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Apple Blurs the Server Line With Mac Mini Server

Posted by kdawson on from the so-easy-a-child-can-set-it-up dept.

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.

35 of 557 comments (clear)

  1. I can see plenty of uses for it. by palegray.net · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by sarahbau · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you're going to put Debian or Ubuntu on it, you might as well get the regular mini. Part of the value is that the Mac mini Server is only $100 more than the standard mini equipped with a single 500 GB drive, when OS X Server costs $500 on its own. I think it's an interesting package. Not everyone needs a Mac Pro or XServe for a server. The mini is plenty for a small scale server, and OS X Server is easy to set up.

    2. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by PhunkySchtuff · · Score: 4, Informative

      Professional Photographers need massive server space as a photo have become 50 - 80 meg each

      You will then notice that there is a Configure-to-order option of a Promise FireWire 800 RAID unit with 4x 1TB hard drives.

      --
      Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
    3. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by R2.0 · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Part of the value is that the Mac mini Server is only $100 more than the standard mini equipped with a single 500 GB drive"

      A caveat: the server does not have an optical drive (that's where they stuffed the other HD). Still a good deal, just not quite as good as on first glance.

      --
      "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
    4. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So Honda announced a bunch of new Accords.

      Cool.

      I was looking at buying a Kia for $10k. Can I buy one of those new Accords for that price? I don't see any listed here or on honda.com.

    5. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by sarahbau · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No. Can you buy one that fits in 6.5x6.5x2", has gigabit ethernet, 802.11n, FireWire 800, dual display support, and uses 16w? I don't see that listed anywhere BUT apple.com. Nice try at trolling though.

    6. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by SimonTheSoundMan · · Score: 4, Informative

      http://www.apple.com/uk/imac/features.html#ports

      "Mini DisplayPort.

      The Mini DisplayPort lets you connect an external display, including the Apple LED Cinema Display, to your iMac. On the 27-inch iMac, the same port offers input, too. So you can connect any external source that has DisplayPort output — including a MacBook or MacBook Pro — and use your iMac as a display."

    7. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by Hadlock · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Lenovo sells what's essentially an Eee Box (atom processor+motherboard) in a midtower case for $200 shipped if you shop around on their website. I've seen it for less. It includes a DVD+/-R optical drive and 1 spare SATA port, for a total of three drives. It also includes a PCI slot where you could add a 4 SATA port expansion card. Hard drives only eat about 5w a piece, so the meager power supply shouldn't have trouble with the "extra load" at all. My buddy just put together something similar from newegg, but he went with the Atom 320 processor (64 bit, dual core atom) for a few bucks more. It's his primary file server now.

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    8. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by anagama · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't forget shared calendaring. I'm currently running Apple's Darwin Calendar Server (DCS) on a Debian Lenny box for my office, but it probably uses 7x the electricity the mini does. It takes a bit of fiddling to work with the DCS which many people may not really have either the time or capacity to deal with, and OS X Server would make the backend configuration pretty painless. What is wild is that yesterday, OS X Server unlimited license was $999. Today it comes with a computer for the same price.

      --
      What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
    9. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by KillerBob · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A caveat: the server does not have an optical drive (that's where they stuffed the other HD). Still a good deal, just not quite as good as on first glance.

      That's not actually that much of a hinderance. None of my servers have an optical drive, either. When I need to load something from CD, I have a USB Blu-Ray drive that I can cannibalize from my HTPC for the purpose.

      I can see a definite market for this, too. I built a super-server a year and a half ago (you know the type, multipe physical CPU's representing 8 logical cores, 16GB of RAM, multiple terabytes of storage, running half a dozen virtual machines, each one having its own set of services, in order to present a complete framework, etc.), but other than that, the overwhelming majority of the servers I run/administrate would do just fine with Mac Mini hardware. They're small purpose-built servers whose primary design goal beyond its actual purpose is power efficiency. At home, for example, I have a small file server. It serves up MP3's and videos to my HTPCs. It also has a network share drive for saving/sharing documents between computers on the network. Beyond that, it's also got a small MySQL/Apache/PHP implementation, and I use it to test web pages when I'm designing them... I just save/work on the files on the appropriate folder on the network drive, and they're live to the internal network immediately. This system is low end... aside from the hard drive (which is as big as I could get in the system), it's running a Via C7 1.5GHz, with 2GB of RAM. I could very easily replace that system with a Mac Mini.

      --
      If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
    10. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      whereas a Compaq PC-compatible == Mac in terms of reliability.

      Fail. Epic fail.

    11. Re:I can see plenty of uses for it. by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh you mean you just let it sit on your desk as a shiny ornament?

      I may be ignorant, but my suspicion is that there are a lot of servers out there that spend 99% of their day idling, waiting for an HTTP request to come in. They are left running 24/7 because you never know when somebody will want to access the data they hold, but nevertheless they are almost always idle.

      For that kind of light-duty service, the idle wattage is significant. (of course an even better solution would be to merge a bunch of those services onto a single physical machine, but that's not always done because it can be complex and/or risky to do)

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  2. Bold claim... by sean_nestor · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "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."

    ...call me skeptical on that one.

    1. Re:Bold claim... by palegray.net · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Apple's actually pretty good at this, although it can lead to the same sorts of problems many businesses face with regard to Windows-based server solutions. The easier something is for "anybody" to set up, the less likely an organization will be to keep a good admin around. So when stuff blows up, they can find themselves scrambling for someone to fix problems.

      --
      512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
    2. Re:Bold claim... by antifoidulus · · Score: 5, Informative

      As an admin on a mix mac/linux network(well, we do have to support 4 pcs, but only grudingly), I would say that Apple's tools are pretty nice, and have progressed immensely during the lifespan of Leopard(Tigers Open Directory was buggy as hell, Leopard has been pretty rock solid), the GUIs actually work really well UNTIL something goes wrong. Then trying to wade through the mish-mash of manual configs vs. gui configs(not to mention you don't really know what the GUI is doing) trying to track down the problem is a real mess.

      Overall, if you want centralized logins at your mac-centric organization I would definitely recommend a Mac Server, largely because LDAP config on Linux still isn't quite as simple as it is on a mac, but for everything else(web, database, file shares etc.) I would go Linux.

      The nice thing about the mac clients is that they support most of these technologies out of the box. For instance sharing NFS between macs and Linux is pretty braindead simple. Of course, that *other* OS still doesn't support NFs out of the box. I mean, I guess you have to give them a little slack, the protocol is only 20 years old....

      --
      Monstar L
    3. Re:Bold claim... by sean_nestor · · Score: 5, Insightful
      That's precisely how many consulting companies make their daily bread. Hell, nothing wrong with that. But you have to admit, it seems a bit misleading to claim that something like a server can be setup "without the assistance of someone who actually knows what they are doing."

      That is a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. I've been in the unfortunate spot of representing a consulting company called in to configure a Mac OSX Server purchased by less-than-knowledgeable employees. It was a small business, about 5-10 people, that did contract-based graphic design/marketing. They loved Apple stuff, and were suckered into a completely unnecessary Xserve system, complete with overpriced external rack-mount tape backup drive. Being young and mildly tech-conscious, they overestimated their ability to manage this thing, doubtlessly egged on by some "whiz" at a Genius Bar waxing their balls about how well they'd be able to run it on their own.

      Wrong. Granted, it's not hard to someone like me who does this sort of thing for a living, but managing backups was way out of their league. The backups weren't even running, though they remained blissfully unaware of this fact, and setting up network shares/user permissions was beyond their capability. This ended up costing them way more than ever needed to spend to get what amounted to a file server up and running, and I blame this on bad marketing.

      Oh, we tried to convince them to sell their ridiculously overpowered server equipment before it depreciated in value, but they were insistent on using it, because it's Apple.

      Misleading marketing like this is exactly what drives the borderline masochistic relationship Apple nuts have with Apple. All I can do is shake my head.

    4. Re:Bold claim... by element-o.p. · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Being young and mildly tech-conscious, they overestimated their ability to manage this thing...

      C'mon, who here on /. hasn't been there? If you haven't yet found yourself in such a position, you will eventually.

      ...but managing backups was way out of their league. The backups weren't even running, though they remained blissfully unaware of this fact...

      This reminded me of my own worst IT disaster, back when I was young, green and waaaaaay over-confident. I learned from my mistake; who's to say that your clients didn't learn also? They at least had the common sense to recognize that they didn't know enough and therefore called you, right?

      It seems to me that you are making an error that is all too common: ignorance != stupidity. There is no shame in simply being unaware of something -- everyone has something yet to learn. The truly stupid, however...well, they have a way of weeding themselves out of the gene pool.

      As for the "borderline masochistic relationship between [Apple users] and Apple" -- I don't know about that. I've only used a Mac occasionally, but it seems like a far less masochistic relationship than that which exists between Windows users and Microsoft, or even arguably less masochistic than the relationship between Linux users and <insert name of favorite distro here> (and I say that as one who regularly uses Gentoo, so I'm neck-deep in masochism <grin>).

      --
      MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
  3. For those who need a server... by Interoperable · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?
    1. Re:For those who need a server... by fermion · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I don't know where you have been for the past ten years, but the time of putting beige boxes in the back rooms and praying hat they don' break down is over with. Servers are now serious business, and the aesthetics matter because it is often related to reliability, TCO, and overhead. Servers now require real-estate, which costs money, power, which costs money, and cooling, which costs money. What is more, downtime costs money. On a personal note, the server room I use follows the philosophy of 'who cares about aesthetics'. It is impossible to work, takes forever to get things fixed, and generally is pain. I can imagine how much nicer it would be just to have neat stacks of mac minis.

      I think that is the issue. What if one wants a server and all one has is a telephone closet. For 1K you can put a mini in there and probably won't need to worry about power, cooling, whatever. A thousand for a server. Back in the olden days, when I was putting the first servers in a MS Windows environment, the machines cost at lest twice that much, and were unreliable. Today, a growing business could probably live for a while just adding more servers. And at that price, one could keep an extra around. You now, a redundant array of mac minis.

      I am not saying that I can imagine a real case where a mini server would make sense. I am just saying that discounting things like aesthetics and design in a what is clearly meant to be SOHO server is rather silly. Not everyone has the funds to hire an MSCE to run a server, has the need for a rack solution, or the ability to set up a *nix server from scratch. In reality, I can't imagine how this would be better than outsourcing, but I can appreciate how this is one of Apples cleaver ideas. I suspect MS might be pushing their xbox server next month

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    2. Re:For those who need a server... by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Funny

      Why does nobody think of the cooling? It doesn't matter how small the boxes are, if you cram too many of them into one room without adequate cooling, you're in for a world of hurt

      Well sure, if you do it wrong like that you'll run into trouble. The proper way to install a MacMini supercomputer is not to put all the minis next to each other in the same room.... instead, you superglue a couple dozen minis to the ceiling of each and every room in the building. That way the heat output is spread evenly across the entire building rather than being allowed to build up in a single room.

      As an added bonus, if any of the minis ever does overheat, the superglue will melt and the mini will fall from the ceiling. The person whose head it lands on will call the IT department and notify you that a node needs replacing.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  4. Scoff? by aicrules · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Scoff? by cabjf · · Score: 4, Funny

      If someone made a miniature rack mount for these guys, you could have a bunch of them sitting on your desk as though it were a scale model of a server room.

    2. Re:Scoff? by samkass · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously, this thing could be a nice little Subversion/backup/collaboration server for a small iPhone development shop. With built-in CalDAV, email, wiki, svn, time machine, rsync, web server, etc., it's a nice little small workgroup server. It would be nice if they could have made it cost a little less, but having a small, quiet server in a home or small office is pretty valuable.

      --
      E pluribus unum
    3. Re:Scoff? by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sure, it may not be the right thing to rack-mount en mass

      Tell that to these guys. Apple has been experimenting with the server potential of the Mini for quite some time now.

    4. Re:Scoff? by clare-ents · · Score: 4, Informative

      We have custom built rack shelves for Mac Minis that neatly hold the power supplies and minis.

      http://www.mythic-beasts.com/macminicolo.html

      14 minis in 5U including the power supplies. You need to allow some rackspace for the masterswitches and switches too.

      --
      Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
    5. Re:Scoff? by SchroedingersCat · · Score: 5, Funny

      Do they come in pink?

  5. Obligatory quote in accordance with social norms by e2d2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's not a knife.. THIS is a knife (pulling out Kabar-based server)

  6. Re:Obligatory quote in accordance with social norm by nbvb · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's not a knife, that's a spoon.

  7. I've done this for years.... by ducomputergeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  8. Real shot is at Microsoft for small business... by nweaver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  9. Compared it to the Cobalt Qube.. by jcr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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."
  10. Just, whatever you do... by arhhook · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't use the Guest Account!

  11. Re:Duck! by clbyjack81 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Let me ask again. Is this server, 'rackable'? How many Us?

    4 Mac Minis will fit on this $58 2U tray..

    --
    Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing.
  12. We've been using a Mac Mini as a server... by litewoheat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...

  13. Use even less power with Wake on Demand by superposed · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.