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Apple Blurs the Server Line With Mac Mini Server
Toe, The writes "Today Apple announced several new hardware offerings, including a new Mac mini, their (almost-literally) pint-sized desktop computer. In a bizarre twist, they are now also offering a Mac mini with Mac OS X Server bundled in, along with a two hard drives somehow stuffed into the tiny package. Undoubtedly, many in the IT community will scoff at the thought of calling such a device a 'server.' However, with the robust capabilities of Snow Leopard Server (a true, if highly GUI-fied, UNIX server), it seems likely to find a niche in small businesses and even enthusiasts' homes. The almost completely guided setup process means that people can set up relatively sophisticated services without the assistance of someone who actually knows what they are doing. What the results will be in terms of security, etc. will be... interesting to watch as they develop." El Reg has a good roundup article of the many announcements; the multi-touch Magic Mouse is right up there on the techno-lust-inspiration scale.
Especially if you have other Macs in your office, you can leave OS X on it and have a nice little small office server. You could also throw Debian or Ubuntu on it and use it as you see fit.
The small form factor would make it easy for a developer to keep one on the (literal) desktop alongside a workstation. Personally, I'd use virtualization instead, but others may prefer having a physical box to play with.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
...call me skeptical on that one.
that focuses primarily on the visual aesthetics of the physical box that it's housed in.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Really interested to see a teardown of this guy.
12.5mm 2.5" drives?
and waiting for DisplayPort audio to be enabled.
Servers are a computer role, not the size of the box. Would you say a router running Linux and serving files is a server?
Fkn hell. Yes, it's doable, you dumb, inefficient, wasteful "enterprise class" f****ts.
But OS X for a server, is rather lame. OS X is a Desktop OS
Windows is kinda mediocre for both Desktop and Server but gets the job done.
Using Linux for normal desktop use for normal actives is just doing extra work... However it is perfect for a server.
Sure they can all do the Job as a Server and Desktop and they have their variants which make them a bit better at it. However OS X even being Unix Based doesn't make it a good server. It might make it a reliable server just as long as you do what Apple want you to do with it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Why scoff at a nice looking server that adds to the array of options you have for serving whatever you may want to serve? Sure, it may not be the right thing to rack-mount en mass (though maybe it would work fine for that too), but it'd be a safe bet to say that Apple isn't trying to take over the rack-mounted server market with this particular offering. Those who would scoff would merely be scoffing at a misuse of the product.
Undoubtedly, many in the IT community will scoff at the thought of calling such a device a 'server.'
I'm not familiar with this exact device, but the premise of the statement is rife with inexperience. You cannot look at the physical characteristics of a thing and say 'that is not a server'. It may not be a 'good server', but 'server' is certainly possible based on this simple test:
Does it primarily offer services to people using another machine for their interface?
If yes, 'server'.
If yes, but someone is using it as an interface, that's 'server being used as an interface'. (Which is bad, by the way.)
If no, not primarily, that's 'workstation with shares'. (Also bad, but less so.)
Its all about the purpose, not the form factor. Lets not forget, the cell phone in my pocket is more powerful than the first 'server' I was ever asked to admin.
Stay around long enough, and you'll soon be able to say the same.
That's not a knife.. THIS is a knife (pulling out Kabar-based server)
...on one of these. If it's a no-brainer, point-and-click affair I'm in. I've got this Xerox copier that is a fantastic B&W scanner - the problem is that they only allow scanning to email. And the email server can't require any authentication. I'm not kidding. The first time I set it up the Xerox s/w support guy walked me through getting it connected, verifying the old exchange box I used would take an unauthenticated telnet session to send an email. When that machine died, I decided I could by a new scanner for less than a MS Exchange license (it was tied to the dead pc). I tried ubuntu and slack on a small box, but couldn't quite get the two to talk.
For $500, I might try again.
(FWIW, the scanner can do 20-30 sheets a minute, and also does 11x17 duplex and mixed originals...not you're run-of-the-mill $200 AIO machine)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Go and check out how much a so called 'windows home server' cost and is like on the market, what's the argument here? Mac mini server is a brilliant idea, and it is what a lot of mac mini users is doing with it.
I love the idea of a Mac Mini server for many tasks. If you just need a server for directory, file, and print stuff, this is a damn good idea, especially if you're constrained for space. Even if you're not, most small offices don't have huge IT setups... many just use a business-grade cable or DSL connection with a small router. This is the perfect kind of server for that kind of small office setup. I don't think Apple anticipates anyone running heavy SQL on this or anything. This is also a good way to test the waters to see how much of a market there really is for OSX Server. Bravo to Apple on this one. It's a few more bucks than a PC equivalent (no surprise there), but a typically elegant-while-useful idea that Apple is sometimes famous for.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Meh. Some of us already use boxes like this (or actual minis) in this sort of capacity.
Once you install a robust OS on a bit of hardware, the whole desktop/server distinction is entirely arbitrary.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
people can set up relatively sophisticated services without the assistance of someone who actually knows what they are doing
I have never in my experiences encountered that problem; someone who wanted a server but didn't want it to be set up by a knowledgable person - or even worse wanted to set it up themselves without knowing what they were doing.
I know I for one would never want to board an aircraft being piloted by someone with a similarly cavalier attitude towards working knowledge.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I am certainly no Mac fanboi... In fact my only Mac runs Linux. But I can just imaging a simple plug-and-play file server that damn near sets itself up, has some redundancy, has built in monitoring and alerting, and hopefully integrates directly with Time Machine so that you can configure a simple backup system with versioning.
If this works as well as Apple's products have been known to do, it should save a lot of people a lot of headaches when it comes to backup and recovery.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Software worth runnning on the cute lil' box :)
Answer - by not including the DVD drive in the box.
I think this could be a useful little box for most of the sorts of things people set up home servers to do. At least they are using the 5400rpm drives instead of the 4200rpm versions.
#DeleteChrome
That's not a knife, that's a spoon.
You can easily set up Exim on Debian to accept all mail from your LAN without authentication. Set up a local VM that accepts the mail and forwards it on to your real mail server.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
A server is not a physical manifestation. It's the services it provides that matter.
.: Max Romantschuk
Ah, I see you've played "knifey-spooney" before...
$comment =~ s/($verb)\s+($noun)/IN SOVIET RUSSIA, $2 $1s YOU!/g;
Snow Leopard Server (a true, if highly GUI-fied, UNIX server)
That's not true. The UNIX trademark is handled by the Open Group. Only if they say it's UNIX, it's UNIX. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (for Intel) is UNIX. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is not. The Server version also doesn't have a certification.
Sure, it's Unix-like. It might even comply with the Single Unix Specification. But it's not a true UNIX until the Open Group says it is.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I put OS 10.4-Server (10-Client version) on a Mac Mini back in 2006 and continued to pick up used mac minis for less than $200 each to play around with Xgrid. Eventually I moved the server over to an old dual core PowerMac G4 tower and used all the Mac Minis as render nodes, but it was a fun little project and worked extremely well for rendering blender, compressor, and Final Cut projects. I even put screamernet II on them for lightwave rendering as well. I had about $4500 invested in the project, the price of a decent Macpro, and had a distributed rendering grid.
With the release of some tools like Xgrid Lite, there wasn't the need to go with the full blown Server version of OSX in OS 10.5 or 10.6. Everything I needed could be downloaded with the xserve remote admin kit and a default install of OSX.
But for the year or more I used the Mac Mini as a home server, it worked extremely well. It just sat on the bookshelf and frankly I just ignored it 90% of the time because it did exactly what it needed. I'd log in every month or so to do updates, etc. But it was pretty much turn on and forget. Plus it didn't suck down as much power as the PowerMac. Something I learned once I moved out of an apartment with the utilities included and into my house.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
...are thanking you for that question.
If these catch on, and are too easily left as open relays, we'll see shortly after a spike in development of botnet software for Snow Leopard. Considering how many of these will likely be left on 24x7, they would be ideal mail relay zombies for botnet operators and spammers.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Unfortunately, they don't give you the option to use the slower CPU with the mini server option, or give you the option to use SSDs. I'd also like to see an eSATA port and a 2nd ethernet port, for the server build, anyway. Perhaps an Xserve mini? It'll be interesting to see these once they're updated with Core i5/i7 processors. At least they have decent discrete graphics now. Are the CPUs still soldered in, though?
Heck for a tiny little 6 person company like mine this thing could be great. Only one problem... the local telco hates the idea of competition and thus blocks low ports so as to keep small companies from cost effectively hosting in house. Sure the D&E sales guy said he could offer me a static ip for $1200+ a month but still not allowed to host on ports 25 or 80 and hey their $25/month IIS + Exchange hosting with no uptime guarantee is such a great deal right so why don't I do that? So as much as I'd like to bring things in house I think we'll have to keep using keep using Dreamhost.
Really simple, they have a nice UI for this: screen shot
I already have an old G4 Mac Mini sitting in the corner of my lounge. It's running Debian and hosts a number of community websites without a problem, is a permanent torrent server and hosts several code repos. It runs perfectly fine for these sorts of jobs. Plus, it's virtually unnoticeable with just a power cord and an ethernet cable connected to it. Personally, I love it.
Fixed URL of screen shot: screen shot of UI for relays.
In a bizarre twist, they are now also offering a Mac mini with Mac OS X Server bundled in, along with a two hard drives somehow stuffed into the tiny package.
Uh. Hello? Ideal MythTV box?
Finally, I can eliminate the last vestiges of crappy open sores software from my home network. This is pretty much the death of Linux in what few end user roles it has ever held.
which is probably the biggest thing wrong with the server machine. A lot of servers that we run use both jacks that standard in all rackmountables. I guess you could use the wifi or buy an ethernet USB dongle.....
Monstar L
In some ways this is very cool, but the drives are 5400 RPM and I don't think are server rated. (In other words, this is not really "server class" - but 3 or 4 of them racked together might be.
Please note, BTW, that X Server is not quite the same as Mac OS X. Close, but not the same.
Imagine a small home/workgroup server like this, but with iPhoto support so that everyone can share a photo database.
OSX server includes an iCalendar server, Address Book server, Mail Server, iChat server... so they have every other server component that a Mac Centric office would need, why no iPhoto server?
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Apple continues their damned war against mouse buttons.
I have two Macs, and both of them have Microsoft's low end optical mouse connected... the best product Microsoft have put their name on since Xenix. I tried using the Mighty Mouse, and I've tried getting used to the two-finger tap on my Macbook Pro, and they just don't work for me. For example, I hold my mouse in three fingers, with two fingers resting on the buttons. I press with my middle or index finger, to click. On the Mighty Mouse this results in it being interpreted as a left click no matter which one I apply pressure with. On this mouse... who knows?
this reminds me of NT Small Business Server edition from so long ago (does it even exist anymore?) I know this is going to sound like MS bashing (which isn't my intent), but I would dare say that this is what MS was trying to do with SBS, but done right and easily packed into a nice little box. The only drawback I can see is at the end user point and no superdrive/dvd/cd for re-installing the whole OS if needed. Granted there are many ways either via target disk, disk image, remote desktop, etc but a lot of those functions are exactly intuitive to most people who may see this as a sort of turnkey solution to their small business needs. Hopefully they will be knowledgeable enough to hire someone to setup/troubleshoot the system when needed. Working with OS X Server, I can see some great advantages for those running an apple based environment. We're a small business and a while back we went with an Xserve to meet our requirements. It was a bit overkill (it still is) but the expectation is that it will last a hell of a long time with minimal maintenance. Which, knock on wood, it has.
This Mac mini has more power than most servers had a couple years ago. Is a HTPC serving all your multimedia needs in your home (mp3s, videos, pictures) a server, or do you also need to use it as a file server? Microsoft has been advertising the concept of a home server for a couple years. What is blurred here?
I got a 10 year old dsl router from ebay for 5 bucks to use as a print server. 10 of those things would have less computing power than my last cellphone (my current one actually has the same computing power as my last computer). And I call it a server.
Has the guy who wrote this ever typed anything into a command line?
However, with the robust capabilities of my butt I will surely find a niche on my couch...
For small business purposes, Microsoft server offerings are horrid. Windows Server OEM price! is $800, and then there is the whole "client access liscence" crap where until you pay even more if you want more than 5 computers to talk to your server!
This, on the other hand, is a complete system for $1000, thats silent (so you can have it in your office, suprisingly important!), doesn't have client access liscence crap, and can support a bunch of windows systems as well as macs for file sharing, email, calendaring if you want to use Mozilla rather than Outlook, etc etc etc.... Don't have enough storage for your liking? Simply add a 4 TB external USB array for $800...
Its a really brutal product to deal with if you are Microsoft.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Yup, I'd agree with you. I consider myself a Linux guy, but I have a Mac Mini at home. I originally bought it so I could push stuff I purchased from iTunes to my iPod (and I still use it for that.) I have it plugged into my TV via VGA, and use a bluetooth keyboard/mouse.
Mostly though, it's a convenient backup server for the Linux laptops in our home, using rsync over ssh. It's great, and fits conveniently on a shelf next to my TV.
I think Apple hopes to do similar business with a Mac Mini Server. There's no optical drive, so I'm curious about that ... but if you want to set up a small server in your home, I'm sure Apple would love to sell you this thing. Small, fits on a shelf, great for home use.
I don't see this being used at the office, unless someone works in a small business (less than 100 people) that doesn't have their own server room, and wants to set up a small web server or file server.
The mac mini is already in use in server farms. Apparently it's size and low power consumption make it a good candidate in a server farm. Check it out yourself:
http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/13019/Mac+Mini+Server+Farm.html
Say NO to unpaid Internships!
Lets get this straight. There are no blurred lines here. This is a desktop box running a server OS. There are no blurred lines here. This is absolutely not data center level hardware. What kind of server has audio jacks, mini dvi ports, fire wire ports, and mini display ports? Just because I can run Linux, MySQL, and Apache on a mini-ITX system doesn't mean that said system is all of a sudden going to start showing up in data centers. Lets make this very clear... This is a desktop system running a server OS.
Apple will sell you (£20.00 here in the UK) a USB to Ethernet adapter.
I have a Mac Mini (allbeit running Fedora 11) setup just like this as my main system Firewall & DNS, DHCP Server.
I also have another PPC (bought off Ebay) that acts as my main fileserver. I have a Lacie Firewire Drive that is the same formfactor attached.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
The Mac Mini Server goes for a grand, with four gigs of RAM, and 1TB of disk, Core 2 Duo processor at 2.53Ghz.
The Cobalt Qube 3 sold for $1149 in 2002 (inflation adjusted, that's about $1367 today), with a 450 Mhz MIPS CPU, 40 gigs of disk, and 32 megs of RAM.
Looks like Apple's going to pick up a lot of business in the niche that Sun abandoned.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
steve jobs, sieg hail!!!
Don't use the Guest Account!
It's about as easy as setting up Sendmail (or whatever your favorite MTA is) to do that on a Linux box. And you don't need OS X Server to do it, if you already know how to set up Sendmail. Just set it up to only accept connections from the copier's IP address, without requiring authentication, then have it forward mail to your real server.
The difference is that you can't re-compile MSexchange on whatever Unix-like OS you prefer, even if you were willing to pay money to Redmond.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
GP is just out of it. Visual aesthetics? The actual beauty of the Mac mini isn't "visual"; quite the contrary - it's that you can stick this thing out of the way and ignore it. At home I use an old G4 Mac Mini plugged into a projector as my entertainment system -- the box itself is completely out of the way behind a cabinet door; there's no reason to even look at the thing.
From what I can tell, your question boils down to "Can an email server be configured?"
The answer to that, obviously, is yes. Implementing the features you want (or don't want) is a function of reading the documentation for the software you intend to use, and configuring things accordingly.
What software Slackware or Ubuntu includes by default (whether that's Sendmail, Exim, Postfix, etc.), and how the OS and/or the included email software happens to be configured, is irrelevant.
>> the multi-touch Magic Mouse is right up there on the techno-lust-inspiration scale.
It seems like a half-assed implementation of multi-touch so far. Example: you need a keyboard shortcut to use it for zoom. Why the hell wouldn't they just use "pinch" like on their other multi-touch systems? I smell another epic fail in the world of Apple mice.
The mini-server is interesting though... and I'm already lusting after the 27" quad-core i7. Having video-IN on the 27" is impressive, and negates some of the planned-obsolesence of such a huge monitor while making it also a potential bridge to AV systems.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Mac OS X Server 10.6 has pretty decent security on it's mail services, however with some tweaking I'm sure you can turn some of this off. From memory, you can easily allow unauthenticated SMTP from the local subnet, but not from the internet at large.
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/mail-services.html
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Not being able to bridge from the external network to the internal network makes this thing little more than a toy.. can't do things like DR:BD or n-tier makes this just another toy for the art department.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
macminicolo.net has been selling the service to host mac mini's in a data center for a while with macos server on them. Idea was for lower traffic setups they would be fine. Mind you they didn't have internal mirrors drives like the new one does but they have been doing it since the g4 minis. All apple did was remove the optical drive and throw a second notebook drive in instead.
Magic Mouse functions as a two-button mouse when you enable Secondary Click in System Preferences. Left-handed users can reassign left and right click, as well.
It looks great and everything, but I'm a bit funny - I like to see how the practical things are done.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Ideal for a development server for those wanting to get familiar with OSX Server.
There are a few openings for OSX Server skills, mainly in the iPhone operator arena as visual voicemail apparently is served from it (hence why only specific operators have the feature).
The enterprise Xerox stuff I've been managing for the last 4 years (2 leases so far, 2 different deploys) have all been able to do authenticated SMTP
Thing is, most environments manage their SMTP by only allowing sends from certain IP spaces or hosts, at least insofar as I have seen. Unless you're doing SMTP between LANs on the public internet from your scanner/copier/printer, I don't see how that'd be an issue.
What do you mean "somehow stuffed"? The Mac mini uses (and has always used) 2.5" drives. If you remove the optical drive there is enough room for two hard drives.
I only wish they'd had this and the dual HD feature sooner!
I went out and Mac-Mini and Snow Leopard Server the week Snow Leopard came out and can't think of a better option for a home-media server
that offers cool features like a Mail and iCal Server, PodCasting, rounded out with a nice suite of admin tools and takes all of 20 minutes to install and configure.
Of course, I'm sure a horde of *nix and windows freaks will are ready to tell me why I'm wrong and could get far better for much le$$.
There is no spoon.
(And that's no moon.)
AT&ROFLMAO
New imacs make the mac pro look even more over priced pay $1000 more to get smaller HD, much weak video, and less ram. Also why still 9400m in the $1200 imac? and the base mini should have bigger then a 160g and better video then 9400m at $600 and $800. The imcas just keep getting bigger and bigger how about people who don't have room 20inch+ systems to get new hardware.
also only dual cores in $1200, $1500, $1700 imacs?
your unborn child. :3
Get a PC.
Dual ethernet is pretty much a standard feature for a small office server, lets you set up firewalls, remote access and other public-side facing services. And they could have made space for it by removing a few of the USB ports, 5 USB ports seems kinda overkill for a machine that isn't intended for desktop use.
FWIW I haven't used OSX Server in a few years but last time I did the GUI config tools were okay but not amazing. Some of the services were pretty smooth to config, but the hard stuff was still hard. For example to setup Apache you still pretty much had to be an expert in httpd.conf arcana even though you didn't actually have to edit the files by hand (usually).
Businesses may scoff, other than the really small or home based type... but I think this is Apple's "in" to the home based server market. Set it up in your living room along with your AppleTV, connect it to your router along with your work and personal computers, serve all your media, all you mail, all your everything to all your house. SOP for businesses, sure. Geeks everywhere have been doing it for years. Does your grandmother have a home server? She will, and Apple wants to be there.
Am I the only one that thinks that the pricing for the Mac Mini has gone a little insane? When they first came out they were for people who wanted to dip their toes into the Apple world but without spending a small fortune. Now the base unit is £500, hardly a drop in the ocean.
And yet again, nothing headless in the mid-range :( I can either go for the sexy (but hugely overpriced and underspecced) £649 Mac Mini or jump over £1200 to the £1,899 quad core beast. As the idea of paying to replace your monitor every time Apple make your old product obsolete sounds a little absurd to me - I'm not interested in the iMacs.
It's no wonder that some companies (*cough*psystar*cough*) and people are flirting with the idea of a Hackintosh. A £800 mid-range headless box from Apple would surely hit the sweet spot for quite a lot of people.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
People always joked about it. Here it is. And it isn't even April yet.
The fanboys are here... and they have mod points!
I've never seen so many posts going down to negative in such few seconds.
Seriously, Let me ask again. Is this server, 'rackable'? How many Us? What rack mount standard does it follow?
Yet they came and modded you down.
I've been running OS X Server in a SOHO situation for several years, including hosting some websites, LDAP-based network login, OS X Mobile accounts on laptops (laptop synchs when it's back in the home network) and file sharing.
Last week I got a new low-end Mini and a copy of Snow Leopard Server, at about the same cost as the new product. My Mini is only 2.0ghz, compared to 2.5ghz, and has only 1, 120gb, disk drive vs the 2x 500gb drives. But those drives are 5400rpm, and you give up the optical drive for the second hard drive. My big disappointment with this (besides it coming out a week after I bought something a bit less capable) is that I think they should have added at least one and preferably 2 eSATA ports (and given up 2 USB ports.)
I'm looking forward to trying out the Wiki server, and also the new 'connect to home' facility that is something like a very simplified VPN, that's new in Snow Leopard Server.
Administering Snow Leopard Server is very little like handling Unix servers, with one exception. You still need to pore through logfiles for security issues, etc. But the late Leopard Server (X.5.6 or so) and now Snow Leopard server "server preferences" are likely to provide a relatively knowledgeable user with the ability to set up a functional server in, literally, 10 minutes (voice of experience...) That's assuming you have a DNS that provides domain name/IP mapping, and you're doing simple LDAP or already have an LDAP server (including Active Directory, but I don't have any experience with AD or mixed Windows/Mac integration.)
Clearly this is not for someone who needs computational power in a server. But a pair of servers, using a shared (NAS) disk, and some sort of mechanism that can do hot-backup/rollover at the edge, could be a very workable relatively high-reliability situation for someone. But more importantly, I think this is a very attractive product for small offices, particularly with some sort of FW800 or NAS RAID mirrored/redundant disk enclosure.
Oh, and someone asked how you do an install without an optical drive in the server: "There's more than one way to do this." MacOS provides remote disk (this was developed for the MacBook Air), so you slide your install DVD into another Mac with an optical drive and active remote disk. OR, you can use Firewire Target mode (one of the great Mac tricks of all time.) This is how I loaded my Leopard server double-density DVD onto an old G5 that did not have a double density DVD drive. I stuck it in my MacBook Pro, then rebooted the MBP into Firewire Target mode. I used a (FW800 - great performance) cable to plug that machine into the G5. All of the MBP's drives, including the DVD in the optical drive, mounted on the G5. Basically Target mode turns your Mac into the equivalent of an external disk enclosure for all drives/volumes on that machine. This is also super-cool for backup. I have an eSATA enclosure and a ExpressCard34 eSATA adapter for the MBP. I can do drive-dump level backups by putting the Mini into Firewire Target mode and then disk-dumping drive images onto my eSATA enclosure. (The eSATA enclosure is left over from that G5, which had a hardware RAID eSATA card in it. I was sorry to give that particular card up, it worked pretty well.)
Core i3/i5 mini may come with suck build intel video if they make one same thing for the $1200 imac. half the video speed.
This is interesting for people considering a DC-powered server room. The Mini uses 18.5V DC with an external AC-DC converter. No hardware modifications required to run off a DC supply.
No, that would be good marketing. Bad marketing is the kind that doesn't move product. You tech guys should stick to commenting on things you know about, like how many penguins can dance on Linus's head. ;-)
Core i3/i5 mini may come with suck build intel video if they make one same thing for the $1200 imac. half the video speed.
There are already Core i5/i7 (mobile) laptops announced with discrete graphics. The Dell Studio 17, for example, has "1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650". That's way better than what I have in my current desktop (for now). This shouldn't be a problem to build for anyone but Apple.
Let me preface this by saying I am not an XServe genius. So my question would be... Can XServe act as an iTunes media server? Could the kids access HandBraked DVD's on the AppleTV in the basement and the AppleTV in the living room? Can I access my music in my study above the garage as well as the kitchen?
I believe when the Mac Mini G4 was first released, the pricing on it was $499 for the lower end model, and $599 for the higher-end one, in U.S. dollars.
So the current pricing doesn't seem "out of line" to me, by comparison. It's a well-known issue/problem that Apple's pricing can get pretty skewed in other countries though -- so won't try to speak for anyplace other than the U.S.
Excellent point - iPhoto is one area where Apple seems to continue to miss the boat. It is very slow for what it does, and sharing photos (which it already does do from the client) takes forever over gigabit networks. Backup is theoretically easy ("just copy the iphoto library from one computer to another!) but in the real world is a mess (not at all automated, and when you take two different computers to different photo shoots, for example, you wind up with different libraries and synchronizing them is not as easy). It's quite frustrating to have your slideshow up on a projector and then think, oh, those photos are on a different computer...
I have to say I have the same problem with iTunes. Lots of great potential there but the actual sharing software is way too slow to be useful with large libraries, and there is no easy way to maintain one master music collection on a hard drive being served to different computers. Instead you wind up with several different libraries across different boxes, each incomplete in a different way. It would be great to see Apple integrate server technology into these tools for home entertainment centers and other home server applications.
You don't want to set up an open relay unless you want to help spammers. You want to set up an IP-address-authenticated relay. Instead of using SMTP AUTH, allow only approved IP addresses to relay mail, and then only to approved recipients. Then your DHCP server would detect your scanner's MAC address and give it an approved IP address. How would a spammer exploit that setup?
Why not 640GB of 750GB drives? Two 750GB drives can be had for a little over $300.
All in all I am happy that the Mac Mini got an update. But I was hoping for a slightly cheaper one. While it is true that I would find it difficult to find a non-Apple Core 2 Duo system that is small and still under $600, I was hoping for some Good Enough(tm) computing out of Apple.
At least they didn't abandon the Mac Mini, which is something many of us were wondering for the past couple of years.
Question - anyone with the 1 hdd version of the new Mac Mini know if it is possible to mount a second drive in there? A $599 Mac Mini + $100 drive seems like a better deal than a $999 Mac Mini. (Why do I need two drives? I don't know, RAID-0 maybe?)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's like ten-thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.
I needed the storage capacity for the multimedia the mac is so good at handling. My hackintosh is a champ with 3 TB of harddrive space for my photos, 8 gigs of ram. Its been super reliable and was $1100 Dollars, the price of a high spec mini.
I've seen a lot of photographers leave apple because of this lack of affordable mid level machine (4 so far). You can get a windows machine that can easily power through photos for $800-$1000.
A server is not a physical manifestation. It's the services it provides that matter.
It takes reliable hardware to provide services reliably. Until Apple replaced the SuperDrive with a second hard drive, a single hard drive failure could have brought down a Mac mini.
People are already using Mini's as servers, there are co-lo's that offer Mac Mini's as "servers". Others are using them as display servers for overhead screens in their commandcenter with their OS X based system.(saw an article somewhere about some police command center that used a OS X based system)
So there is many places where you already can find racks of Mac Minis today so I'd say there is a demand for server minis with RAID disks.
I see you've played knifey-spooney before!
Make a cluster. Like the saying goes, never underestimate the calculating capacity of a closet full of Mac minis.
I don't see what the big deal is. I've been using a Mac Mini G4 as a server for more than 3 years. It doesn't even need X Server on it. Mine has been faithfully serving as a Apache HTTPD/PostgreSQL/Tomcat/Postfix/SFTP and music/file server just fine - and with only one HD too (which had to be replaced after 2 years) and only 1GB of RAM. Sometimes I even hook up an external HD and have even MORE space available. Oh my!!
Mine just sits on a bookshelf, headless, and I use ARD as and if necessary. I'm an Apple fan, but there is no news on this one - I dunno why anyone could be excited about it, especially at the price. Go get a used Mini for less than half the cost and use it for the exact same thing.
But does the mini come with rails? :P
I built 4 tiny quite capable servers from large lunch boxes and VIA EPIA. I crammed in a good intel server PCI board in there and ran it from 12V power bricks-- redundant too! (its DC, just wire in parallel add diodes.) I ran openBSD on them. hardware SSL acceleration made up for the slower cpus; although, openBSD had issues with a freebsd nfs server not resovled until I retired them. PLENTY fast if you depend on NAS. I wanted to use Apple's minis because they were great-- but only had 1 ethernet connection. I might have used their OS...
Mini servers is a good idea! totally overkill for many tasks... DNS, email, web server... if you have larger loads, then get a bigger box... or make a cluster that still uses less power; that is, if you care about heat and power usage.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The only thing it really has going for it is... it's a Mac, running an official server OS.
For myself, I prefer a server I can't accidentally sweep off the desk.
All things considered, it's a nice, compact, drop-in home/SOHO server solution, particularly if the rest of the inhouse environment is also Mac.
Just don't use a Time Capsule to back it up.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
this is a knife: http://www.erik.co.uk/ans/
I've already put my order in for two if them. We need a test machine to deploy our upgrade to Snow Leopard Server (on an xserve), and this is the perfect candidate. I may also use them as hot swappable backup servers if they will boot the server images we have. In the past we have not done this due to expense. I had a PPC xserve die a few years ago due to a big surge at our data center and was able to recover using an old imac for a few weeks while we sorted out the mess. Transparent to our users except in performance, but mostly unnoticed. To have a hot swappable server that can be powered on with the touch of a button if something in your main server fails is awesome. Also this allows us to safely tweak our sites and services in a test environment that was cost prohibitive before. The ability to set up and deploy directory services, a web site, etc. for under 1k is pretty damn cool.
Looks like the only OS option is Win XP Home, only comes with 1 GB DDR2 SO-DIMM (no mention of expandability, although I would think a 2 GB module could be substituted as I did with my 904 HD netbook), and biggest HDD is 160 GB, so any server-izing would take more work/expense (if it can handle it...).
A server is not a physical manifestation. It's the services it provides that matter.
Spoken like someone with a data center.
For the rest of us, a server is a box that has to sit in someone's office, or even at home in a corner out of the way.
The smaller, and quieter, the better. The services it offers are of course important but so is everyday being-out-of-the way, and also easy to reach to manage. Something you can easily stuff on a bookshelf is very handy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a small, inexpensive office machine - the 118i, only about $3.5k retail, if it's still sold. The difficulty is that the machine gives no feedback on an error; any failure to send an email returns a single "can't complete" code. It's essentially a blind operation to set it up. Not being someone who tinkers with networks that much, I don't have the knowledge to sniff what's going on and where it's failing.
Since most mail servers are set up to require some sort of authentication by default, you have to turn that off to get the machine to successfully send. The question is, do I spend $1000 on a local network guy to buy me a $1000 server and set up the system, and then pay him $400 a call if anything goes wrong, or go buy a $400 dedicated scanner, even if it's slower or not as capable - but good enough. That's a simple business decision. It's the problem with small operations; we can't financially justify many consultants and still afford to pay our own salaries. I'm on the other end of the business deal at times too - most people can't keep me on retainer "just in case."
If the mac is easy, and there are few/no hidden options (as can be so common with CLIs, and even the MS Exchange GUI), then it might be worth a shot. If I'm messing with the CLI or having to change "hidden" options, then it's not worth my time.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This mouse is what I've wanted for YEARS now! Don't know about you, but I've wished for a trackpad stuck on a mouse for over a decade!
I HATE the previous apple mice... except the 90s ones-- they make good garage door openers.
I've got beyond the mouse button phase; in the late 90s I had a 6 button mouse and I had it set for multiple apps too. It was hard on my hand and didn't free me from heavy simultaneous keyboard use. Power users use the keyboard; I am perfectly fine just 1 button. I use the scroll wheels but i do not like to heavily use them. Most of the time I use the keyboard whenever it is possible to be productive.
The thinner the mouse the better as far as I'm concerned. I have a largely 1 cm high mouse now. I often use portable mice as well. I use my fingers and minimize movement on my wrists; the large normal mice are too hard on my wrists; I also don't try to point moving my arm so my mice are really fast in the inch of space it moves within.
If this mouse clicks properly, I'll buy one-- if it works like the previous mouse then I'll have to hope they don't have a silly patent on the trackpad idea.
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Umm no dvd drive.. so its pretty simple how they did it.
But they ship with a DVD disk? How about the OS installer on a USB flash drive instead?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For the type of server a small organization needs (LDAP directory, mail, even web content etc) you don't need a beefy XServe or Mac Pro. You can get away with Mac Mini and with its really low power consumption. For SOHO outfits that adds toward considerable savings on a yearly basis. Enough to pay for Mac Mini.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I remember reading an article in the last year that suggested that the only reason why Apple was keeping the mini around was because admins were buying it up as a server solution (I think it may have been on Wired.com). If so, it makes since that Apple is offering this built-in solution while still keeping it around for the small niche it fills in the consumer market.
And data loss.. with no DVDr, you can be sure no one will back things up.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
We use a first generation Mac Mini in my office to do nightly builds of both our MacOS and Windows software. The windows builds run on VM Ware. Its not uncommon for the build machine to be running 100% CPU for hours at a time. It hasn't been rebooted in months. We've been doing this with the same machine for over three years. Its wonderful. Never had a problem...
How does cost/gig compare with other servers?
Same with our Xerox copiers. I think the the OP has more issues that the Mac server is not going to resolve.
Mediawiki does a lot of that kinda stuff.
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You don't know from ridiculously overpriced. Try paying for an RS/6000, or worse, Windows Advanced License Revenue Generation Server.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I've worked in IT for over a decade, and it's not my experience or lack thereof that made me say that some may scoff.
Some may. And will. A lot of IT people are very opinionated, particularly about what is and isn't "good enough" to qualify for their definitions.
Heck, a lot of IT people still don't take any Macs seriously at all (even now when they're Intel boxes running UNIX). I used to administer a room full of Macs providing a full suite of services to a corporation... and had people telling me I didn't have any *servers* because Macs are graphics machines.
I think the mac mini server would take off if apple made it very easy to cluster them into a high availability environment. Imagine just being able to add them to an office environment for increased capacity and redundancy. Apple is very good at making things easy to set up.
"Mac OS X Server has found the following servers:
o add to high availability cluster?"
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I neither use nor particularly like their products, but damn, it's a good day to be an Apple shareholder!
I really don't see what there is to scoff at; there used to be a time when personal computers could not even run Unix! Personal computers today are far more powerful than mainframe servers used to be not too long ago, and you're going to tell me I can't use a Mac Mini as a server?
Apple did not do this because they are trying to gain new customers. They did it because existing Apple customers already have been doing this for a long time.
Putting OSX Server onto little Mac Minis has been going on for a long time. People strap them to the back of plasma TVs, use them in point-of-sale, put them in kiosk boxes that use a modem for remote administration, or use them for a test server on their desk. Let's face it, I don't want to put a rack mount 1U XServe on my desk when I could just use a Mac Mini and basically get the same software features on much MUCH cheaper hardware.
That is why people want OSX Server on the Mac Mini; dev/testing, kiosks, and other rough-environment deployments.
There is no spoon...
(I'm impressed that no one said this so far!)
The almost completely guided setup process means that people can set up relatively sophisticated services without the assistance of someone who actually knows what they are doing.
The question is, would you host any content at a company that has this kind of "policy" (eg: to not know what they do...)? Also, what is the need of some graphical point and click desktop interface in a server?
I use a USB fan connected to my Time Capsule to protect it from overheating, since in my city the mean temp is around 28-32C and electricity prices are really high, so using AC is out of the question. In fact, I use fans on everything: entertainment center furniture, computer furniture, aquarium, fridge, etc. etc. I must have around 20 DC fans around the house :)
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At my work this would be just ideal. We are a medium sized electrical contracting company(I am an electrician, not an IT person and we don't have one on staff, but there is a company on retainer should anything go wrong) with about 65 people on the payroll. At our office/warehouse we have one server that sits in a mess of wires and a variety of workstations. All our computers are aging Win XP machines which are clunky, occupy space and electrically inefficient. The server handles email, file serving, backups and maybe the website...I don't know if we host it ourselves or have it hosted elsewhere. In a year or two we are going to be due for an upgrade and due to as the level of dissatisfaction with Simply Accounting increases I feel tempted to suggest switching our office entirely to Macs running MoneyWorks Gold. We would retain one Windows computer to run our estimating and bidding software, Accubid and BidWinner Plus.
This mini server would complete the picture and do it without requiring a server closet...which is good because we don't have the room for one. We don't need or want massive processing power...we want compactness, reliability and energy efficiency. Our server is mounted on the wall of a warehouse room where we store large quantities of wiring, tools and other supplies, and as we are short on space this would be very welcome. I imagine the reduced frustration would increase our productivity and make management a lot easier without needing to call up the IT company all the time. We install a lot of renewable energy equipment so energy consciousness in our own office is something we pay attention to. People who scoff at this thing simply don't work with or see applications where this would be a perfect drop-in solution. Apple is once again offering something that nobody else is capable of and I am glad they have paid attention to something a lot of people need but cannot otherwise find. At my company Linux is not even remotely an option, so fanboys can go pound sand.
This mac mini server has plain non-ECC RAM, right? If so, that's lame and not worth using as a server.
Disappointingly close to being useful, but it's just pretty junk after all.
I'm like you - I love my Microsoft Intellimice, but this new magic mouse piques my interest. It's almost like a trackpad on top of a mouse. It looks like it will take some getting used to, but it's the first Apple mouse in forever that I'm curious to try.
I'm definitely going to replace my aging G4 tower (I was waiting for the quad core) with that shiny new 27" iMac, but I think I might wander over to the Apple store near my work and play with one of those mice.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Does it have any server-class hardware? e.g. ECC ram? If not, it shouldn't really be called a server.
I host my website on a mac mini, and in fact manage a few mac minis as dedicated servers. They make pretty good machines for web hosting, due to low power consumption, and the fact you can fit about 8 in 3U of rackspace/
Photo:
http://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/File:Macmini-rack.jpg
Not running OSX mind, but Debian. More info on http://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/ExoticA:Hosting
then i noticed that instead of having two gigabit ethernet ports on a box that could act as an excellent router they chose to put in TWO ports for display options and FIVE usb ports.
Seems to me like they only took the Mac Mini chassis, put in new disk options and slapped on Mac OS X Server.
Also how will Xsan work with Xgrid when there's no fibre option?
Seems like clustering these would be awesome but i would also like a distributed filesystem to go with that, please.
Very cool idea and i would get one without hesitation if it had two gigabit ethernet ports. For clustering though i would prefer to have a fibre option too, even if it would jack up the price significantly.
Undoubtedly, many in the IT community will scoff at the thought of calling such a device a 'server.'
I call something a 'server' if it is providing one or more services to other computers. It has nothing to do with the hardware or operating system used.
I've often redeployed old 'desktop' computers in server roles. At that point they become 'servers', whether or not they sport features like high speed, large capacity or redundancy.
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It could use more memory. Maxes out at 4GB. But the bigger missing feature, in my opinion, is the lack of a eSATA port. Connecting external drives via FW800 or USB 2.0 is not ideal for a server. If Apple could fit one or two eSATA ports on the back of the mini, it would be awesome.
I prefer a server I can't accidentally sweep off the desk.
You could always mount it to something.
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It is certainly a nice product this mac mini. However I think there are some better alternatives for many people. For example I am looking for the next Intel Pine Trail platform (due out in January) which will give me enough CPU power (OK, its not great but enough for web server/filesharing and other basic stuff) with even much less energy consumption. I will buy some nice case, put there 2.5" hdd (or SDD to keep things even more cool&quiet&fast+maybe some 2.5"/3.5" for occasionally read data), some memory, maybe some quality network card is an option (if the pine trail mobo will not include some intel low-cpu-utilisation network card). Install my favourite linux distribution (OSX is nice but I don't see a need for it on a small server) and I am done. This will be fanless and with SSD it will be completely silent.
Its a perfect server for a small office (say 5-10 people) or as a home server. Heck cluster a few and they would make a nice render farm for a smaller design studio or advertising firm. I doubt I would try to run a fortune 500 company off of a farm of these though. But my guess is Apple going for the low cost solution for consumers and small businesses with this anyway.
Yup, just hook it up on any high performance halogen psu with a few resistors in serie ...
disclaimer: I'm not responsible for any happening accidents!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Oh .. looks Daryll Mcbride has found a new job already!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
though anything other than white will cost extra - ColorWare Mac mini.
I just went to the page where you can configure the blades, and specced out an 8-core blade:
- 2x E5405 Blade )cheapest quad-core)
- 4GB of RAM (4G is needed for Windows 2008 server)
- 2x Cheapest drive. RAID is required for OS installation (!)
- Windows SBS 2008, standard edition
Comes to $2,857 per blade, or $27,085 for 8 of them in the cheapest enclosure. Compare that to 16 minis at $15,984. Ouch.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
That is based on user feedback, not objective reliability data. It's also biased towards those machines people actually have at home, not server machines.
(I've owned a lot of Macs and non-Mac machines, and Mac reliability and service have been about average for me, with some "epic fails", like two top-of-the-line Mac laptops failing completely within a month after purchase.)
The new Mac Mini is actually rated for "14 watts of power when idle", which Apple says is lower than any other computer in the EPA STAR database.
But wait, there's more! With Snow Leopard, Apple introduced a new "Wake on Demand" feature that could allow the Mini to be in sleep mode (~1.5W) most of the time, but still work as a server when needed:
(1) Airport base stations can now provide a "Bonjour Sleep Proxy" service that will keep announcing all the services your computer is hosting on the network, even after the computer goes to sleep. The base station will then wake the server whenever another computer tries to access it. It isn't clear whether this happens only for Bonjour services, or for any IP-based access (which should be possible in principle).
(2) All this magic can happen via the wireless network if your computer is new enough. (Wake-on-LAN was only possible via ethernet before.)
If the server is set to go back to sleep automatically after a few minutes of inactivity, this setup provides a low-power, always-on server arrangement: the computer sleeps most of the time, automatically wakes up whenever someone wants to connect to it, then goes back to sleep whenever it's not needed.
We're an 8 person print shop with all Macs (not just design/prepress, but accounting, receptionist... everyone)-- The mini server certainly look appealing, Here's why:
1. Full AFP compatibility: When you're an all mac shop you need it. There's no time to mess with Netatalk settings if you're getting random disconnects and stuff. Other servers may give you fits if you enter filenames with \"/?*| in them (all of these are legit mac filename characters.)
2. Searching for filenames on a mac sever is very quick, since the server keeps all filenames under a b-tree (using HFS+). When searching a Linux or SMB server, the mac has to traverses the entire directory tree to search for files, which takes excruciatingly long when you have almost half a million files on the server.
3. A SOHO business is going to have very few employees, one of which is going to be the 'computer guy', but not a full time I.T. professional. (I'm a print shop guy first, web developer 2nd, and IT guy a distant third.). That's exactly the target market for this server.
there is no spoon.
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