I’m now working 2 weeks with my MacBook. The Mac Pro was rarely used and was just on for 2h’s in 2 weeks. Well, I decided to give it a new function.

As recent blog reader you know that I’ve 2 Onnto DataTale RAID5 boxes which are connected to my Mac Pro via eSATA (PCIe x1 card). Well, as much as I appreciate the stability and the good performance, I hate the noise they create.

Turning off the Mac Pro and not using it is no option – in my mind that would be a waste of money. Also selling it is no option. I’ve gone through this process times 3x already (bought G5, sold it, bought used G5, sold it a few months later, bought the Mac Pro 2008 – and sold it 3/4 year later). Why? No idea I was switching between Windows & Mac OS X too often. Both systems have it ups & downs. While appreciate the openess of Windows (I know how crazy that sounds, I’m talking about expansion options), I really enjoy the workflow, the look & feel and of course the design of Macs.

The reason to use the MacBook only in my home office were:

• I don’t NEED the power on my desktop
• With the RAID boxes, it was too noisy

So, I’d put the 80GB Intel Postville G2 SSD from my Mac Pro back into the MacBook, bought the Mini DisplayPort to DualLink DVI cable (as posted earlier) and installed Snow Leopard from scratch. I’m still very happy with the performance and while using it for the last 2 weeks often enough I asked myself why I had bought the Mac Pro and if I should sell it. The answer on this question was, that I love to work with different systems: OSX, Windows Server, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris – I’ll try a lot and I see a lot pros in using them mixed. Because of that I’d bought 12GB of RAM for the Mac Pro.

Funny enough, my 3D tool and Photoshop are more than fast enough on my MacBook (with 4GB or RAM) – I just need some decent speed if I want to render something, if it’s a cut movie, a 3D still or animation.

Yesterday, I decided to put the Mac Pro into the basement. Attaching the RAID boxes there is a great way for still being able to access them via the GBit house network and also having the needed silence in my home office. I admit, I love silence. Currently, typing this, I just hear the little fountain in the garden. The MacBook is superquiet, not even a click from the HD since it’s a SSD now. For my satisfaction, the 30″ display offers me great screen real estate. Sure, it’s not what I had before nor is it more than 1x 30″ – but it’s very ok and I’m happy with this compromise.

The Mac Pro is running in the basement, but just using it as fileserver would be a huge mistake and a waste of power. I gave him a real job, serving me a Mac OS X Server in a VMWare Fusion session side by side with a Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 session that has an installed and full useable Exchange 2010 server. It’s really amazing what the Xeon says about it – the cores still have not much to do, yeah it sucks RAM. OS X Server got 2GB and the Win Server 4GB, so I still have 6GB left. I’m also running a Parallels version 5 on the Mac Pro for my previously “desktop” Windows 7 (Home Premium) which I need for some Office 2007 stuff.

For rendering, Apple’s QMaster will do the job, but I think I’ve to dig into the documentation to see how this works. I must say that I’m very happy with OS X Client as base OS for this kind of “server”. I quickly connect to it using the VNC/Screensharing to control it if I don’t use ssh. The VMs are running quiet fast and so I use VNC/Screensharing for the OS X Server and Microsoft’s Remotedesktop for Mac to connect to the Win server.

Using the Mac Pro as fileserver also has some (in my mind) special pros. One is the software KNOX that I’ve just bought 2 days ago. It’s a great software to easily encrypt volumes or even complete harddisks. I’ve encrypted the external RAID boxes using this great software. Why? Because I care about my data

Another pro is that the Mac Pro delivers a LOT ports for expansion. Using the 2 eSATA ports, I could expand to FireWire 800 and USB2. The overall capacity of the system is stunning. I’ve made a text overview of the storage that I’ve connected to it. Here’s a screenshot:

Returning to the MacBook, I just can recommend, if you don’t use VMs like a devil and want to buy a new Mac, be sure not to spend too much money on a desktop machine. I did and in some way I regret that buy. I’m happy to run my stuff on it now and so it’s still the perfect solution for my usage, but most people would be fine with a MacBook or MacBook Pro in my mind. Having a silent and cool (yeah cool – the Mac Pro creates a lot of heat ) home office is worth thinking about your buy several times.

Ciao
Dennis