[rlorenc]

We are a design firm of 15 or so Macs (running 9.1 and X) and are about to set up file-sharing services for our network with OS X Server (the new version). I've heard different opinions on this question: should I use OS X Server with an older G3/300 or a Dual G4/500? My gut reaction is for the G4, but some people have told me that with the small network we'll be running that the G3 would be more than sufficent. Has anyone run OS X Server on a 300 G3? Any suggestions would be great! Thanks!

-Richard

[Jool]

I'm running OSX Server 2 on an G3 300MHz tower(384 MB RAM) with filesharing and Filemaker 5.5 sharing databases and so far that combination works fine. There is only about 10 users connected at the same time but so far I've had no trouble with it, the GUI is very slow but who cares :-)

[ingalaxy]

I am running Os X standard with ftp services on on G3/300 with 640 RAM and it is working fine. GUI is slow if compared to my 867 Quicksilver. Again as jool said who cares.

[geekstud]

Originally posted by rlorenc:
<STRONG>We are a design firm of 15 or so Macs (running 9.1 and X) and are about to set up file-sharing services for our network with OS X Server (the new version). I've heard different opinions on this question: should I use OS X Server with an older G3/300 or a Dual G4/500? My gut reaction is for the G4, but some people have told me that with the small network we'll be running that the G3 would be more than sufficent. Has anyone run OS X Server on a 300 G3? Any suggestions would be great! Thanks!

-Richard</STRONG>

Fileserving may not require the G4 500DP CPUs in your system, but other considerations may lead you to choose that system as your server. Given sufficient CPU resources, other factors that will directly affect the performance of your server are the disks and the network.

Your G4 system will have (in standard factory configs) newer and faster disk technology (both the standard IDE disks and the controller) than the older G3 system. If you need to serve more than a small number of small files to the client systems, you may wish to move a step beyond the standard IDE disk options, many knowledgeable systems folks prefer to build server systems with SCSI disks, sometimes in multiple arrays, due to SCSI's improved handling of the heavier I/O request load often involved with a file server system. SCSI disks also tend to lead the pack in speed and advanced technology - and price (higher). An alternative interesting disk technology option for the Mac systems would be some of the new, faster external Firewire disks (really IDE disks with bridge chipsets), perhaps deployed in mirrored pairs for redundancy.

Note the current sad lack of native software support in Mac OS Server for even basic disk mirroring (a.k.a. RAID 1) and striping (a.k.a. RAID 0); some 3rd party vendors are said to be working on such support (e.g. SoftRAID). You could implement some home-grown disk copy scripts to perform "warm backups" to mirrored disk volumes - not a bad idea even with true mirrored systems. 80 GB external Firewire disks make a sweet backup device at less than $400 and are much faster than most affordable tape systems.

Serving the data from the server disks is only half the battle - getting it to the client systems is the other half. Again, it really depends upon your work needs: a light load of occasional small file transfers will be fine served from the G3 over 10 Mb/s Ethernet. Any higher file sharing load would benefit from being served out the G4's 100 Mb/s fast Ethernet port into a good fast Ethernet switch (so inexpensive these days!), or maybe even into a 1000 Mb/s port on a switch, and then out to the client systems.

Summary: gather current and projected usage needs, evaluate server hardware/software requirements to meet needs, then build, test, and deploy.

Cheers,

-Nathan

[Jool]

I would at least try the G3 first since there is a lot of money to be saved if you don't need the speed from the G4MP, if you want fast networking and if the server will do more than just filesharing I think the G4/733MHz is sufficient.

[Gregory]

Small Dog has an older G4/500 SCSI (Ultra160, maybe ATTO) w/ 36GB drive, AppleShare, $1699.