mini server performance

Question

Level 1

29 points

mini server performance

I'm assisting a small workgroup using a 2012 2 core/8gb Mini running Yosemite and Server 4 (file sharing, mail and web) and it seems to be struggling. I'm fairly sure it began after they started using the mail server and transferred several years' worth of messages to it. I'm going to try the obvious thing of moving the data on to an SSD as it's currently on a 7200rpm SATA drive, but I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts about the performance of Minis as servers generally? I've always had doubts about their suitability. How would they compare performance-wise with a mid-range NAS box (which I don't have experience of)?

thanks

Posted on Apr 30, 2015 4:18 AM

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Answer 1

jepping

Level 3

785 points

Apr 30, 2015 11:01 AM in response to beachmat

More memory will improve performance, so expand to 16GB will make the server run a lot better.

Also an SSD will make the server fast enough for this small workgroup.

Do you have any huge processes running (activity viewer, select all processes if needed and check) continuously? Even some small processes can make the server feel sluggish, it's only a dual core so it doesn't have a lot of processing power to spare.

Also splitting maildata from the main drive where OSX runs on, will make it more responsive.

Al those tasks need to be handled by one drive and one drive only, so mailtraffic, connections, OpenDirectory, filesharing perhaps, caches, updates, changes in files will impact the overall performance.

You're on the right track with the SSD, but perhaps an external RAID5 drive is a good option as well.

Goodluck

Jeffrey

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