Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Server For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Choosing Server Hardware

In This Chapter

• Dissecting hardware requirements

• Selecting the right RAM and hard drives

• Selecting the right Mac for your server

• Considering other network hardware

You've chosen the software — Snow Leopard Server — now you need to pick a Mac to run it on. You can spend anywhere from under $1,000 to over $10,000 (with storage options), and no one Mac model is best for running Snow Leopard Server. It runs on everything from Mac mini to Xserve, with varying amounts of memory and hard drive space. You can't use your old G5 Mac tower because Mac OS X 10.6 Server runs only on Intel processors (a major change from previous versions).

This chapter takes you through criteria for choosing a Mac that best meets your needs as a server. By matching your anticipated uses to the available hardware, you can avoid getting an underpowered Mac server or spending too much for more than you need. If you already have a Mac in mind for use as a server, this chapter helps you decide whether it'll work for what you want to do with it.

Criteria for Selecting Server Hardware

Before you think about processor speeds, do some planning to determine what you'll be doing with the server. Here are the two key issues: how many users access the server and what the users do with it. Neither tells the whole story by itself; both must be considered. When you have this information, your hardware options become clearer.

Number of users

The effect of an increasing number of connected clients on ...