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I'm convinced the design is a tradeoff to make this work in the datacenter. With the exact same footprint, racks of Mac Mini servers can be converted to fit the

I'm convinced the design is a tradeoff to make this work in the datacenter. With the exact same footprint, racks of Mac Mini servers can be converted to fit these with very little effort.

mynameisvlad 5y ago
Unfortunately, the height (3.7") is just above a 2U (3.5") rack. It's also not a multiple of a Mac Mini height (1.4") which means you'll have some leftover space if you're replacing 3 Minis with one of these.
- MBCook 5y ago
  But most rack mounted Mac minis seem to be placed on their sides with space between each individual machine. Perhaps it still works in that orientation, just fewer per rack?
  - yurishimo 5y ago
    Yeah, this was my thought as well.
  - mynameisvlad 5y ago
    I was thinking that as well, but I believe they still use some sort of support to keep them propped in place, so not being an exact multiple means modifying them would be harder than, for instance, just cutting some of the vertical supports off to fit a 3xMini.
NorwegianDude 5y ago
In...datacenters? That's a strange usecase!
- yurishimo 5y ago
  https://www.macstadium.com/datacenters https://www.macstadium.com/datacenters If you scroll to the bottom of this page, there is an image carousel with an example.
  - NorwegianDude 5y ago
    But why would anyone do that? IO is very limited, memory on the m1/mini doesn't support ECC from what I know, and repairs/parts/redundancy is terrible. I can understand it if it's just for fun, but otherwise it seems like a really strange idea.
    - yurishimo 5y ago
      It's one of the only sane form factors available if you need off-site compute power running on MacOS. The rack mount Mac Pro helped to fill that niche somewhat, but they're just insanely expensive. Amazon has dedicated Mac hardware in AWS as well and the pricing is also crazy expensive. For large app devs though, the cost is worth it to build their apps in the cloud without bogging down their local machines constantly. If you have rebuild targets for a half dozen OS versions, it can add up! Datacenters are the solution and the Mac Mini just so happened to be the form factor that was available and could be made to work with less hassle than accommodating laptops.

I'm convinced the design is a tradeoff to make this work in the datacenter. With the exact same footprint, racks of Mac Mini servers can be converted to fit these with very little effort.

mynameisvlad 5y ago

Unfortunately, the height (3.7") is just above a 2U (3.5") rack. It's also not a multiple of a Mac Mini height (1.4") which means you'll have some leftover space if you're replacing 3 Minis with one of these.

MBCook 5y ago
But most rack mounted Mac minis seem to be placed on their sides with space between each individual machine. Perhaps it still works in that orientation, just fewer per rack?
- yurishimo 5y ago
  Yeah, this was my thought as well.
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  I was thinking that as well, but I believe they still use some sort of support to keep them propped in place, so not being an exact multiple means modifying them would be harder than, for instance, just cutting some of the vertical supports off to fit a 3xMini.

NorwegianDude 5y ago

In...datacenters? That's a strange usecase!

yurishimo 5y ago
https://www.macstadium.com/datacenters https://www.macstadium.com/datacenters If you scroll to the bottom of this page, there is an image carousel with an example.
- NorwegianDude 5y ago
  But why would anyone do that? IO is very limited, memory on the m1/mini doesn't support ECC from what I know, and repairs/parts/redundancy is terrible. I can understand it if it's just for fun, but otherwise it seems like a really strange idea.
  - yurishimo 5y ago
    It's one of the only sane form factors available if you need off-site compute power running on MacOS. The rack mount Mac Pro helped to fill that niche somewhat, but they're just insanely expensive. Amazon has dedicated Mac hardware in AWS as well and the pricing is also crazy expensive. For large app devs though, the cost is worth it to build their apps in the cloud without bogging down their local machines constantly. If you have rebuild targets for a half dozen OS versions, it can add up! Datacenters are the solution and the Mac Mini just so happened to be the form factor that was available and could be made to work with less hassle than accommodating laptops.