It's Here!

During my lunch break, I picked-up my Mac Pro, along with my 27" Apple Cinema Display and hurried home to catch a peek of what would be my new office server.  Unlike the retail versions, these refurbs shipped in very plain boxes.  The Mac Pro came in a white box with only a small label detailing its contents.  

After opening the box, the contents were wrapped in the typical Apple aesthetic, so much so that you almost don't want to remove the clear protection surrounding the monitor.  After unwrapping its thin foam sheeting, I was pleasantly surprised with the condition of the Mac Pro.  I had read about the overwhelmingly positive experiences of others in terms of the refurbs that were purchased from the Apple Refurbished Store, and mine was no different.  This Mac Pro, for all intents and purposes, looked brand-spanking new! What a beauty!  

I still had a few minutes to spare before I had to return to work, so I decided to remove the 1TB HDD that shipped with the computer and install the two 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT drives that I had purchased prior.  An aside: I was mildly curious to see what brand drive that Apple spec'd with my Mac Pro.  I turned to be an Apple-labeled Western Digital, probably akin to a Caviar Black.  Back to the install . . . I had previously watched a step-by-step instructional video at OWC depicting how to change a hard drive in a Mac Pro, and it seemed a very simple and quick job.  After opening the Mac Pro, I must say that I was extremely impressed with the interior's layout and engineering.  Everything that the end-user may want to get to is exposed for easy access or removal.  It literally took me about 5 minutes to swap and install the drives.  Heck, I even had time for a bite to eat. 

Drive Bay 1 removed

Memory and RAID Setup

Not much beats returning home from a hard day's work to entertain the joys of setting up a RAID array.  (Insert winking emoticon here).  After another quick peek at the Mac Pro Memory Installation Video, again from OWC, and I proceeded to install the 24GB of OWC RAM.  Both the processors and the memory slots are located on a removable tray, which easily slides out with the flick of two levers. Because my Mac Pro is a 8-Core dual processor model, each CPU has its own bank of four memory slots. Placing this tray on a table top, I was able to install the memory modules in no time flat. Theoretically, this Mac could accept 8 sticks of 8GB RAM, totaling a whopping 64GB!  

Removing the processor tray

On the MacRumors forum, a person much smarter than I suggested that the easiest way to setup the RAID was to install the two "blank" drives into the Mac Pro (done) and then download and use the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant (installed onto a USB thumb drive) to both format and setup the RAID drives and install OS X Lion.  I attached the Cinema Display to the Mac Pro, and fired her up for the first time. Note that the Apple Cinema Display lacks a power button. Instead, it automatically turns on when the attached computer powers up. Clever. 

Attaching the thumb drive to a USB port, I was able to boot into the Lion Recovery assistant and enter Disk Utility.  From there, I basically followed the steps that I outlined in a previous blog to format the two drives and create a RAID 1 mirror set.  Piece of cake.  All that was left was to install Lion.  I should point out that the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant does not contain all the files for installing the OS. Instead, you must have internet access, as the majority of the installation files are downloaded from the cloud.  It took another half hour or so to complete the installation of the OS, which proceeded without a hiccup.  An evening's work, and this:

My Mac Pro Desktop

The "A" is for Apple List

(As I sit at the keyboard, many of the items that make-up this blog entry are coursing their way to me on the UPS line, seemingly at a snail's pace. The Mac Pro and a 27" Apple Cinema Display were ordered on Black Friday. So much for God Speed . . .)

Here is how I ultimately outfitted my server. If you have been following this blog, you'll know that the platform I chose was the Mac Pro, specifically the Mac Pro (Mid-2010) 8-Core (Two 2.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processors) iteration. I found a refurbished unit at Apple's Refurbished Mac Store for a nice discount. From what I've heard from others, Apple's refurbished units are, except for their price, as good as new. Apple also allows you to purchase their AppleCare Protection Plan for refurbished Macs, a policy that probably isn't available if you purchase from another vendor. I strongly recommend purchasing Apple's extended warranty for any work-based computer.

I decided to upgrade the Mac Pro's internal drives and memory myself. You can save a substantial amount if you purchase aftermarket compatible memory. I decided to play it safe and purchase memory preconfigured and certified by Other World Computing (OWC) for my particular MacPro: 24GB PC8500 DDR3 OWC Memory. This is an ample amount of memory that should serve well for any future needs. OWC memory has a 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee and a Lifetime Advance Replacement Warranty. It costs a bit more than other vendors, but when it comes to memory, I don't want to mess around. I should note that OWC caters to the Mac crowd, and has a good reputation and great customer service and support.

The internal storage that will adorn my Mac Pro consists of two Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache 3.5" HDDs, which will be implemented as a RAID 1 mirror configuration. I'm planning to use OS X Lion's "built-in" software RAID using Disk Utility, and will outline the steps in a future blog entry. Note that another very worthy candidate for an internal drive is the Western Digital Caviar Black, another 7200RPM/64MB cached drive. The flooding conditions in Thailand are currently having an adverse effect on the hard disk drive industry, and prices have risen dramatically. Nidec, which supplies nearly 100% of the drive motors to HDD manufacturers like Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung and Toshiba, is located in the region of the flooding, as is Western Digital itself. In my situation, I already had a 2TB Seagate Barracuda, and it was luckily a matter of purchasing one additional drive. The floods did not effect solid state drives (SSD)s.

Some may get the impression that I have been dissin' solid state drives in previous entries. Don't get me wrong . . . I'd be the first to adopt the technology if I was certain they were as hardy as your traditional HDD. Heck, I have one in my primary home computer, my 27" iMac. In anticipation of this day, I did go and order this cool 2.5" Drive Sled for 2009-2010 Apple Mac Pro. It will sit in a drawer, waiting for its day to shine. Dig the blue color!

For my backup needs, I purchased a NewerTech MAXPower eSATA 6G PCIe 2.0 RAID Capable Controller Card, which will sit in one of the Mac Pro's internal PCI Express 2.0 slots. This card provides two external eSATA ports that I can attach an external drive or RAID array. I probably could not go wrong with the very capable Sonnet Technology Tempo SATA E2P Serial ATA Host Adapter Card, but in the end, chose the NewerTech product because of its additional RAID capabilities.

Which leads me to my 'External Backup Device #1': a G-Technology G-DRIVE 3TB External Hard Drive w/ eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 Interfaces, which I'll attach directly to the Mac Pro via the aforementioned eSATA controller card interface. (I plan to discuss the software that will handle my backups in the near future). As an alternative, I am also considering an external RAID array, but haven't come to a final decision. Keeping our mantra about backup redundancy in mind, my 'External Backup Device #2' is the Apple Time Capsule 3TB and its Time Machine software counterpart. I must admit that 'External Backup Device #3' is a bit more hazy. For now, I'm thinking of simply copying the data to a USB thumb drive for off-site safekeeping. Between these three methods, I'm hoping that my MacPractice backup data will be remain safe and readily accessible in a pinch.

Please stay tuned . . .