We have a slightly different approach to this. Local machines are laptops if you want to do model building you can do it locally either 2d or connected to a Zalman in 3D.
I have one Mac mini hooked up to a Zalman as "permanent" 3D station. The dual HexaCore MacPro (16 GB RAM) is connected also to a Zalman but is mostly used remotely via ssh in X11. Since you most likely want to use the MacPro for number crunching the ssh connection is fast enough, also for bringing up the ccp4I interface it still works fine even from home. I have a second 8core MacPro in my office used the same way, although right now I only have a 2D display connected to it, but the cores are accessible for number crunching. We are not using OSX Server, multiple users can have simultaneous ssh sessions. I link to a central .bashrc script so that every user has access to all software as soon as they log in. This requires me when setting up a new user to change the local .bashrc file to instead read the /etc/.bashrc that's all. So not sure if you really need OSX Server for your purposes. Maybe if you could specify what types of things you want to run on those machines it would be easier to make suggestions. I would not built in Coot over the network, that's just frustratingly slow and you don't get the benefit of graphics acceleration. Here's an incomplete list of stuff on those MacPros: USF stuff e.g Moleman etc. Coot, Pymol Docking software CCP4 package Phenix XDS Jürgen - Jürgen Bosch Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute 615 North Wolfe Street, W8708 Baltimore, MD 21205 Phone: +1-410-614-4742 Lab: +1-410-614-4894 Fax: +1-410-955-3655 http://web.mac.com/bosch_lab/<http://web.me.com/bosch_lab/> On Dec 15, 2010, at 12:51 PM, Francis E Reyes wrote: Dear all, We are currently considering buying a computer which can be used by multiple people, via our existing network, as a workstation for crystallography purposes. My thoughts are currently going towards a 8-core Apple Pro (or 12-core) with a lot of RAM, with OS X Server, which in theory should be able to handle multiple (up to 4) users simultaneously running crystallography software. The idea would be to have the users access this computer using their own laptops (starting their own virtual sessions?) connected to the same network. Does this sound like a viable strategy, or should it be setup in a different way? In that case how? Would it need advanced setup and maintenance, or would it be possible to jsut set up a number of user accounts in OS X Server, and let it run? I'm reasonably computer savvy, but haven't really done something like this before, so I would very much appreciate your advice or personal experiences regarding this matter. I know that I could probably get a cheaper computer if I went for a pc with linux, but I have more experience with OS X, and would therefore want to stay with it. Thank you in advance, Ronnie Berntsson ---------- Ronnie Berntsson, PhD PostDoctoral Fellow Department of Biochemistry Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute & Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials University of Groningen Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands --------------------------------------------- Francis E. Reyes M.Sc. 215 UCB University of Colorado at Boulder gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu<http://pgp.mit.edu> --recv-keys 67BA8D5D 8AE2 F2F4 90F7 9640 28BC 686F 78FD 6669 67BA 8D5D
