Mac Mini OSX Server Vs NAS

[gorilly]

Hi

I have recently been approached by a SMB customer who has a small (11 users) network of OSX based machines with a very old mac mini server (i would expect is a first release).

The use the apple sever for file sharing, directory services, mail etc.

The company has a lot of data stored on the mac mini, are running out of space and complain how slow it is, they also complain that the mail/calendar/contacts services are flaky and problematic. They also complain about the speed of their VPN when working from home (which will be due to their limited upload speed).

I am trying to come up with a solution for them but i mainly deal with Windows servers and networking for enterprise.

I don't know a great deal about apple servers, however after doing research it looks very easy to set up etc, but also when doing research i find a lot of people online comment on the mail setup being flaky etc.

I am wondering if people can give me advice on their experience with this type of set up.

I'm finding it really hard to find much osx server info online, other than it being slated.

Originally i was thinking of implementing cloud based email (they have outlook users) so thought of hosted exchange or office 365 rather than the mac mail server.

Google apps (my usual favorite) is out of the window because there is no google apps sync tool for outlook on the mac, imap is cumbersome and clunky.

I thought we could keep their original mac mini for directory services.

Then i could use a Synology or QNAP NAS device for file shares, cloud backup but most importantly i could use the cloud file sync app for home workers. This would mean they would be accessing the sync'd files locally rather than accessing a server via the VPN.

Obviously i could get a mac mini os x server, install a file syncing cloud app and do the same thing but the performance of the NAS should in theory outperform the mac mini.

I also like the fact the NAS would have hot swap drive bays on the front.

Thanks for any help and advice.

 

[sfx2000]

Best to get image backups of the drives, ASAP... Carbon Copy Cloner is a great tool for this...

I used to run OSX Server on a 2010 Mini, and slow performance for read/write started was a key symptom of one of the two drives going south... up until the drives started failing, performance wasn't too bad..

Native OSX server for mail is POP3/IMAP/SMTP, and Outlook does support that (Outlook's IMAP support on Gmail is weird because... Gmail's IMAP is weird, lol...) - so if they're using Outlook in Exchange, they might already be hosted somewhere..

(BTW, first hand experience with OSX mail servers as supplied with Server - yes, it's flaky, there are much better options, which is why my item above)

Open Directory - backbone of most OSX server services - but are they using OD for Profile/Single Sign-On, or are they using local accounts. What I'm getting at is OD may not be necessary as part of a migration.

I moved from OSX Server to a QNAP TS453Pro - more/faster storage, and I use hosted email and local accounts, not OpenLDAP, and workgroup services only for SMB - QNAP's AFP support is very good.

Scary part is that OSX does offer some services that make migration a bit tough, primarily their Wiki Server, which doesn't have anything that directly translates over to another Wiki platform (markup is a bit different compared to MediaWiki, DokuWiki, MoinMoin, others), and do they run Messages (which is not the same as iMessage/iChat).

Databases - native if I recall is postgres - MySQL, if they're running that, just do the backup out of mysqladmin, and you can restore on any mysql (same version) on any platform. Other things that I can think of off the top of my head is WebServer, which is basic Apache2, but Apple keeps the files in a different location that what LAMP typically does, but the serverRoot is easy to find in the config file..

So... moving from OSX Server for me was a multiple step project spanning a few days (evenings) - can be done, but another option might be to buy a new Mini and install Server on it - cheap enough, $29.00 - but newer versions of OSX Server have lost several features (and gained new ones) from the Last Real Version of OSX Server (10.6 Server).