My new Mac Mini Server - what upgrades?

Question

Hi,
I have just purchased a base model Mac Mini, and a copy of Server.
It is my intention to store all of our media on an external USB3 drive  (with music, movies and other stuff it's 3TB)  I have also connected an iMac (months old) and a 17" MBP to the server via Ethernet. All of this is going through a brand new Airport Extreme. The iMac will write files to a second USB3 drive.
My questtion is - what to upgrade?
I just installed more memory, now 8GB. But is it worth upgrading the 5400 rpm drive to a 7200? Adding an SSD?  I am unsure whether I will see any benefit, as the files will not be written internally to the Mini. Make sense?
I would also like to ask about settings - should the Mini be set to never sleep, and allow drives to spin down? Any help is much appreciated.  :-)
Hugh

Answer 1

As Simon Slavin writes: learn about your server and profile your activities, and find the bottlenecks.  You've got some initial setup for your network probably including local DNS and maybe VPNs and firewalls and related gizmos, and a whole host of other Server.app and system and networking-related details to become familiar with.
There are lots of ways to spend money.   Buying hardware piecemeal or upgrading incrementally and particularly without a plan or goal, or upgrading some component that isn't your bottleneck, can both get expensive.   Have a plan.
There are massive lists of device bandwidths around, but you need to learn about and find the performance bottlenecks first.
If you're on a budget, also consider where you're going with your general configuration.  Your plan.  Your 3 TB is comparatively small by current standards.  That's the capacity of one current-generation disk.  If you're planning on increasing aggregate storage past that 3 TB value, then you might decide to pick different storage hardware for an incremental upgrade, for instance.   You might look to use a USB 3 multiple-disk-bay storage or a Thunderbolt multiple-disk-bay rack for storage, for instance.  Also consider whether you're adding storage or servers over time, as if you're not likely adding servers, then direct-attached storage is usually cheaper.  If you're adding servers or serving a whole lot of data via the local network, then you're getting into networking speeds and feeds.
Given you're on top-end WiFi gear, as a guess GbE Ethernet and either direct-attached or network-attached storage are probably going to be on your upgrade plan, when you get to that.  An internal SSD will be screaming fast here if you're getting throttled by the internal HDD (again: know your bottleneck!), but you're going to spend far more for an equivalent capacity of SSD than with the "rotating rust" HDD storage.
But yes, buy your mom or your spouse or your significant other a gift, and then spend some time learning about your new gear, how it works, and where its limits are.