Setting up a new mac office

[marcg]

Hi all,

I'm splitting from my business partner and moving out of his office. For various reasons, I cannot claim ownership of the whole of the existing set up which is 3 iMacs, a mac server, a RAID array, a photocopier/laser printer, a network switch and a set of 5x 1TB external hard drives being used for backup. It remains to be discussed, but I think I will be walking away with 2 iMacs and the photocopier.

So I'm looking to build a new set up in our new premises - I'm thinking to replace the server in the set up with another mac and to have a pair of external 1TB drives for daily backups. I'd like three iMacs so that we have the ability to have temporary staff when we need them.

So now the details - we basically run sketchup and visualiser and nothing else. Our best iMac is a 2013 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 but the other one would be a 2011 2.5Ghz i5. They are both ok for the job but neither is flying and some of the visualiser renders take 20 hours. So I'm thinking the new 3rd mac could be an upgrade. Which would make the 2011 the server/temp worker.

Questions
1. Is this practical? Is having the 3rd mac as a server going to make it unusably slow?
2. Do we need another network switch or can three macs and a printer be connected to a router and function as a local network? Could this be done wirelessly? We don't sent out much over 20MB so speed is not essential. That said, most sketchup files are ~250MB so speed of opening off the server is an important consideration.
3. Instead of/as well as the 3rd iMac, should we be considering a dedicated server or a network storage device?
4. I don't want to buy a brand new imac unless it will make a serious difference in performance. I'm guessing it is the video card processing that is limiting us at the moment - was there a set up in performance after 2013 and, if so, what is the oldest/cheapest entry point to benefit from that?


Many thanks in advance!
Marc

[Craikeybaby]

What do/will you use the server for?

[marcg]

Sketchup files, image files, cad drawings, word and excel docs. Sketchup will be opening and autosaving from the server - not planning on copying files to desktop and copying them back as that will only lead to file confusion.

[mph999]

Not sure how you are running your backups, but given it's a business, and thus your income, I'd certainly suggest a backup that is offsite (apologies if you already take the disks offsite) - I'd also make sure you have more than one copy, and ideally, not a copy made from the first backup copy if that makes sense (if one disk is corrupted, the corruption would copy over).

[Craikeybaby]

In that case is a server even needed? A decent NAS would do the job.

[marcg]

The current system is five external hard drives (MondayTWTF) using Retrospect, yesterdays always being taken home overnight. Five seems overkill? Also, Retrospect seems an expensive solution as well - 119EUR for a single machine with no support.

[marcg]

Also, I'm keen to buy a new machine - I think we need three - so if it did the job of a NAS it would save that cost.

[BlueMR2]

If your using macs can you not just use time machine to back them up?

Maybe a mac mini as a server? Small and quiet and apples server software is about £20 iirc.

[marcg]

Google seems to agree - Time Machine is a great shout.

Mac mini? Maybe, but it depends on my other question - I'd like to upgrade to a faster machine which will mean we have three macs for up to three people. Can one act as the server without being functionally useless? If having someone using the "server" as a workstation means the whole thing slows up then we need a dedicated file server or NAS or Mac mini.

Edited by marcg on Tuesday 31st January 14:26

[Vaud]

What size is your archive?

You should consider at least one cloud backup in addition to your strategy. It only takes theft of your office kit and a faulty drive and your data is gone?

<1tb per month file hosting would be pretty cheap (compared to recreating).

Amazon Cloud Drive is £55 per year for unlimited (within reason) use.

[marcg]

We have only 200GB of data as far as I can see. 1TB is the capacity of all the various components of the current system.

Cloud storage sounds like a good idea.

[Leithen]

Do you have Fibre at the new premises? If so cloud backup will work.

I'm not au fait with networking sketchup and visualiser, but I'd suspect that a good Raid NAS that connected to a cloud backup service and allowed USB HD Snapshots to be taken would cover the bases. Use Time machine for backup of individual machines.

Office 365 sub for email, word excel etc?

[marcg]

Yes, we use OpenOffice.

[Bikerjon]

You could either go the NAS route and use that for storage/backups or use one of the existing iMac's, attach some external storage and install the Apple server software. You can quite happily use a Mac that is running as a server.

[mattley]

marcg said:

Can one act as the server without being functionally useless?

Yes, then use iCloud to backup that machine straight offsite.

[marcg]

Hi again,

So I've taken advice from a guy I know...

Conclusions -

1. Buy a secondhand cheese grater desktop i5 for best value for money upgrade.

2. Run the oldest iMac as the file server.

3. Get something like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! as a incremental backup and point it at Dropbox or Amazon cloud servers.

4. If the file server mac is unusable as another workstation, buy a mac mini to do the server job.

Any flaws with the above plans?

3. Needs some refinements.

I don't think we need full disk images since we use Autocad (old version, we have CDs), Sketchup (have licences and would install from online download), OpenOffice and Photoshop (subscription). Emails are gmail-based. So if a computer tanked it, we could do a fresh install. Or we could do a Time Machine backup of each machine on to one of the others.

I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) we could just back up the file server "work" folder. One original big backup and then incremental ones nightly?

All advice muchly appreciated!

[Bikerjon]

If you're getting a cheese grater I'd be tempted to fill that with RAM and disks and then making that the server rather than the iMac.

[marcg]

My understanding is the server will prioritise sharing files over the user? Our oldest iMac will be used once a week. If it becomes a problem, mini Mac?

Unless you are telling me a cheese grater (by which I think we mean a aluminium g5 tower?) Will cope in both roles?

[Bikerjon]

G5? No, I assumed you'd be going for a more recent Xeon model! They were made up until 2012. Fairly quick machines and many used ones have already been upgraded further with SSD's and better graphic cards. I can't imagine a decent spec one would struggle serving up a few files while also being used as a workstation. They do kick out a fair bit of heat and a little fan noise though.

[ZesPak]

Bikerjon said:

G5? No, I assumed you'd be going for a more recent Xeon model! They were made up until 2012.

While this is true, the 2012 Mac Pro was already dated by 2012 standards.
It should be able to cope but it's still an over 5 year old machine.

OP, I'm sorry to say this but there really is no such thing as 'running macs on the cheap'. They are expensive machines and either you're willing to go all in on price or really selling yourself short.

Get a new Mac and max it out in terms of CPU and ram, that should be up to the task easily (and will seriously outperform a cheese grater pro).