Mac Mini Server as VE Pro Slave?

[mdvirtual]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has tried using a Mac Mini Server (the newer 2.66 Core Duo with two HD's) as a VE Pro Slave to host VIs. I'm looking for something very small and portable to supplement my MacBook Pro when I'm on the road.

I use Pro Tools LE 8.04 cs2 with VE Pro hosting VI's - E/W Play and NI libraries, NI Komplete 6, etc. Would love to be able to network in a Mini via VE PRo to get more horsepower.

I guess the question is - will VE Pro and VIs run on the Snow Leopard Server OS? I thought about loading the standard Snow Leopard OS on the Mini, but Apple support says it's incompatible with the server configuration Mini. The other alternative would be to upgrade the regular mini, replace the optical drive with an HD or SSD, add RAM, etc.

If anyone had any experience with minis I'd be very interested to hear how you made out.

BTW - so far I've been able to work around the pro Tools/VE Pro multi-output VI bug that others have experienced. I have trouble if I route VE Pro audio ports directly to PT tracks, but am OK if I bring the audio in through auxs and then buss over to audio tracks for printing stems.

Cheers,

[JohnO]

+1
wondering the exact same thing. So the Mini Server model can only run a server version of OSX? I would think that's a red flag as far as compatibility goes.

Did you post on the Vienna site?

[mdvirtual]

I've seen a couple of posts on Mac boards saying the restore disks for the standard mini can be used to load Leopard onto the server version. Of course then its and unsupported configuration and risky. Vienna tech support said similar, but they have not tested that configuration.

Would be worth it if it works though since the hardware configuration in the server is a better value. The standard mini would need some upgrades (the 2.66 Ghz cpu, 8GB RAM, 2nd drive in Optibay) to be a workable slave and would cost more in the long run.