Mac Server - Need some help and advice.

[rob2218]

I'm in need of an experienced individual who can speak to our Mac tech folks about how best to upgrade our current MacMini server situation.

Apple tells me that the MacMini is fine.
Our Mac tech folks are telling me we should look for an alternate solution since we are expanding both locally "AND" remotely (other countries).

So..I'm in need of speaking to someone who can speak Archicad15 TW requirements as well as Mac server with BIM capacities.

I work for a local design firm in Washington D.C. and I'm in charge of finding a solution to upgrade our office.

You can contact me at:
Rob Robert
Trout Design Studio
2112 Ward Court
Washington D.C.
202-659-0600
email: rob@troutdesign.com
cell: 786-877-8120

I'd prefer to be contacted via email or the office phone.

thank you for you help.

RR

[Anonymous]

I'm kind of new to Archicad... but...

I am running the BIM server from a mac Mini using Snow Leopard Server 10.6.8. It has a pair of raid enabled HD's and a boot enabled firewire drive connected, regularly archived to firewire drive using superduper and BIM folder synced off site using sugarsync.

HOWEVER, I do not have a gambit of other services running on that server concurrently.... apparently the BIM server doesn't like to share resources... or rather, other programs interfere with BIM processes and the BIM server will disconnect your clients if that happens.

You can have BIM servers in each office and in that way collaboration is possible interoffice on any of your projects. You can use VPN or not.

I'd say, ideally, set up a dedicated mac mini on your LAN.. You can run more than one BIM Server if you have a few projects running concurrently .. make sure they have lots of ram and fast hard disks, raid enabled is better so the mac mini server config is better but not essential... and of course, forward the required ports from your internet router/router directly to the BIM Server... you can set up different ports for each BIM server you have established.

You need to establish public dns of course to find the server in the other office... for that I use a dynamic DNS provider and I do not have a static internet IP, but the BIM server has a static 10.x.x.x IP address.

As demand grows.. just add another mini mac BIM server... soon all this will be hosted on virtual servers using vmware... I guess... and you dont actually need the mac server software environment to run the BIM server, but maybe it is more secure.
Gaz

[schagemann]

mac mini server in various configurations (old and new models and on 10.6 and 10.7) work just fine.

choose either the server model right away or upgrade the normal model with a second HD - preferably an SSD, to separate the project database from the actual bimserver app.

the latest model can take up to 16GB RAM - although if that results in any speed advantage, really depends on the size / complexity of projects you are going to work with.

some of our clients work on large scale residential projects and have had no trouble. as mentioned before you should however not run any additional services, i.e. run the mac mini a bimserver.

[Stress Co_]

Rob:
Have your mac techs checked out the info in ArchicadWiki?

[Anonymous]

Stress wrote:
Rob:
Have your mac techs checked out the info in ArchicadWiki?

I have. If you use the mac mini server to provide local DNS, then there is no necessity to go fiddling about with every client's hosts file. The idea that a laptop user might have to swap hosts files back and forth depending on their location is pretty crazy stuff. Most of us are clever enough to open the lid and close the lid.

My tip for managing DNS from a mac mini server is to set it up correctly from the start. Get yourself a registered public domain name ... for example... example.com... and set up a subdomain name... bim.example.com ... then set up your mac mini server from a fresh install using the domain name bim.example.com .... with a fixed local ip address e.g. 10.0.2.2 ... make sure the server will automatically resolve local domain names to itself....

Then with DNS working locally complete with reverse lookups.. you can then set up all your users and groups... in the server preferences interface, create a group called VPN and give those users a shared folder for storing teamwork project external content... then set up L2TP VPN with a shared secret....

Open your BIM ports on the server firewall... open the BIM ports on your router... leave them closed on your internet gateway....

Install your BIM server using your bim.example.com in the qualified domain name space... then set your local archicad teamwork client computers to resolve DNS from your sever at bim.example.com. Check using archicad that each can find and connect to the BIM server... resolving the host name.

If you have a dynamic internet IP address, use a DDNS service to point bim.example.com to your external dynamic ip address... so that VPN clients can find you, otherwise point your public domain name to your fixed internet IP address.

YOu dont have to use VPN if your client computers have fixed IP addressses. you can use the server's firewall settings to limit access to BIM ports to particular external IP addresses.. those which belong to your team. The firewall will prevent incoming port requests from others.

That's all.