5 ms·

Mac Mini colocation

43 points by pw 17y ago

pw 17y ago
Any thoughts on this?
- anurag 17y ago
  No personal experience, but manybooks.net is a popular (mostly public domain) ebook site that has been running well on macminicolo.net for several years now. http://manybooks.net/about/ http://manybooks.net/about/
  - pw 17y ago
    Yeah, in fact it was manybooks that led me to macminicolo. I hadn't seen manybooks until yesterday. Neat site. Nice typography.
  - manybooks 17y ago
    I run manybooks.net -- only have good things to say about macminicolo; they're responsive to tech queries, have decent pricing in my experience (and have been very good about switching my plan when bandwidth usage spiked), and I haven't noticed any bottlenecks in their setup. They're also notable, in my experience, for not CAUSING any trouble with my server or the network itself.
- Zev 17y ago
  I (well, those of us behind Mobile Colloquy, not just me) briefly considered having a colo'd Mac Mini a few months back. It was either with macminicolo or at a datacenter near where one of us lived (NYC area, LA area and SFish area, so decent variety, even if the focus of our search was on LA or SF). For our purposes, the datacenters that we looked at[1] wound up costing about the same as it would have to host with macminicolo. With macminicolo, bandwidth is expensive, while other places charge for the space on the rack and have much (3-4x) more bandwidth. It ended up being a lot more then it would cost to get a VPS or two (or even renting a cheapish, non-colo'd, dedicated server somewhere). So, unless you absolutely need a Mac server[2], I don't really think its worth it. [1] Can't remember where exactly we looked. I'll dig through my emails and see if I can find any information. [2] There are definitely some valid reasons for having a Mac Server. Stuff like Golden%Braeburn, http://golden-braeburn.com http://golden-braeburn.com, which, I suppose wouldn't need much bandwidth.
matthew-wegner 17y ago
They also regularly post "The State of the Mac Mini" with details and opinion on hardware refreshes. Their last one is here: http://www.macminicolo.net/state2009.html http://www.macminicolo.net/state2009.html
freebsd_dude 17y ago
Cool idea but a rather expensive way to go (if you consider hardware + colocation fee) compared with a VPS. Although the mac mini is dedicated its laptop parts make it on par or worse than a good VPS performance-wise. Id be more inclined to use a mac mini as a server on a local network as opposed to colocating. Another interesting application is a cluster of mac minis-that a whole other area.
colonelxc 17y ago
I guess (as a linux junkie) I don't see the draw of using a Mac as a server. Anyone care to share their likes/dislikes of OS X Server?
- freebsd_dude 17y ago
  I dont think Mac OS X server is really anything special - Mac OS X itself can be a good server. Unless your using some specific Apple-only technology like Xgrid, plain OSX is fine. And Id only use OSX as a server over linux/bsd if you really want a GUI to administer your server as opposed to command line. The GUI really is the draw of OS X generally over Linux.
- blasdel 17y ago
  As a hacker who had 3-4 xServes for several years, do not run OS X Server by choice. If you need your server app to run on OS X because you are making some crazy decisions in your life, use the standard client OS X. The Server version adds bullshit and pain, and doesn't remove any of the standard Desktop bullshit. The only bad thing about xServes is that Apple doesn't support running the standard OS X on them! If by hook or by crook you find yourself as a developer running OS X Server, do not use the built-in Apache or any of that shit. Compile it all yourself with MacPorts, and manage it as if it were just another unix box. The only Apple provided services you should use are SSH, NFS, SMB, and NetBoot. I was mostly running them for NetBoot (doable from Linux, but it's already enough of a PiTA on big heterogenous networks), and because it was the most politically viable means to have root on some non-CS servers at my school -- otherwise they'd be Windows or old RHEL, domesticated into the domain, with storage on an anemic SAN, and probably virtualized to death. As a sole server for a small business, it would not actually be too bad, as long as you weren't trying to host real webapps from it using the included Apache, and didn't really try to use the OpenDirectory stuff. The file sharing stuff works, Mail/Calendar/Contacts server stuff is pretty well done, and the Wiki server is fucking fantastic -- I saw it demoed at a Leopard tech talk in December 2006 and still haven't seen a better rich text editing interface in a browser. Unfortunately nobody used it because they stuck with 10.4 Server as the core OS in 10.5 Server was riddled with regressions (I've heard 10.6 Server is a brand new day)
gchpaco 17y ago
I've had my Mac through these folks for a while; I was unwilling to give up the idea of owning the gear (so VPSes were out) and was pretty happy with the thing in general. I run Linux on it.
carson 17y ago
I completely forgot about these guys but I think they have been doing this for a while. I can think of a number of reasons you might want to do this and one of those would be to use the Apple HTTP video streaming software that was released last year. It is also interesting that GoDaddy just released OSX hosting although at a higher cost using XServe boxes and Parrallels. http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/mac-hosting.aspx http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/mac-hosting.aspx
jbellis 17y ago
3 OS X machines gave me more trouble than 100s of linux boxes. They kept locking up, hard, whenever load got above "looked at severely." We had remotely controllable PDUs, so we could power cycle over ssh, but it was still a pita. No matter how much you love OS X on the desktop, I would stay the hell away from it in the server room. Apple just doesn't care enough to fix the problems, and/or there aren't enough people using it that way to get all the kinks out. I'm also pretty sure mac mini's don't have ECC memory. And ECC is not optional on a server: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf
cjbprime 17y ago
Does anyone know if Linux on the Mac Mini can address 8GB RAM? (I know it didn't work on versions of OS X pre-Snow Leopard, so I'm wondering if there's some incompatible special sauce that makes it work there, rather than something simple like turning PAE on.)
cjbprime 17y ago
The bandwidth pricing is extremely expensive -- for comparison, I pay $60/mo for a VM with 1500GB/mo transfer, yet they'd ask $250/mo just for bandwidth charges for 1000GB/mo.
- petercooper 17y ago
  I'm looking into getting a Mac Mini for some screenshot production and iWeb is offering them with 1500GB for ~$120 a month. That includes the actual machine though, so isn't colo exactly.
  - cjbprime 17y ago
    Thanks, that looks much better -- they do colo too, and with a year contract they appear to offer for $44/mo what macminicolo wants $155/mo for. (500G transfer.)
jdietrich 17y ago
What is the advantage over a VPS?
- cmelbye 17y ago
  Are you referring to VPS vs. colocation or Linux VPS vs. Mac OS X Mac Mini? If it's the latter, people would obviously use this if they needed to use Mac OS X Server.
- cjbprime 17y ago
  By up-fronting the cost of the hardware, you're going to get many times more CPU and RAM and faster disk I/O than if you were one user of many on a VPS. If you priced out a VPS with 8G of RAM and a dedicated CPU, it would be many hundreds of dollars per month.
enduser 17y ago
ECC memory is a must for server applications, and Mac Minis--including the "server" model--do not come with or support ECC memory. http://cr.yp.to/hardware/ecc.html http://cr.yp.to/hardware/ecc.html

Mac Mini colocation

43 points by pw 17y ago

pw 17y ago

Any thoughts on this?

anurag 17y ago
No personal experience, but manybooks.net is a popular (mostly public domain) ebook site that has been running well on macminicolo.net for several years now. http://manybooks.net/about/ http://manybooks.net/about/
- pw 17y ago
  Yeah, in fact it was manybooks that led me to macminicolo. I hadn't seen manybooks until yesterday. Neat site. Nice typography.
- manybooks 17y ago
  I run manybooks.net -- only have good things to say about macminicolo; they're responsive to tech queries, have decent pricing in my experience (and have been very good about switching my plan when bandwidth usage spiked), and I haven't noticed any bottlenecks in their setup. They're also notable, in my experience, for not CAUSING any trouble with my server or the network itself.
Zev 17y ago
I (well, those of us behind Mobile Colloquy, not just me) briefly considered having a colo'd Mac Mini a few months back. It was either with macminicolo or at a datacenter near where one of us lived (NYC area, LA area and SFish area, so decent variety, even if the focus of our search was on LA or SF). For our purposes, the datacenters that we looked at[1] wound up costing about the same as it would have to host with macminicolo. With macminicolo, bandwidth is expensive, while other places charge for the space on the rack and have much (3-4x) more bandwidth. It ended up being a lot more then it would cost to get a VPS or two (or even renting a cheapish, non-colo'd, dedicated server somewhere). So, unless you absolutely need a Mac server[2], I don't really think its worth it. [1] Can't remember where exactly we looked. I'll dig through my emails and see if I can find any information. [2] There are definitely some valid reasons for having a Mac Server. Stuff like Golden%Braeburn, http://golden-braeburn.com http://golden-braeburn.com, which, I suppose wouldn't need much bandwidth.

matthew-wegner 17y ago

They also regularly post "The State of the Mac Mini" with details and opinion on hardware refreshes. Their last one is here: http://www.macminicolo.net/state2009.html http://www.macminicolo.net/state2009.html

freebsd_dude 17y ago

Cool idea but a rather expensive way to go (if you consider hardware + colocation fee) compared with a VPS. Although the mac mini is dedicated its laptop parts make it on par or worse than a good VPS performance-wise. Id be more inclined to use a mac mini as a server on a local network as opposed to colocating. Another interesting application is a cluster of mac minis-that a whole other area.

colonelxc 17y ago

I guess (as a linux junkie) I don't see the draw of using a Mac as a server. Anyone care to share their likes/dislikes of OS X Server?

freebsd_dude 17y ago
I dont think Mac OS X server is really anything special - Mac OS X itself can be a good server. Unless your using some specific Apple-only technology like Xgrid, plain OSX is fine. And Id only use OSX as a server over linux/bsd if you really want a GUI to administer your server as opposed to command line. The GUI really is the draw of OS X generally over Linux.
blasdel 17y ago
As a hacker who had 3-4 xServes for several years, do not run OS X Server by choice. If you need your server app to run on OS X because you are making some crazy decisions in your life, use the standard client OS X. The Server version adds bullshit and pain, and doesn't remove any of the standard Desktop bullshit. The only bad thing about xServes is that Apple doesn't support running the standard OS X on them! If by hook or by crook you find yourself as a developer running OS X Server, do not use the built-in Apache or any of that shit. Compile it all yourself with MacPorts, and manage it as if it were just another unix box. The only Apple provided services you should use are SSH, NFS, SMB, and NetBoot. I was mostly running them for NetBoot (doable from Linux, but it's already enough of a PiTA on big heterogenous networks), and because it was the most politically viable means to have root on some non-CS servers at my school -- otherwise they'd be Windows or old RHEL, domesticated into the domain, with storage on an anemic SAN, and probably virtualized to death. As a sole server for a small business, it would not actually be too bad, as long as you weren't trying to host real webapps from it using the included Apache, and didn't really try to use the OpenDirectory stuff. The file sharing stuff works, Mail/Calendar/Contacts server stuff is pretty well done, and the Wiki server is fucking fantastic -- I saw it demoed at a Leopard tech talk in December 2006 and still haven't seen a better rich text editing interface in a browser. Unfortunately nobody used it because they stuck with 10.4 Server as the core OS in 10.5 Server was riddled with regressions (I've heard 10.6 Server is a brand new day)

gchpaco 17y ago

I've had my Mac through these folks for a while; I was unwilling to give up the idea of owning the gear (so VPSes were out) and was pretty happy with the thing in general. I run Linux on it.

carson 17y ago

I completely forgot about these guys but I think they have been doing this for a while. I can think of a number of reasons you might want to do this and one of those would be to use the Apple HTTP video streaming software that was released last year. It is also interesting that GoDaddy just released OSX hosting although at a higher cost using XServe boxes and Parrallels. http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/mac-hosting.aspx http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/mac-hosting.aspx

jbellis 17y ago

3 OS X machines gave me more trouble than 100s of linux boxes. They kept locking up, hard, whenever load got above "looked at severely." We had remotely controllable PDUs, so we could power cycle over ssh, but it was still a pita. No matter how much you love OS X on the desktop, I would stay the hell away from it in the server room. Apple just doesn't care enough to fix the problems, and/or there aren't enough people using it that way to get all the kinks out. I'm also pretty sure mac mini's don't have ECC memory. And ECC is not optional on a server: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf

cjbprime 17y ago

Does anyone know if Linux on the Mac Mini can address 8GB RAM? (I know it didn't work on versions of OS X pre-Snow Leopard, so I'm wondering if there's some incompatible special sauce that makes it work there, rather than something simple like turning PAE on.)

cjbprime 17y ago

The bandwidth pricing is extremely expensive -- for comparison, I pay $60/mo for a VM with 1500GB/mo transfer, yet they'd ask $250/mo just for bandwidth charges for 1000GB/mo.

petercooper 17y ago
I'm looking into getting a Mac Mini for some screenshot production and iWeb is offering them with 1500GB for ~$120 a month. That includes the actual machine though, so isn't colo exactly.
- cjbprime 17y ago
  Thanks, that looks much better -- they do colo too, and with a year contract they appear to offer for $44/mo what macminicolo wants $155/mo for. (500G transfer.)

jdietrich 17y ago

What is the advantage over a VPS?

cmelbye 17y ago
Are you referring to VPS vs. colocation or Linux VPS vs. Mac OS X Mac Mini? If it's the latter, people would obviously use this if they needed to use Mac OS X Server.
cjbprime 17y ago
By up-fronting the cost of the hardware, you're going to get many times more CPU and RAM and faster disk I/O than if you were one user of many on a VPS. If you priced out a VPS with 8G of RAM and a dedicated CPU, it would be many hundreds of dollars per month.

enduser 17y ago

ECC memory is a must for server applications, and Mac Minis--including the "server" model--do not come with or support ECC memory. http://cr.yp.to/hardware/ecc.html http://cr.yp.to/hardware/ecc.html