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Among Servers, Apple's Mac Mini Quietly Gains Ground

Posted by timothy on from the if-you-can't-see-it-is-it-beautiful? dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "In 2005, the first business to offer colocated Mac Minis inside a data center made its debut, provoking criticism on Slashdot of everything from how the Mini was cooled to the underlying business model. But nowadays, more than half a dozen facilities are either hosting their own Mac Minis for rent, or offering colocation services for individual consumers and businesses. While some vendors declined to give out reliability information, those who did claimed a surprisingly small number of failures. 'If Dell makes a small little machine, you don't know that they'll be making that, in that form factor, six months down the road, or what they're going to do, or how they're going to refresh it,' Jon Schwenn, a network engineer for CyberLynk Networks (which owns Macminivault) said in an interview. 'We've had three model years of Minis that have stayed externally, physically identical.' Customers are using Minis for all sorts of things: providing Mail, iCal, and the Websites for small businesses; databases, like Filemaker or Daylite; as a VPN server for those who want an IP address in the United States; build servers for Xcode; and general personal servers for Plex media streaming and other fun projects. Some are even using it for Windows."

9 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. And the moral of the story is: by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Customers are using Minis for all sorts of things: ... Some are even using it for Windows.

    I guess the moral of the story is "beauty is only skin deep".

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  2. A new fad? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is this a new fad or something? Some tweaker rolled into my office wanting to know if we did consulting for setting up a webserver on an apple platform. We only did windows/linux. I questioned him on why he wouldnt just use a linux box for webhosting? He didnt have an answer.

    Is this just some hipster fad? Finding a use for old Apple boxes? Or do they offer something that linux/windows hosting doesn't?

    1. Re:A new fad? by node+3 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Is this just some hipster fad? Finding a use for old Apple boxes? Or do they offer something that linux/windows hosting doesn't?

      No more so than Windows/Linux offers something that OS X doesn't for small scale deployments like this. It's six of one, half dozen of the other.

      I think the main mistake here is in thinking that Apple users are simply hipsters. They are normal people, like you and me. In your example, that person probably uses a Mac, and wants something he can relate to, maybe even maintain himself to some extent, and at the very least, will be configured to be more compatible with his PC than a Linux or Windows server.

      And you're doing the same thing, in reverse. You run Windows and Linux, so you prefer your servers to be what you know. It's the same thing he's doing.

      They're all just computers, nothing wrong with any of them, even Windows PCs.

    2. Re:A new fad? by drosboro · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've got a Mac mini with CyberLynk / Macminivault. What they offer - a dedicated server (albeit, not the most powerful one imaginable, but dedicated nonetheless) with a significantly lower cost than other colocating companies. They even financed the server for me over several months (at 0% interest / fees, if I recall correctly their special at the time). Then, when I got sick of OS X Server (after about 12 minutes), I emailed them, and they went ahead and installed Debian on the Mac mini for me (in fact, I believe it was Jon Schwenn from the article who did it). There was some confusion about how to get it to reboot after power failure under linux, but a little careful googling fixed that. It's been running perfectly ever since.

      Long and short of it? I've got a quad-core dedicated Debian server at less than 1/3 the price I used to rent a similar machine for from another company, and close to the price I was paying at the time for a VPN at Slicehost. The service from Jon and his co-workers has been outstanding, the data centre has been reliable (one brief hiccup due to a power issue in the last year and a half). And I'm with you on this point - not quite sure why anyone would really want to run OS X Server.

  3. To their credit by U8MyData · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These are great little machines. I have had two and want another. Oh, and I am agnostic when it comes to these things, but I do give credit where credit is due.

  4. Mac Mini is flagrantly unsuitable as a server by JDG1980 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Even the "server" version of the Mac Mini does not support ECC RAM. Many other important server-grade features, such as IPMI, are also missing. Why would anyone choose this over cheaper, more robust commodity PC server hardware? You can't even plead cosmetics, because it's a freaking server; it goes in a rack somewhere and only a handful of IT staff ever need to see it. The only possible reason I can think of why someone would want to run an OSX server is if they were going to be remote-accessing it to run Xcode for iOS development. What else can you do on OSX that you can't do on Windows or Linux?

    1. Re:Mac Mini is flagrantly unsuitable as a server by vux984 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Its perfectly suitable as a home server if you happened to have an extra one and wanted to use it. But I agree 100% with your post.

      There is no rational reason to select a mac mini for a colocated server. Even most of the suggested uses in the summary don't make any sense. Databases should be hosted on linux or windows... even Filemaker can be hosted on windows. Mail servers, calendar servers, etc... a colocated ANYTHING for a VPN server is absurd, and plux media / streaming / etc... again... for the price it just doesn't make sense. For fun / toy servers virtual / shared hosting make sense at a fraction of the cost. Colocating dedidated hardware ?.If you need that... a mac mini make's no sense.

      The only people who i could see wanting this are people who simply have no idea how to use another operating system, don't want to learn, and don't mind paying a premium for a substantially inferior server solution.

      Sounds like Apple users to me.

      (I hate to troll.. but come on that was irresistible, and I say it as a Macbook Pro owner myself.)

  5. Re:becasue Apple never by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What part of "stayed externally, physically identical" are you failing to understand?

    Yes, of course they change things all the time, but the article was referring to the external form factor for the mini, which hasn't really changed much in years even if the ports and guts have changed quite a bit. The last significant revision was 2010.

  6. Re:becasue Apple never by geekmux · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The fact that they haven't changed it says more about a lack of innovation of Apple's part than any commitment to consistency for their customers. Remember how they decided to screw everyone over with the iPod cable?

    New iPhone comes out, Apple doesn't change a damn thing with the dimensions to placate the aftermarket crowd. People bitch they're not innovating.

    New model comes out, the screen is half an inch bigger, forcing everyone to buy new aftermarket accessories all over again, and people bitch about change.

    Who exactly would you like to "screw over" with the next revision...the group that gets pissed off, or the group that gets pissed off?