Setting Up Mac Mini / iTunes Server Help

Question

I have a new MacMini that I wanted to just leave on and use it as my iTunes media server for my various iDevices and ATV's.  I have an external Thunderbolt G-Drive attached to the MacMini with my movies, music, home videos and photos on it.  The MacMini will only be used for the purpose of streaming my media and nothing else.  The MacMini drive has nothing on it but whatever it came with the initial OS.  If anybody could provide me with any tips to keep this running as smooth and as fast as possible I would appreciate it.
This is what I have done so far.
I have a Cyberpower Smart App Sinewave UPS system connected to the MacMini.  This allowed me to set up in preferences an automatic smooth shut down of the MacMini in case of a power failure.  My router is also connected to the UPS system as well as the external drive.  I do have a small monitor attached to the MacMini that I can turn on to the proper HDMI input to work on the MacMini, so it is not set up as a headless system.
Tha MacMini is dircectly conected to my router via ethernet so the WiFi portion of the mini is not being used.
Do I need to turn of the wifi via preferences manually or does the ethernet hook up take care of that an I don't need to do that?
Is there a way to get iTunes to automatically launch after the MacMini reboots?
How can I handle updates automatically to keep the MacMini up to date with minimum if any interference from me?
I know I can also schedule an automatic reboot at certan intervals but not sure where to set this up nor if its needed?
Should I set up the MacMini to Never Sleep Mode or let it put the hard drive to sleep?
I know some people have had issues with the hard drive not waking from sleep mode hence iTunes will not work properly.  This has been via firewire hook ups and I am not sure if that would happen via thunderbolt or not.  If there is anything else I can do via hardware or software that I am missing let me know. 
Thanks

Answer 1

glass99 wrote:
The MacBook Pro is sometimes at work, or otherwise "off" in the house. I don't like having to go and turn it on, just to access my itunes library.
That's one downside of AppleTV2 - cheap, small and low power usage but lack of onboard storage means you need a computer on for streaming, which is less than ideal when you have a laptop.
So I've been thinking... maybe a mac mini is the solution? I could set it up near the TV, leave it idle and access media when I need it.
That would certainly work. I have both the current Mac Mini with HDMI and an AppleTV hooked up to the TV - I either use wireless keyboard/mouse or AirMouse on my iPad to control the Mini. You don't necessarily need the Mini connected to the TV but I do in order to do things AppleTV can't.
Right now all of my itunes is on my MacBook Pro. If I wanted to copy over the library is this possible?
Several ways to do it.
I don't want to do a complete restore on my mac mini of the macbook pro from time machine, since there is a lot of stuff that just isn't necessary to transfer.
Not advisable to restore a MacBook Pro to a Mini in any case. You should stick to the same hardware for restoring.
So is there someway to either sync the libraries, or copy things? Basically, I want to keep both libraries up to date, likely I'd download things on the MBP, but would then want to access this media on the mac mini... what can I do about this?
Easiest thing is to use Home Sharing - sign in to Home Sharing in itunes on both computers - this will allow you to copy material from one library to another, you can even configurre it to do so automatically if you want to. (Depending on your home network speeds this may be initially slower than say simply copying all the iTunes media to an external drive and then copying this into the Mini library, but once most stuff is copied, additional transfers will be incremental and relatively quicker.)
AC