
well by network speed I was also including your internet connection. As for ram, imagine having an open ssh session, and FTP uploading a ton of pictures and and 20 simultaneous hits - in a case like that it certainly wouldn't hurt to have 512Mb.
 
Given that the miniMac's maximum continuous power is only 80W (as opposed to the QuickSilver's 360W) excessive heat generation is unlikely to become an issue.

I couldn't even get near my local Apple Store this week end, but the zillions of reviews all tout the mini's "whisper quiet" operation.
 
WeeZer51402 said:
As for ram, imagine having an open ssh session, and FTP uploading a ton of pictures...
Click to expand...
Like I said, using File Sharing not FTP... And I only load at most 30 new photos at a time,so either way I don't imagine loading new ones will be a problem.

WeeZer51402 said:
...20 simultaneous hits - in a case like that it certainly wouldn't hurt to have 512Mb.
Click to expand...
To get that I'd probably have to have 6-10 people hitting the site at the same time. And that's not likely.

andychrist said:
Given that the miniMac's maximum continuous power is only 80W (as opposed to the QuickSilver's 360W) excessive heat generation is unlikely to become an issue...
Click to expand...
Now that's an answer that is clear and makes sense!
 
Sorry... I didn't mean to imply one post made sense and the other didn't.

Probably I should not have combined the two reponese.

:(
 
Tommy

I doubt you'll have any problems for your use with the Mini Mac, but I would up the memory as much as you can.

There's sure to be info on opening the case to install memory, hard drives, in the near future on the web.
 
FYI, the iMac G5s were described as whisper quiet, but during a recent extended review of one I had for almost a week, it was far louder than my PB17, even with performance settings turned to the lowest setting.
Though with an AirPort card and AirPort Extreme, could you move it to a different room?
 
I'm betting that the mini will be fine for your needs. I bought one to use the same way.
One thing on "quiteness".
I have a QS 733 and it was really loud. It turns out that the loudness was coming from the hard drive. As soon as I replaced the stock HD the QS suddenly became VERY quite.
 
For a server that small - 100 ish hits a day, most of the clients are on slow connections anyway, yadda yadda - you could practically run the server on a sack of potatoes.

Swapping should definitely not be an issue, especially if you're logging in via ssh and not a full GUI session. It's true, the more unused RAM you have, the more the OS can use for caching recently accessed files.

Where the disk speed could be a bit of an issue is with loading the pictures. With 2 gigs of images, obviously the OS won't be keeping all of that in cache no matter how you do the administration. On the other hand, if it's a photo album for keeping your family up to date, clients will mostly head straight for the newest photos (I have no way of verifying that, but whatever).

So, if the next person looks at the newest 20 megs of photos, just the same as the last person did, there's a pretty good chance your disk won't even need to do a seek - either the file will be in cache, or the drive heads will still be over the same cylinder.

Anyway, even if you had the full 2 gigs of images in RAM, your customers would probably never notice the difference - even if they're on some kind of super hot dog high speed internet connections, their bandwidth is going to be way way slower than the rotational and bus bandwidth of even the slowest HD, and the latency of even half a dozen hops is going to be longer than the seek + rotation latency of a 5400 rpm drive.

All of this would only be relevant if your traffic suddenly went up several orders of magnitude. From your description of what the server will be doing, you might want to seriously consider the sack of potatoes - they're quiet, they draw very little power, and they keep forever in a cool dry basement.
 
As i posted in your other thread that i aggree got way out of line, the short answer is that the mini will be overkill for what you need.

About 6 months ago i switched from an 8500 with a G3/300 card and 512mb of ram and only a total of about 12 gig of harddrives to my BW G3/450. the 8500 did a fine job for my low volume sites, I posted something up there once that had a huge download (about 3 gig of downloads in two days) and while this was happening i was watching the CPU on that 300mhz g3 with a SLOW bus and it was only at about 60%, but the 10base connection/roadrunner was slammed to capacity. the only time my BW G3 gets pegged is when i cam slapping it on my own LAN and never from the WAN.
 
scruffy said:
How to get Apache on a sack of potatoes? Easy - of course it runs NetBSD.
Click to expand...
Ask Sogni — that's essentially what his server amounts to. :D ::ha::

Just kidding, buddy. ;)
 
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