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Very nice and clean design - however, it seems to me like there is easily enough room for two Mac Mini M1s per sled without affecting the cooling and achieving

Very nice and clean design - however, it seems to me like there is easily enough room for two Mac Mini M1s per sled without affecting the cooling and achieving a density of 20 per rackmount enclosure and 120 per rack. I'm also curious as to whether GitHub considered (or is considering) running Asahi Linux natively on them - the latter would make more sense to me as it could easily blend into their existing infrastructure.

dijit 3y ago
Why would you run a linux on these? there are much better server grade systems that linux works on. The benefit of these devices is running MacOS, and virtualizing it is not going to give many benefits that aren’t natively available in Macos already.
- jasoneckert 3y ago
  Asahi Linux performs far better on Apple Silicon hardware compared to macOS for server-related tasks (https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/ultimate-linux-arm64-workstation/ https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/ultimate-linux-arm64-wo...)
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Any luck with virtualising macOS itself on that? :)
  - thfuran 3y ago
    But the point of buying the Mac hardware is so that you can run macos.
cedws 3y ago
With one machine per sled you can easily isolate it and remove it for repairs if it breaks. If you packed two or three on to a sled you'd have to take all of them out of service. The cost difference probably isn't too big.
windowsrookie 3y ago
There is no point in running linux on these. If you were looking for servers to run linux on...you would buy linux-based servers. Those would be much more space efficient and cost effective. The whole point of doing this, is to be able to run MacOS.
- kevincox 3y ago
  I actually think there is a use case. IIUC you can only legally run macOS on Apple hardware. However you are allowed to run it in a VM. So it could make sense to run Linux as the base OS then run macOS VMs on top. This would probably make it easier to manage than only running macOS as generally Linux is more suitable for headless usage and people are more familiar with running it in a server setting. Of course there are still limitations here because IIUC Apple also has restrictions about renting, so I don't think you can run 2 VMs and rent them to different customers. But you could possibly run multiple VMs for the same customer on the same hardware. Honestly I assume that they are running the "Runner" OS in a VM anyways. So really it comes down to what makes it easier to manage the host? macOS running macOS VMs or Linux running macOS VMs.

dijit 3y ago

Why would you run a linux on these? there are much better server grade systems that linux works on. The benefit of these devices is running MacOS, and virtualizing it is not going to give many benefits that aren’t natively available in Macos already.

jasoneckert 3y ago
Asahi Linux performs far better on Apple Silicon hardware compared to macOS for server-related tasks (https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/ultimate-linux-arm64-workstation/ https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/ultimate-linux-arm64-wo...)
- justinclift 3y ago
  Any luck with virtualising macOS itself on that? :)
- thfuran 3y ago
  But the point of buying the Mac hardware is so that you can run macos.

cedws 3y ago

With one machine per sled you can easily isolate it and remove it for repairs if it breaks. If you packed two or three on to a sled you'd have to take all of them out of service. The cost difference probably isn't too big.

windowsrookie 3y ago

There is no point in running linux on these. If you were looking for servers to run linux on...you would buy linux-based servers. Those would be much more space efficient and cost effective. The whole point of doing this, is to be able to run MacOS.

kevincox 3y ago
I actually think there is a use case. IIUC you can only legally run macOS on Apple hardware. However you are allowed to run it in a VM. So it could make sense to run Linux as the base OS then run macOS VMs on top. This would probably make it easier to manage than only running macOS as generally Linux is more suitable for headless usage and people are more familiar with running it in a server setting. Of course there are still limitations here because IIUC Apple also has restrictions about renting, so I don't think you can run 2 VMs and rent them to different customers. But you could possibly run multiple VMs for the same customer on the same hardware. Honestly I assume that they are running the "Runner" OS in a VM anyways. So really it comes down to what makes it easier to manage the host? macOS running macOS VMs or Linux running macOS VMs.