Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mac mini, Mac OS X Server
Why an Apple-blessed Mac mini server has big possibilities
Why, of course we can, Daniel! That's why we're here.Can you god blessed brains explain in some easy-to-understand way what are the possibilities for a Mac mini server for us non-tech brained mortals?
I have personally used Mac minis as servers since shortly after the first G4 models came out on the market. In fact, at one point I personally had two of them at Macminicolo.net, a wonderful little company that was founded on the belief that Mac minis were great servers. I've installed at least a dozen for clients, and they are excellent for small businesses for the following reasons:
They're inexpensive. When you start looking at an Xserve, you want to start looking at mass storage and tape libraries as well. Pretty soon, the cost of a fully-loaded Xserve starts looking astronomical to a small business. That's not to say that Xserves don't have their place -- in fact, I have had two of my clients start with Mac minis and then move to Xserves when they found that they were outgrowing the mini servers. With the new $999 price point for a mini with an unlimited Mac OS X Server 10.6 license, two built-in 500 GB drives, and 4 GB of RAM, almost anybody can afford to own a server that provides email, instant messaging, calendaring, a wiki, podcast production, and more to a small workgroup.
They make it simple. The advantage of Mac OS X Server's software suite is power with a pretty face; it exposes the UNIX power of Mac OS X (including the industry-standard Apache, PHP, Samba and Jabber/XMPP stacks) with the relative ease of the Mac. While you can certainly roll your own server setup using conventional Mac OS X (either using Apple's shipped versions of Apache & PHP, or bumping them up), having the server administration tools makes everything a lot nicer. What's more, the standalone unlimited-license version of Server is a full $499, making this a straightforward bargain.
They're small. An Xserve requires a rack mount, or at least a small rolling rack. With a Mac mini server, I can just set up the box and literally hide it in a closet somewhere. It doesn't need a monitor except in emergency situations, and most of the time screen sharing works well to administer the mini servers.
They're real servers. A Mac mini server is not a huge server, but then not every business or individual needs a fully loaded Xserve. These are great for "power" home users as well, as you can use them as a backup server for every Mac on the premises using Time Machine, set up a recipe wiki and family calendars, even an email server for a family domain. Hook one of these up to a RAID storage device or two, and you have tons of redundant storage (although not offsite).
They're expandable. The number of ports on a Mac mini server is staggering; 5 USB 2.0 ports, 1 FireWire 800 port, and a gigabit Ethernet port that would work just great with iSCSI on a DroboPro.
They're energy efficient. Most servers sound like a jet taking off when you turn 'em on. The mini makes very little noise, and uses about 14 watts of energy when it's in an idle mode. Rather than heating your building with a traditional server, you can have a Mac mini server and see almost no impact on your electric bill.
A Mac mini server has a lot of possibilities, and I foresee a lot more small companies choosing Mac OS X Server as their server OS of choice now that this "server in a box" is available. A lot of ACNs had been setting up Mac minis as servers for a while, and now the concept has the official blessing of Apple.
I don't know if this truly answers Daniel's question, but it should serve to hopefully remove any doubt that a Mac mini isn't a powerful and useful server for small business.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Murray Stevens said 4:04PM on 10-20-2009
Is it possible to set up mirroring on the two 500gb hard drives?
Reply
tempus said 4:13PM on 10-20-2009
I'm sure. It's all in the software, and OSX can mirror using DiscUtility.
JDQ said 4:50PM on 10-20-2009
Absolutely, software RAID has been fully supported and available in OS X for a while and it works great.
Cy Starkman said 2:46AM on 10-21-2009
Yup and I confimed it with Apple this morning. Only consideration is that the case hasn't changed and so while relatively easy to open it voids warranty. This means if you have a drive failure, the mirror can be switched to but you can't swap out the dead drive. It has to go to a Apple Service Centre.
Not a deal breaker but an issue
suneohair said 12:26PM on 10-21-2009
Opening the Mini does not void your warranty. Your warranty would only get voided if you happen to break something inside or if you mar the case up to the point where it is obvious that you opened it.
YodaMac said 4:12PM on 10-20-2009
So to clarify even MORE - what EXACT uses would a person have for a Mac Mini Server in their home. Assuming that home used a single Mac computer, a couple of iPhones and an Apple TV.
Specific enough for ya? ;)
Reply
tempus said 4:18PM on 10-20-2009
1) Personal web page/personal WIKI/ Personal iCal/ Personal email hosting. Need to be half-techy to use, but certainly a wonderful thing to have if you get it set up.
2) Remote Backups of all your machines on the network - it can be a time-capsule of sort.
3) A good old file storage server - between Bonjour, SFTP, and AFP and with a properly configured router you can access files from anywhere. I have a laptop I use at home and work. But I store all of my files/TV/photos on my server at home - which I can access from home or work.
It can essentially act like a backup/file storage/net-interface/calendar interface between a number of computers and the internet. If you have 3 computers but want to access the same set of files on all three, want to be able to access them from the internet, and want hourly backups for all three - $1000 for a server is a great deal.
Joey said 4:22PM on 10-20-2009
I'm really not sure, honestly. I know there is some demand for Mac Mini servers to compete head to head against bargain basement LAMP dedicated/colo servers (pretty much the standard for low end web hosting). In fact you can Google "Mac Mini Web Hosting" and get a ton of results, with MacMiniColo probably being the best known.
That said, last I checked, OS X server can't run any of the popular web hosting control panels. Therefore, administering one is arguably more difficult than managing a Linux box. It's also about 3x more expensive too.
Perhaps there's some market for Mini servers in video production?
/shrug
THJ said 4:26PM on 10-20-2009
With only 1 Mac, a few iphones, and an TV, a mini server is overkill.
If you had a few macs, or were streaming to multiple devices, a mini server would be where you could host all your backups, run Handbrake conversions 24/7 (by ripping the DVDs to your other mac then copying to the server for the conversion), or host your own email (yoda@yodamac.com, for example), then you might want to consider a server, but it really doesn't start to shine, imo, until you have a number of machines that could benefit from central services.
Frankly, most of what I described above could be done on a regular Mac Mini with the client version of SL.
Like booting into 64 bit, if you're not sure why you would need to, then you probably don't.
DrWho said 4:35PM on 10-20-2009
Not sure you'd need one with only one mac. I use a mini for, among other things, time machine backups for my iMac and macbook pro and backing up my pc for work. It also runs my home automation software. I use a synology nas for music and video storage but could easily have added this to the mini too if I'd done things in a different order.
MNJayW said 4:37PM on 10-20-2009
I use my current Mac mini as a tivo server by running pytivox. It's great. I can store video in almost any format on my 1 TB firewire drive and pytivox will transcode and serve it to any tivo on my network.
bob said 5:03PM on 10-20-2009
media / itunes server, print server, bit torrent 'server' downloader.
Daniel Anderson Jr. said 5:40PM on 10-20-2009
Having recently lost my iTunes library due to MY failure to backup (dang!) I shoulda been RAIDing all along. If a person wanted/needed ONE Mac and had their favorite peripherals, this could be a could contender, just for the sake of redundancy with the dual drives.
Of course, any PC tower could be custom built for half or less but I am NOT going there, ever again. Too much upkeep.
All Apple, all the time. Family of five people with five flavors of Apple here. Hmmm, a mini server could be a nice addition to our family but no more kids just to keep up the number of Macs!
THJ said 7:14PM on 10-20-2009
Holy freaking wow, I just installed pyTivoX and was watching stuff from my mac on my Tivo in
Jonny said 8:10AM on 10-21-2009
IIRC, opening the case doesn't void the warranty. It only does when you do it and end up breaking something inside.
joao.carvalhinho said 6:30PM on 10-21-2009
Well.. for a home solution I would arguably go for a iomega IS2X200 storecenter... it does the same (even itunes/dlna server for multimedia home sharing with a PS3 for instance) and costs 300€
For use as a home media thinggy, I would use the "simple" version, with an external firewire disk like iomega's that stack nicely, and use superdrive for ripping my cds. Would beneffit also the iPhoto tagging... and share a library...
I believe this is a solution for a small office up to 4-5 computers, to postition OSX Server on SOHO level in an official and supported way.
Tom Bridge said 4:13PM on 10-20-2009
Screw iSCSI, you're going to be doing enough over that Gigabit Ethernet port with services, doing storage over it is highly, highly unwise. Stick with FW800 instead. Also, instead of the Drobo, use the Apple-suggested Promise DAS RAID5 unit, as it won't break the bank, and has significantly better throughput over FW800 than the Drobo.
Reply
Rob said 5:22PM on 10-20-2009
I agree. I hear that Drobo is overhyped and SLOW (even via FW800) compared to other RAID hardware options using FW800.
Randy said 11:30AM on 10-28-2009
Can you please provide a link to this " Apple suggested Promise DAS RAID5"?
Google turns up some ambiguous results and I'd like to know specifically, which device you're talking about. Thanks.
Tom Bridge said 11:33AM on 10-28-2009
It's the SmartStor DS4600:
External Storage
For additional storage, connect a Promise SmartStor DS4600 RAID subsystem to your Mac mini. The Promise SmartStor DS4600 offers RAID 5 data protection with outstanding performance in a compact, power-efficient, ultra-quiet design. No configuration is required — simply unpack and connect your power cable and FireWire 800 cable to complete your installation.
Learn more
The Promise SmartStor DS4600 RAID subsystem is the perfect external storage solution for Mac mini. Configured with four 7200-rpm 1TB SATA drives in a compact, quiet enclosure, the SmartStor DS4600 provides hardware RAID protected storage for your server applications.
4TB storage (4x1TB 7200-rpm SATA drives) – 2.7TB in RAID 5 formatted with HFS+
Compact desktop enclosure
Ultra-quiet design
SmartNAVI Management Software
Two FireWire 800 (1394b) interfaces, one FireWire 400 (1394a) interface and one high-speed USB 2.0 interface
Supports multiple RAID levels including RAID 5, 0, 1, and 10.
Hot-swap drive bays for effortless replacement of drives in case of failure
Low-power: 40W max load (active read and write), 36W idle, 15W standby
Included: Quick Start Guide, FireWire 800 cable, USB 2.0 cable, power cable, CD-ROM with SmartNAVI management software and product manual.