Comments on: Enabling RAID 1 on a Mac Mini Server

By: Brooklyn Walker

Brooklyn Walker — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 02:13:19 +0000

Kyle, the only thing I know is to periodically open a terminal window and type “diskutil appleRAID list” and make sure the status is “online” and not “degraded”.

By: kyle

kyle — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:48:36 +0000

does anyone know how to monitor this? preferably using SNMP?

By: Brooklyn Walker

Brooklyn Walker — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:40:15 +0000

Worked like a charm.

- First I created the recovery disk on a USB SD card
- Rebooted the MacMini Server, held the alt/option key
- Selected to boot from the USB-attached “Recovery Disk” (not the partition on the HD)
- Discovered the partitions “Server HD” (disk0s2) and “Macintosh HD2″ (disk1s2)
- Made “Server HD” into a RAID set with “diskutil appleRAID enable mirror disk0s2″
- Discovered the new RAID set (disk15)
- Added the old “Macintosh HD2″ to the RAID set with “diskutil appleRAID add member disk1s2 disk15″ (took a few hours to build, monitored its status periodically with “diskutil appleRAID list”

Once the rebuild was complete and both members were “online”, shut the computer down, removed the USB card, powered on, and it boot normally. Noticed that the new RAID set is now “disk2″.

By: Brooklyn Walker

Brooklyn Walker — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:53:41 +0000

I’m about to try slowe’s method on my MacMini server to implement RAID 1. Question I have (for anyone) is: should this thing ever blow up (regardless of RAID status) and I ever need to build from scratch, Apple did not include any media, so what should/would I do, take it to their store and let them install a new HD and recover from my Time-Machine backup? If I were to ask Apple to give me a Server-OS-install CD, would they, for less than their regular price? Next question: will I get some kind of alert or popup when a RAID 1 member fails, giving me a chance to replace the bad HD and re-build the set?

By: slowe

slowe — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 01:00:34 +0000

Foqne, I could be mistaken but I think–if you are very careful–you can preserve your boot disk. *HOWEVER*, I would make sure I have a backup of the data before starting. You can NEVER be too careful!

By: foqne

foqne — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:05:30 +0000

This is probably a very rudimentary question but I’ve never played with RAID before.

I have a mini server with 2 HD doing a few things for me — everything is saved on the boot disc. The second disc is totally empty. Will the process described above to enable mirroring, destroy the setup I have on my boot disc? I don’t care if the 2nd gets overwritten because it’s empty.

By: slowe

slowe — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 13:13:02 +0000

ASDL, you could potentially play with symlinks to select place some data internally and some data externally, but otherwise as far as I am aware there’s no way to present both types of storage as a single volume. Personally—assuming the DS4600 has sufficient performance and data protection—I would just put the data there. Good luck!

Laura, I believe Lion doesn’t include any Rosetta support, which means you won’t be able to run any PPC applications on your Intel-based Macs. If you need Rosetta, you’ll have to downgrade to Snow Leopard. As for the other issue with installing the software, I don’t really have any suggestions for you—sorry. Good luck!

By: ASDL

ASDL — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:08:09 +0000

I’ve mirrored the dual 500 Gb drives in my MacMini Server (now running Lion Server) and added an external Promise DS4600 3 Tb RAID.

Now where’s the best place to put the home folders for my family/users?

There are four of us and we each have lots of photos and music. If I put the Users home directories on the RAID, then the 500 Gb in the MacMini goes unused, but if I put the Users home folders in the MacMini, they’ll outgrow the space there.

Is there anywhere to use symlinks or something to “combine” the MacMini 500 500 Gb and the 3 Tb Promise RAID space?

Or do I just have to give up on using the MacMini 500 Gb space?

By: Canuno

Canuno — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:53:19 +0000

I am working on the new Mac Mini Lion Server, and there is another easy way to accomplish the same goal of 1TB Drive instead of 2 separate 500GB Drives.

1. You have to create a Recovery Disk in your Lion Server First:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433

2.Reboot your MacMini Server pressing the “CMD”+”r” or “Apple”+”R”.

3. Select Utility Disc from the Menu that Pops up.

4. Create de Raid just adding the 2 hard drives to the window and selecting Concatenate arrangement, and apply changes, also is a good thing to do to check the status of the disk at the end of this process, that is really fast (Seconds).

5. Go back to the previous window (Menu Window) and select Reinstall Lion Server X.

6. Then it will ask you for an internet connection and to select the 999GB Disk to instal!

Really easy way for noobs like me. Hope you find it helpful.

By: Laura Powell

Laura Powell — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:26:13 +0000

Hi, I installed lion on both of my macs and now I can’t use my PPC archicad program. We bought a Mac Mini Server used and the guy installed Snow Leopard on it. I don’t think he knew what he was doing anyway. I got the mini home connected it to a monitor, keyboard, mouse and added a super driver to install software. I then tried to install the cad software and it keeps giving me a window saying “Specify directory name”. Also, I noticed that there is no space on the discs so I opened up Disk Utility and noticed that the 2 Raids each 500GB are locked. Please someone help. Our clients are going to start beating down our door.