PicturesA much needed update to this server was completed. The previous single-core Mac Mini was fighting the good fight, but could not be upgraded beyond Leopard Server (10.5). I needed some of the newer features that Mountain Lion + Mac OS Server provided. So, I purchased a used modern Mac Mini from a friend at work. The specs are impressive for a little machine: 4 Cores at 2.5 GHz and 4GB of RAM. My home automation system is much more responsive and the new text-to-speech voices make the announcements from my house so much more enjoyable! The simplified server interface took some getting used to, but provides all of the basic functionality I need when I don’t feel like jumping to a terminal interface.
Additionally, I replaced the NIC in my media center server to address strange performance issues (only getting ~5 megabit of throughput). The media server is a relatively new 6-core replacement for the aging dual-core machine that it replaced. The network issue was the last remaining performance concern. (I nearly mistook it for hard drive problems, but a few tests helped identify the real issue.) I swapped out the Intel NIC for a Broadcom chipset and all is much improved (up to 950 megabits of throughput)!
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