Colocate Your Mac mini

Pfhreak writes "Pure Static is already offering a service to colocate your Mac mini into a rack for those who want to set up a server on the cheap. Unfortunately, according to their FAQ, they're not planning on creating a Mini supercomputer. Which could be good news for those of you that are working towards being the first to set up such a cluster who have purchased a couple pallets of Minis, but haven't had time to finish setting up the cluster."

You'd have to be pretty desperate

[Cmdr-Absurd]

The mini is NOT server-grade hardware.
from the FAQ

What about hardware failure? In case of hardware failure we will repair the units. However they are your units and you will be charged for the repairs.

How often will that happen if they put a bunch of these in a rack togeter? laptop drive running 24/7.... hmmm. In an encloded space jammed up against other minis.... hmmm. seems like a bad idea to me. Better to get a used xserve.

Re:Why?

[moosesocks]

OS X is essentially FreeBSD with a pretty GUI on top.

Install OS X server, and you've got a top-notch backend with a beautiful / easy to use graphical frontend that you can either access via VNC or apple's remote server administration utility (not a remote desktop, but rather, a remote control panel). People use Windows 2003 because it provides a decent feature-set while being easy to use. Linux is obviously more featured and secure, but is a PITA to use. OS X Server takes the best of both worlds.

When the system's just sitting there, the GUI isn't using many resources -- RAM would be the only concern I see here, and chances are that most of the GUI stuff would be the first to be swapped to disk.

My biggest peeves here are the Mini's hardware specs. 256mb of ram just won't cut it for a server, and no sane person would run a server without RAID or some other form of redundant backup. Of course, you could set up two minis in a load-balancing configuration, and then you've got much more redundancy than you would get with one server running RAID.

Re:Mac Mini Cluster??

[antifoidulus]

First, you are looking at the wrong stats. If you plan to run your cluster as anything besides a side show, heat/power concerns are going to be as big of factor in your cost calculations as the hardware itself. I don't know if the mac mini gives off a lot of heat but it's something to take into consideration.
However, the fact that you probably cannot upgrade the ethernet capabilities in a mac mini to even fast ethernet is probably the bigger strike against the mac mini. In a lot of problems that employ parallel computing, the network latency can be as important as the processor speed(of course, there are plenty of exceptions and plent of "trivially parallel" problems). The Dell is a bit more upgradable than the mac mini. Though it's not nearly as cute.

you know..

[outZider]

This is a blatant advertisement.

My take on Mini-as-server...

[Bug-Y2K]

Speaking as the guy who runs the oldest and largest Macintosh colocation facility [forest.net] on the Internet. (outing myself on /.)

I think, the form-factor is great. However, that said they would make a lousy server. It has a very slow, laptop HDD not at all optimized for use 7/24. They are not equipped with an adequate fan for cooling the unit if packed densely (like the photoshoped up "condo" on the Pure Static website.) If packed that tight, I bet the MBTF of the drive (and other components) drops to under two months or something insanely short like that.

Google "IBM Deskstar drive failure" to find out when non-server spec drives are used in a 7/24/365 environment

The final remaining issue with the mini-as-server idea is the external power brick. Wall-warts are the bane of any server installation. Very tough to work around. Potential fire hazard if not handled properly.

...

All that said, I expect we will see some clients who send us Minis to colo. We will probably treat them like we did iMacs & G4 Cubes - Put them on well ventilated shelves, in open racks. NOT pack them tight in a cabinet.

And with the Mini, just like the companies that popped up claiming to be "the place" to colo your [G4, Cube, Xserve, insert Apple product here] in the end, digital.forest will still have more of them colocated. Why? We have been doing it longer, have a better facility, and better support. We have knowledgeable systems administrators ON SITE 7/24, who understand MacOS, MacOS X, as well as other UNIX flavors and Win32. We are in our 11th year, opening our third facility. We are a known quantity, with a reputation for quality. Not just some guy who registered a domain name on January 12th.

However... all this interest in using them as servers should be a big honkin' clue to Apple!
They need to make "Xserve Lite" 1U - 18" X 18" X 1.75"
one or two drives
one 64-bit pci slot (for an FC card)
1 usb port front and one in back
ditto firewire
built-in video
(low-end admins need video... lame I know, but check the lists and forums about how many people freak when their G5 Xserve arrives sans video card)
Ideal would be video front and back, ala the Dell servers
No need for the goofy split case of the Xserve (I have seen two fall apart in a rack)
No need for those gawd-awful "whack a paddle/kill the server" drive sleds. (I want to find the engineer in Cupertino who designed this and beat them senseless - with one of these lame drive sleds! Sure, they look nice, but they are functionally worthless. Except perhaps as a blunt object to beat people with.)
$1000 price point.
"workgroup server" or "lightweight web server"
No need even for OS X Server, just MacOS
An option to buy Server if you need filesharing for more than X users.
If there really is a market for people to shoehorn an low-end DESKTOP machine into a server role... then Apple should address it. Especially something as ill-suited to server work as the Mac Mini.

--chuck goolsbee
vp tech ops
digital.forest
seattle, wa

Re:My take on Mini-as-server...

[harlows_monkeys]

You forgot the 10/100 NIC

What about it? Most colocation plans are 100 mbit/second or under (usually well under).

Re:You'd have to be pretty desperate

[TheRaven64]

I just got an email from the company addressing these two concerns. Firstly, they are in a wire grid maximising air flow around them - which should alleviate the cooling issue. Secondly, they allow external disk drives to be connected for $5/month or $7.50/month if you require a power outlet. Since OS X can boot from a FireWire disk, there is nothing at all stopping you from buying a 320GB 7,200RPM disk and leaving the internal disk turned off.

Re:Interesting but economic?

[ArbitraryConstant]

The thing with a jail is that it'll be running on a very high end machine (unfortunately FreeBSD doesn't have a decent PowerPC port yet, otherwise an Xserve would be ideal for this) (also unfortunately, MacOS doesn't seem to have the jail facility, so you can't do the jails with MacOS would would also be ideal), and it's probably set up to failover onto another machine if it goes down. You're paying for the reliability.

If your Mac mini goes down, you could be SOL for weeks.

The value you place on reliability is of course completely up to you.