Replace RHEL server with Mini for JSS?

[easyedc]

I need to add a 2nd server for our DMZ and could possibly consider replacing our RHEL 5 (yes - we don't meet JAMF's min specs and that's a pain) and am thinking about pushing to switch out to a pair of Mac mini's (internal/external) for convenience and the added bonus of cost savings. Has anyone used mini's to run their JSS servers and DPs? Anyone had issues? We've had a pair of mini servers as imaging and patch management servers for some of our Devs but they are lightly used and were put in place before we'd purchased JSS and Casper suite.

Thoughts?

[jarednichols]

Frankly this would scare the crap out of me from an infrastructure point of view. The hardware itself can likely handle your load but the lack of things like ECC RAM, redundant power supplies, multiple NICs, ability to add Fibre for SAN connectivity, out-of-band lights out management and the ilk are boxes I like to check in the list of requirements. What you find in something like even a low-end Dell R-series is going to give you far more Enterprise features than a Man Mini can do.

[thomasC]

Using several Mac Mini Servers for Distribution Points and NetBoot. The works great. Not using for JSS though. I guess Mac Mini Servers would work ok depending on the amount of Mac and/or iOS devices in your organization.

[tcam]

I"m running a JSS off a MacMini. I found the server was much stabler and performed better at 16 GB of ram. Java some times bloats up; so I set the purge command to run every so often. I'm using a Thunder Bolt Raid for storage.

I went with RackMac Mini from Sonnet to mount the server. Netbooter 5 outlet IP power for power cycling. The power button on the front of RackMount is nice if your troubleshooting.

Soon as we started using Mac Minis we quickly ended up with 4 and we're probable going to 5 or 6 soon. If I had it to do again I would probable look at a MMR rack mount.

[hkim]

Although the writing is on the wall about Apple hardware in the enterprise, I think some organizations can use Apple hardware to host JSS/DPs and it's absolutely fine. It's nice to also be able to administer the same OS server and client, there's synergy there that just works well for some people, instead of having to in some larger places, go through a possible roadblock with a "Windows Team" or "Linux Team" or "VMWare Team" and get approvals and power struggles on who manages those boxes, just to be able to administer your OS X clients.

I'm more worried that long term, JAMF will stop supporting OS X as a JSS platform and move to Linux/Windows only when the day comes that OS X doesn't come in a server flavor any longer, and the underpinnings aren't supported any longer in OS X.

[tlarkin]

Hi Everyone,

I hope all of you had a good weekend. I just want to chime in here for a second about the JSS. The JSS will in fact run on many platforms. What we have done is tested our installers on certain distributions of Linux, OS X Server, and Windows Server. You can always do a manual install of the JSS, as it only requires the following:

You can host the JSS on any server that meets the following minimum requirements: ??
??Java 1.6
MySQL 5.1 or later
Apache Tomcat 6.0 or later

On my test box I have the JSS running on many platforms, some I have used the installers, some I have done manual installs. The downside to a manual install is that when you upgrade, you must do it all manually, and deploy the new ROOT.war files. Since we use these open standard products it allows some flexibility. We only test our installers against a few popular Linux distributions, Windows Server 2008 and newer, and OS X Server. So, if you have a server that can run those requirements it should possibly work, just make sure you test it, and are okay with doing all the manual work if the installers aren't supported on that particular platform. Of course, on older versions of OSes it may not work at all, or be supported, so please make sure you test everything when doing manual installs.

Contact your Account Manager if you have any specific questions on running the JSS on different platforms.

Thanks,
Tom

[hkim]

Thanks Tom for chiming in,

Yes the backend bits are all open source and can run on a ton of platforms, that I understand. But there's a huge difference between "Does it run?" and "Is it supported?".

[easyedc]

My concern is more along the lines of Apple's "server" hardware. If my choices were something like an XServe I would have no concerns, but the fact that it's server software running on consumer based hardware scares me.

We have recently had an incident where the issue was harder to pin-point, from both JAMF and my troubleshooting, due to our running our JSS on a linux platform and if it had been running a flavor of OS X it would have probably been found much quicker.

Our environment is relatively small at this point, with 100 or so workstations, but has the potential to double in the next year +, but nothing that I think a Mac mini server couldn't handle if it weren't for my fears around the hardware.

[chris_kemp]

I've been setting up several client servers similar to tcam's setup (Mac Mini server, xmacmini case, Thunderbolt RAID). So far they're great, and even though they are not as robust as some server hardware they are also easily replaceable - I keep an image of a working server in the JSS, so with minimum post-install configuration I can easily replace a server if it goes down.

Still running the main JSS on an Xserve, although we'll probably migrate to a more powerful Linux server in the future (unless Apple surprises us with something). I got it going on CentOS with minimal tinkering, but it wasn't out-of-the-box easy like OS X Server. I would suggest that if something more powerful than the Mini is needed, perhaps a Mac Pro would be an appropriate choice for a main server? Sure, it's got its own challenges - but it has a few hardware advantages over the Mini, and with some field engineering you could even squeeze in into a rack. ;-)