JSS on a mini

If you're running a Mac Mini Server with OS X Server (which I understand removes an AFP client connection limit) that should be enough for that many imaging clients at a time I'd imagine. I'd max out your RAM…$400 more…yeah, Crucial would be cheaper to replace all the memory to 8GB for that hop.

Now…I don't use Minis so that's an assumption on my part. But you asked for thoughts, not facts. =D

Have a great weekend y'all!

Craig E

Yeah, it could work, but I wouldn't want to rely on it for the long haul.

When I first came on with my organization, I used a retired mini as the first test server in breaking away from 1:1 deployment.

That was a 1.42 GHz G4 w/ 1 GB of ram running 10.5 Server. The box handled netboot and Bombich's NetRestore and I was able to deploy a lab of up to 20 clients if I throttled the bandwidth to adjust for the low drive speed. Still, it punished that little box pretty hard.

So, yes, it can be done.

Obviously the overall power of the mini has improved quite a bit, but JSS also requires quite a bit more under the hood as well. Keep in mind, all that was doing was netbooting and pointing to an image for network deployment, there was none of the useful tracking and management that the Casper Suite offers (or any of the overhead required to handle those features).

Are you planning on running the whole kit on the mini (as in the database, netboot and share)? Or are you breaking things up a bit? Is this a current generation mini and have you beefed it up at all or is it stock? I guess I'm asking... what are the specs on the box? Finally, is this only handling Casper and the necessary OS X Server services (Web, AFP, MySQL and Netboot), or are you turning on additional services as well?

Looking at an off the shelf, stock, Mini Server today (4 GB Ram, SL Server, 2x 500 GB 7200 RPM drives), I'm not positive I'd want to rely on that without some fail safes in place (redundancy, offset of services, consideration of load balancing, etc...).

I guess the biggest question is: do you have any other options or are you trying to get by?

t
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Thom Burrell

You could run your AFP servers off of Minis if you had to. My Casper
set up is 1 JSS in our data center, and then 1 Xserve per a building
(that is a total of 6 Xserves for Casper) and then each building also
has a couple of Mac minis running 10.4/5/6 server as distribution points
and imaging stations running Netboot. We have over 6,000 clients
checking into our JSS at 30 minute intervals randomized to check for
policy/inventory and what not. That is our framework setting.

However, our JSS is rather beefy. 24gigs of RAM and 2TB RAID 5
storage. I would not want to rely on that server as the JSS but I
would say it would make due for a distribution point. What happens if
you start adding more policies and more devices? The Mini has very
little room to grow.

Just my 2 cents.