Topic: Creating ibays on SME running on Mac and VIrtualBox

[gordon]

I have SME running on a Mac via VirtualBox. Seem to work!

I want to replace my Mac OS X Server with SME Server. One thing I have are shared hard drives for the office documents etc. I think I need to learn how to set up ibays in SME. But the first beginner question is how to mount an external hard drive for SME to use. I need to be careful as there are already hard drive mounted on the Mac and in use. But I can attach another either FIreWire or USB for SME. Then what?! Do I mount the drive using the advice at https://wiki.contribs.org/AddExtraHardDisk ?

My aim is to have users access files via SMB, just like they do when connecting to a Mac Server. Any advice welcome.

Thanks.

[TerryF]

No exp with Mac or VirtBox, however that wikki section provides the info to achieve what you want, read it carefully there are different methods that also have different consequences.

[wires12]

I want to replace my Mac OS X Server with SME Server.
My aim is to have users access files via SMB, just like they do when connecting to a Mac Server. Any advice welcome.

Unless you are trying to reuse Apple hardware via virtualization I'd simplify.

Just set up SME server on standard PC hardware with 2 2T drives (RAID 1) and forgo the slower and less reliable external drives. It will work just fine. If the reason for external drives is more space you can certainly mount them in SME but they will be slower (assuming a good network and large file transfer) and you loose the redundancy of RAID 1.

Virtualization is very wonderful but unless there is a good reason for using it I'd cut my SME teeth on standard hardware first. I love VMWare Fusion on my OS X machines. My last two Win laptops run just as fast as they did on native hardware. Older versions of VMWare ESXi are free to use with with registration with the hope you will get hooked.

But maybe I'm missing something in your question. If so I'm all ears!

[ReetP]

I'd agree. Get yourself a dedicated box and either a pair of drives for a mirror (I used to run 3 for good measure) or a decent hardware raid card and a bundle of smaller drives with RAID 6 or possibly 10 with a hot spare and a cold one on the shelf....

Avoid RAID 5, particularly with bigger drives (see MTBF on RAID 5 with large drives) Plenty of horror stories on the kernel raid list !!

Avoid external drives for data. Way too slow.

Personally I run all my SMEs as VMs on Proxmox these days. Hardware RAID for Prox, and VMs installed with NoRaid/NoLVM... think there is some stuff on the wiki about that.

Think I only have one real hardware SME as a affa backup box.

You can pick up decent secondhand servers pretty cheap usually. Just be careful with server drives advertised at low prices as 'bulk new'. They'll be secondhand in a new plastic package. A real ebay scam