On the other hand, I could have built my server.

Later on, I can add more hard drives via USB3 or Thunderbolt 2, add another gigabit Ethernet port via Thunderbolt while having enough power for things like transcoding in Plex Server.

While this solution costs more than a typical 4-bay NAS ($910 plus tax for the Mac mini with 16GB memory, $346 for the 4 bay disk enclosure and $380 for 4 WD Red hard drives, coming in total of $1636), it’s more versatile than a NAS. In the ESXi server, it runs Windows Server 2012 (for WUS currently), Linux (test server) and a Minecraft server. In addition, I run a VMWare ESXi virtual machine which is allocated with 6 GB of RAM. Even so, I haven’t noticed any lag whatsoever.Īs for the software I am using, I have OS X Server (which provides Time Machine, Caching, XCode, VPN, webserver services), Transmission, Plex and Teamviewer installed. Roughly, it’s about 1.5 slower, mostly because the CPU is only a dual core opposed to a quad-core due to Apple’s choice to use lower voltage CPUs instead. On Novabench, it got a score of 717 under Yosemite and 703 in El Capitan. In fact, the transfer speeds are a lot faster than the WD Mycloud 3TB that I have as seen below on Blackmagic Disk Test. The box the Mac mini came in.Īs for the performance, it’s pretty fast. It’s populated with 4 3 TB WD Red NAS drives, which I found on sale at Newegg. I eventually bought a Thunderbay 4 4 bay hard drive enclosure from OWC so I can have RAID 10 storage for redundancy and performance. I decided on the newer version not because I receive a discount since I work for the government, but the newer versions not only use less energy, but also have two Thunderbolt 2 ports opposed to one Thunderbolt port. While I couldn’t find a 2012 quad-core model for a decent price, I eventually settled with a new Late-2014 mid-range Mac Mini customized with 16 GB of RAM. Also, I avoided Seagate since they has a very bad reputation for having a very high failure rate. I went with WD Reds since they are designed for RAID and 24/7 use. While it did the job as it serves as an active domain controller, file server, Bittorrent and other things, I wanted a low power server. Before I moved, I used an old 2007 Dell desktop as a home server, which ran Windows Server 2012 Essentials. For awhile now, I have been thinking about getting a Mac mini as a home server since my WD Mycloud isn’t cutting it anymore.

Mac mini minecraft server