Anyone using Sonnet’s xMac as a server?

[Bob Zelin]

the xMac is a metal box with a 2 slot thunderbolt expansion chassis attached to it. There is no computer in the Sonnet xMac. It is your job to buy a Mac Mini, and put it inside the xMac, and now, using the Mac Mini Thunderbolt port, you now have 2 PCIe slots to put in cards, like a disk drive host adaptor card, that can run an external array.

So is anyone using the Mac Mini as a server. Absolutely. Is the xMac a wonderful product that takes this limited computer, and gives it the slots that Apple doesn’t give you – absolutely. The xMac is a godsend product for people that have professional applications for the Mac Mini, and need to use PCIe cards for products like drive arrays, 10gig ethernet, and LTO Tape backup systems.

This forum deals with SAN and NAS, and the Mac Mini (and xMac) can be used in either configuration.

Bob Zelin

[Eric Hansen]

I’d say it depends on how you’re going to use it.

From a cost perspective, the xMac mini server is $1300 on Sonnet’s site. Apple sells their server-specific Mac Mini for $999

total: $2300

As cool as Thunderbolt is, we’re only talking about a 4x PCIe connection. So if you have SAS storage in one slot (8x) and a 4 port ethernet card in the other slot (4x), you won’t have nearly enough bandwidth to get the data anywhere quickly. 12 lanes of data are crammed into 4.

The last generation of the Xserve was based on Nehalem chips, similar to the 2009 Mac Pro. It has 2 16x PCIe slots. So in this case, an Xserve would run circles around the xMac server. From a cost perspective, I’m finding used Nehalem Xserves in the $1500-3000 range. I would go with an Xserve hands down if bandwidth is your goal. if you don’t need the 1U form factor, used Mac Pros are an even better deal.

But if your server needs are more modest, or if you’re looking to save on power and noise (although i’m not sure how much noise the xMac enclosure makes) then a Mac Mini will make more sense. Some Xsan installers are using Mac Minis as Metadata Controllers because these needs are relatively light.

After spending the last 2 days upgrading an Xsan system with Xserves, I’m reminded of how awesome that design was. Sad to see it go.

e

Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv

[Matt Geier]

Hi Shane,

Lots of people in the industry experiment with this in both SAN and NAS. As with any of the shared storage configurations, you need to deploy and set it all up to work a certain way depending on your workflow.

I recently spoke to a gentleman who was installing his Small Tree Quad Port 1GbE adapter to connect to a switch with link aggregation, and connect his Gtech RAID over thunderbolt to his xMac configuration. For the moment, his RAID only goes about 350MB/sec tops. Sharing the bandwidth with just 6 workstations, means that the bandwidth to his RAID is one bottleneck, then moving down to the 400MB/sec link agg pipe being shared, then to each client working over 1GbE.

He won’t find stellar real time performance, but he’s setting up for push / pull of Photoshop files. The users still won’t pull or push faster then a max of 70-90MB/sec. They will realistically always see lower if they all hit the RAID and network at once.

It’s all about conditions and what kind of performance you need vs want vs actually get with all the various overheads.

Let us know if we can help. You’ll probably want Small Tree multiport adapters to serve the network for this. Maybe something more. Give us a call or swing by our Creative Cow Forum if you’d like some pre sales consult on this subject! I represent the West Coast Sales Region at Small Tree.

Regards and best of luck,

Matt Geier
(Video Networking Solutions Expert)
(Creative Design Workflow Consultant)
(Social Media Networks Consultant)
(Technical Video Industry Sales Consultant)