[kennedy]

I am beginning to install OS X Server for the first time.
(I've been using OS X as a server, configuring by hand... but now
I am stepping up to the real thing.)
I have some key questions that affect how I would partition it... which of course I must decide before I install it and start setting it up... so, if any of you know the answers, it would be tremendously helpful...

1) Is there any value to having OS9 for Classic on a server machine?
Or is it really bad for security or stability reasons to have that?
I was planning on using apps such as Dreamweaver directly on the server
machine... Dreamweaver requiring Classic. Is that a bad idea? If I
shouldn't be doing that, no reason to waste 10GB for an OS9 partition.

2) There is /Network/Applications and /Network/Users. That implies to me that it is possible to install applications on the server and have all the client machines access those across the LAN... rather than having to install the apps on each and every machine. Is that so?
If so, I'll setup a separate partition for Applications. If not, of course there is no point. I've noticed when working with OS X that freeware tends to be usable over mounts whereas commercial apps tend not to be. But is there way to make it work with X Server or with site licensing from the maker??

3) I will be using FileMaker Server on OS X Server to serve my business database. Since that business data is not user-specific, I assume it isn't installed in a user directory, but rather in its own location. Since I will want to protect that data carefully, I was planning to put it in a separate partition.

4) In the end, I was thinking of having these partitions:
Disk1:
10G -- OS9
20G -- OSX
20G -- Applications
30G -- FileMaker Data
Disk2:
80G -- Users

Any issues with that? Recommendations?

Thanks!

[jarends]

Why were you planning to use apps on the server? Bad bad bad. Don't do it.

Classic is kind of a resource hog, and the official apple recomendation last time i personally spoke to one of their engineers was no classic on servers.

So that should nix your OS 9 partition.

What apps were you planning to install? You really shouldn't have any on the server at all.

[kennedy]

Originally posted by jarends:
<STRONG>Why were you planning to use apps on the server? Bad bad bad. Don't do it.</STRONG>

Because its a really nice machine... a really expensive machine... and the Apple engineer I spoke to indicated it was no problem whatsoever.
It has a DVD burner and thus would be very useful when I occasionally
need that. When I throw together a new "movie", it would seem logical
to do it there.

Classic is kind of a resource hog, and the official apple recomendation last time i personally spoke to one of their engineers was no classic on servers.[/QB]

I expected that to be the recommendation... but the Apple engineer I spoke to said it would not be a problem.

What apps were you planning to install? You really shouldn't have any on the server at all.[/QB]

FileMaker Server and Pro
QuickBooks
Office vX
Macromedia Dreamweaver, FreeHand, Fireworks
iMovie
Eudora


I wouldn't mind having a dedicated fileserver if Apple would build
such a thing. In fact, Apple could make its Macs much more appealing
and price competitive if they offered NetBoot for OS X, iMacs with
minimal hard disk and no modem, dual 800s with nothing not needed for
file serving, etc. As it is, I have all these Macs that are overkill
in one way or another... and they aren't cheap!


Anyway, my latest plan is to partition like this:

iMac: 5G OS9 - 5G OSX - 10G Local
Server: 5G OS9 - 15G OSX - 10G Local - 50G Shared - 80G Users

Local will have Applications and some local disk space that users can drop stuff. Ideally, I'd install the apps on the Server's Local and then just copy Applications from Server to each iMac. Any chance that will work??? It would sure ease the maintenance headache.

Shared will have Applications and our shared business data, such as FileMaker, QuickBooks, and so on. It will be mounted on the iMacs.

Users will have the user home directories and will be mounted.

Comments? Recommendations? Issues?

Thanks!

[jarends]

You're missing the point.

A server can't also be a workstation.

If you're just using it to play around, then fine, it doesn't matter, but if this is something people depend on, you for security and reliability reasons it shouldn't much of anything on it other than the server software.

What will you do if one of your apps crash? OS X isn't perfect..yet..so then you have to reboot, and you have how much downtime?

Buy less of a machine and save some money. Don't bother with the DVD burner for example, a server doesn't need that.

Also, I've had 2 apple engineers personally tell me not to use classic on a server. That advice just makes sense.

Anyway what is the purpose of this server? What services will you be running?

A don't know what you do for a living, but just so you know, most network admins keep their servers in locked rooms. We usually use crappy monitors on them. Yes, often times servers are "really nice machines" and I'd love to have them on my desktop, but you need to let servers do serving and have desktop machines be desktop machines.

You might be able to get away with using your iMac as the server, and your new G4 as your desktop machine. It's probably way overkill for what you're doing anyway. i can better help you though if you give me an idea of what you're trying to serve and how many people will be hitting it, will it be exposed to the internet, etc.

[ 12-07-2001: Message edited by: jarends ]

[kennedy]

Originally posted by jarends:
<STRONG>You're missing the point.

A server can't also be a workstation.</STRONG>

Sure it can. It *can*... it may be extremely unwise,
but it *can*. And with a Mac server, very tempting;
and that's why I asked the question.

<STRONG>What will you do if one of your apps crash? OS X isn't perfect..yet..so then you have to reboot, and you have how much downtime?</STRONG>

Reboot... as long as its a rare occurrence and not at the wrong
time of day... more on that in a bit...

<STRONG>Buy less of a machine and save some money. Don't bother with the DVD burner for example, a server doesn't need that.</STRONG>

Oh, but it will make back-ups sooo much easier. And I should be
able to set it up as a semi-shared service... though I'll have to
be there to load/unload...

<STRONG>Also, I've had 2 apple engineers personally tell me not to use classic on a server. That advice just makes sense.</STRONG>

Agreed... the reason for my query. It does concern me, reliability
wise. But more I was worried there might be even bigger concerns,
such as security holes or such. If its just the fear of anything de-stabilizing, I think my situation (see below) can tolerate the small risk. But if there are more fundamental issues, I'd love to hear them.

<STRONG>Anyway what is the purpose of this server? What services will you be running?

A don't know what you do for a living, but just so you know, most network admins keep their servers in locked rooms.</STRONG>

Mine *is* in a locked room. Only I will be using it.
I agree "general user workstation" and "server" do not
mix at all.

<STRONG>i can better help you though if you give me an idea of what you're trying to serve and how many people will be hitting it, will it be exposed to the internet, etc.</STRONG>

Thanks for the help. Basically, I am setting up a network for both my employees and my customers. About a dozen iMacs for use by my employees, primarily for running a FileMaker-based customer class scheduling and billing software (think YMCA-like). They will also be used for MS Office (letters, spreadsheets) and Macromedia(website updates, graphics, movies). And I am sure plenty of web browsing. They will log into OS X on any computer and find complete access to their home directory and to the business database (easily move from office, to front desk, to study room).

In the study room and the "Internet Cafe" I'll have another dozen or two iMacs that any member (customer) can use for browsing or reading their email. Much restricted access.

Nobody will be using the server as a workstation but me. And I will only do it in off-hours, when the level of customers is small to nil. Thus, a two-minute reboot will not be any huge deal. (My public website is hosted by a hosting company.) And I will be doing things I know are relatively reliable... nothing radical.

Anyway, any feedback/tips/gotchas will be appreciated. I have some level of exposure to sysadmin ways as a programmer in a small company, but by no means consider myself an expert... and I've never found a good/brief source of advice.

Thanks again.

[jarends]

I'm not sure if what you want to do is possible yet.

Mac OS X server comes with Macintosh Manager, which right now is only designed for OS 9. You have to run OS X server though. It's kinda a gotcha.

There really isn't a way to do what you want other than setting up each machine right now.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. This applies to a few things here:

I don't think OS X is ready to be used organization wide right now. I use it on my desktop, but even though classic runs pretty well, its not something that I'd deploy any time soon. There is no good way to manage OS X installations. This will come with time.

Also, the engineer I spoke with seemed to stress that there would be major reliability problems by running classic. That is why when you buy OS X server, there is no OS 9 cd in the package. He also did mention there are possible security risks because on its own OS X is fairly secure as origionally set up. Classic can introduce all kinds of fun little situations that no one is aware of since Apple does not support it.

Lastly, I don't think you really understand how big of a mistake using a server for apps also is. I'm guessing you'll be lazy and log in as a full admin user all the time on your server, and then its incredibly easy for you to make a tiny mistake that will result in a massive loss of data.

I think that machine is overkill for what you want to do as a server. You seem to really like it, so you might as well just use it as your desktop machine. Using a server half the time as a workstation can pose problems, but also is just against every rule that network administrators live by. A G3 thats 300mhz or so, as long as the RAM is really tricked out should be fast enough for your purposes. SCSI hard drives in it would probably help speed as well.

[kennedy]

Originally posted by jarends:
<STRONG>I don't think OS X is ready to be used organization wide right now. I use it on my desktop, but even though classic runs pretty well, its not something that I'd deploy any time soon. There is no good way to manage OS X installations. This will come with time.</STRONG>

Hmmm. I'd like to understand all your concerns baked into the first statement above. Is it just the lack of Macintosh Manager that concerns you? Or is there more?

With just 7 workstations growing over the next year to 30, the *temporary* lack of Macintosh Manager isn't too bothersome to me... bothersome, but not a huge loss as OS X has lots of access privilege support built in. The less than perfect reliability is bothersome, but its not like OS9 is rock-solid! OS9 hangs often and has numerous weaknesses and uglinesses that complicate group support (OS X isn't alone there). Given my org is not ready for straight Unix, WinXP or NT is probably the more stable choice. But supporting that is a different kind of nightmare.
Other than supporting a Sun Unix network, OS X doesn't look particularly more problematic than the other options... given my needs.

If you think I'm all wet there, please explain. I can certainly change my mind at this point and deploy an OS 9 network... or even WinXP. However, its not clear OS9 is a particularly solid solution for my needs... and I don't relish training people how to use it... OS X, restricted as I am using it, is just so much clearer.

<STRONG>Also, the engineer I spoke with seemed to stress that there would be major reliability problems by running classic. That is why when you buy OS X server, there is no OS 9 cd in the package..</STRONG>

Are you sure its not because the Mac comes with OS 9 and OS X, so OS X Server need not supply it??? ;^) Anyway, thanks for passing on the issue... I just wish I knew a little more detail behind that... For example, certainly running typical game software in Classic will kill your machine! And some purportedly professional software is also problematic. But, I have not experienced destabilization from Macromedia products running in Classic. None at all.

<STRONG>Lastly, I don't think you really understand how big of a mistake using a server for apps also is. I'm guessing you'll be lazy and log in as a full admin user all the time on your server, and then its incredibly easy for you to make a tiny mistake that will result in a massive loss of data.</STRONG>

Nope... one of the beauties of OS X... if I did that, my working environment that I use on other Macs too would not be there. My 'admin' environment is tailored for getting the admin jobs done quick and get out of there. I have never once run Macromedia, Office, or any other user app while logged in as 'admin'.

So, given I can trust myself there... are there other issues related to your first statement that I may be unaware of? (BTW, I think your elaboration on these issues is very useful... I know it is for me... so thanks for your investment... and please know I am not questioning your judgement, just digging for details so that I understand it well.)

<STRONG>I think that machine is overkill for what you want to do as a server. You seem to really like it, so you might as well just use it as your desktop machine. Using a server half the time as a workstation can pose problems, but also is just against every rule that network administrators live by. A G3 thats 300mhz or so, as long as the RAM is really tricked out should be fast enough for your purposes. SCSI hard drives in it would probably help speed as well.</STRONG>

Interesting... given the machine is handling 3-6 simultaneous class registration queries to FileMaker Server while also file serving for another dozen users and print serving for a couple... I'd have thought a Dual-800 would be far from overkill... I can't imagine a 300 being able to cut it. But I may be far overestimating the CPU cycles required by those sorts of things.

Thanks again.

[jarends]

An example: I could go out and get a Dell computer with Dual PIIIs, a DVD burner, and Windows 2000 Server, and that could definitely handle serving and me using Dreamweaver on it. I'd never do it though. Sure that machine would be fun to use, but its probably overkill for any serving I'd do, and even overkill for a desktop.

Many of my suggestions are just standard practices system administrators follow. Sure everything you want will work, but I always feel that you should follow best practices.

It's interesting to me that you want to run apps directly on your server. I'm not directly attacking you, so don't take this the wrong way, but I just can't even understand why you'd want to do that. I've never seen it done by any network admin.

Standard practice for setting up an NT, Win2k or Linux server is to remove absolutely everything possible that you can think of that isn't necessary.

The Apple engineer's reason for not including OS 9 is that it will hurt performance, OS 9 isn't necessarily secure, and you shouldn't be running apps on the server anyway.

It doesn't look like Macintosh Manager is going to be available for OS X for a while. Apple is still tweaking OS X so it'll be a while.

I haven't spent any time doing anything with OS X on a large scale, but I think a lot of those folders for apps on the network are for future use and not fully implemented yet. You should install apps locally anyway. It'll save a load on your server and your network.

Try setting up mac manager on a server, and then one desktop client. This should give you an idea if it is what you are interested in. I've found OS 9 to be pretty stable so far if it's set up correctly.

While I love OS X, I think its semi problematic, especially when classic is running. I personally had a lot of issues, but as OS X updates came out, and I managed to move more apps to OS X native, the problems went away.

Try to get your hands on some NT admin books. I wouldn't waste money on them, but I might grab one from a library and skim it. Although they won't help you directly, important admin concepts are usually in there.

But anyway, 2 rules
1nobody ever touches the server for any reason other than when necessary
2 backup backup backup backup

I think you'd be really surprised what hardware you actually need. RAM and hard drives are far more important. A 400 mhz Blue G3 would be perfect. This is why you don't run classic on it though. A 400mhz G3 should be just fine, as long as its not being used as a workstation. You could shuffle computers around. Do some testing and see if your fastest iMac can handle your load. I bet it will. Tower machines would probably make better ones though, since you can add multiple hard drives.

I've seen an imac sitting on top of a file cabinet as a server for an entire office.

If you've already bought the super fancy dual proc mac, I guess use it as your own desktop. If you haven't bought it, don't. I can't imagine needing that much computing power. The thing is also like 3K.

[jarends]

Just to give you some perspective. We're using an HP server PII 300 mhz with 256 megs or ram and a RAID array with about 9 gigs of storage running netware 5 serving about 400 user accounts. Probably 50-60 of them are logged in at any given time.

You might also want to consider 2 servers. Run filemaker on one smallish computer, and then do your filesharing on another one.

I wish someone else would reply to this thread and give some other suggestions for load average.

Last time I had experience with mac manager it was on a 350mhz blue G3 with 256 megs of ram. It's only purpose was handling mac manager logins, because the user's storage was on novell servers running the mac access pack. The PCs logged directly into the novell servers, but we wanted to use MM as a means of controlling the mac desktops.

[cowerd]

You may also want to talk to someone about Filemaker server, and what loads it imposes on a machine. The size of your database and hits you expect, as well as how much Filemaker server uses RAM for caching vs. HD speed.

You might be better off with a lesser machine and use the $$$ on a good RAID array. A real one--SCSI with a hardware RAID controller for RAID5.

We have a Win2K server that serves large GiS filesets and lots of RAM [1GB] and a 60GB RAID array make performance very acceptable.

Its very hard to judge from Netware [if its like v4] what hardware/server loads you can handle as Netware is very easy on haardware compared to NT and OSX.