"Like most people that create networks I did not realize that the Mac Mini includes 3 high speed network interfaces and that with a little bit of work and the right architecture they can be used to operate in much the same manner one would see in a high-end network operations centers. I manage one such NOC and I wanted my home network to function like most companies who do serious business online."
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Member since:2005-10-09
No offense was taken! I certainly understand your standpoint, but that kind of "cluster" can be done relatively easily in software. (some other posters mentioned zones/jails, that's pretty much the theory. It's like having a totally seperate machine, including it's own ip/range of ips.)
About the Xserve, you can find them used for much less. 
Even a dualie g4 would be better suited to this, because of the level of hw/sw interaction, he'd have full fault monitoring etc.
As he works in a NOC, he should be familiar with unix as well. I don't know any NOC management who haven't worked on unix boxes extensively. Unless he works at a mac only data center (????) which I'm not sure even exist.
No offense was intended either, as I mentioned in my first post, if he did this to learn or as a "I wonder if I can" project, then most excellent. He did a great job writing it up too. I was just trying to explore a more suitable method for doing this, that would lead to very useful experience in the "Real World". Nobody would put a 3 mini server setup in a production environment unless they were insane. I just wanted to clarify this for people who were thinking "oh I should go buy 3 minis, and then I can be a webhost!" or something like this. Even if you want OSX, you'd be much much better off getting server-class hardware, even used.
The best alternative (right now) would be to put together a x86/x64 box for less than the cost of those three minis, and be an order of magnitude faster, and much much more stable. You could actually put that in production too. 
Not to mention it would look pretty good on your resume to have the associated experience. It really isn't that difficult. That's all.
Member since:
2006-02-10
I am not trying to bash you here ormandj so please don't take this as such.
You kinda missed the point.
He is not assembling something to run in a data center. He wants a small NOC knock-off (heh heh) that he can run from his desk. I had a spare dual G4 lying around, but if I didn't I think this would be a great solution.
Also, the current cheapest XServe you can get right now is 3K US. How is this not more economical, even with the investment in time?
Edited 2006-02-10 23:11