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I can’t help but wish that Apple would provide the handful of features needed to make a Mac mini into a competent home server.
by LordKeren 2y ago
I can’t help but wish that Apple would provide the handful of features needed to make a Mac mini into a competent home server.
- rgbrgb 2y agowhat else do you need?
- timc3 2y agoWhat I look for is, 128GB RAM minimum, decent number of PCIe lanes because I want two fast NVMe drives, a HBA card ( though this I guess could be external ), two network ports minimum, ZFS, sane terminal, native support for containers and VMs. Native support for UPS interfacing, native support for backup of containers and VMs. And lastly a community of other users doing the same. Dual power supplies is a nice to have.
- awiesenhofer 2y agoSo you are sad that the Mac mini isn't a bog standard HPE/Dell/etc Server? Boy will you be pissed when you find out about laptops, phones, game consoles and basically every other compute form factor. Might want to look into rackable Mac Pros though!
- riknos314 2y agoWhat specific feature gaps would you like to see them address?
- echoangle 2y agoOfficial Linux support would help, is anyone running MacOS on a server?
- cosmotic 2y agoIf running native ports of server software isn't your cup of tea, you can run Linux containers on macos.
- echoangle 2y agoIn the full GUI MacOS install? And the Linux container (I’m assuming you mean container like docker or podman?) would run in a Linux VM?
- cguess 2y agoI run full multiple Ubuntu desktop VMs on Parallels on a M1 MacBook Air. You can use Docker for server installs, sure, but QEMU also works great on Macs and with Rosetta you can even get pretty damn close to native x86 execution speeds.
- coconut08 2y agothey run through virtualization which is clunky to interface with across boundaries and introduces overhead. I also don't think it has any hardware acceleration for things that would benefit from using the gpu.
- cguess 2y agoThis isn't the market for MacMinis though. Why are people on this forum so bad at understanding market segmentation? Apple made an incredible desktop machine that happens to work pretty damn well as a server if you poke around. This machine is for people at home to for editing video. It's great in the field for production where it goes from pelican case to hotel desk to folding table to pelican case to cargo hold to storage.
- sourcepluck 2y agoHave you ever thought that maybe people understand "market segmentation", but at the same time, they'd like to know how broad a range of computing options one would have on these general purpose computers, with price tags in the many-hundreds to thousands range?
- cguess 2y agoSure, but to complain that a Mac, which, come on, at this point is a known quantity for 20 years, doesn't run Linux is just looking to complain. If you want more options there's endless x86 choices, and if you want ARM then demand better from other manufacturers as well. Apple showed its possible, why doesn't Dell come out with something comparable? I'm not a fanboy, I run systems of all stripes, but Macs aren't designed to be servers (even though they operate perfectly well as one) and people need to stop complaining that they aren't.
- cguess 2y agoOh, and there's Asahi, which does run on Macs (not the M4 yet, but it'll come).
- wtallis 2y agoIn the past, Apple sold at least four generations of the Mac mini that included models literally branded as server models. Continued interest in using more recent models as servers is quite reasonable.
- coconut08 2y agoLinux support. MacOS is a desktop first gui based operating system. Linux on the other hand is a server first cli/terminal based operating system. Everything server related is designed to on linux first and foremost and may or may not incidentally also run on MacOS.
- SG- 2y agorun it in a VM.
- dangus 2y agomacOS is explicitly designed to not be a server, and the consumer hardware it runs on is also designed that way. Apple even discontinued the Server tools that you could buy on the App Store that used to be called Mac OS X Server. If you want to run Linux server apps, you should run Linux. Because Apple hardware and macOS isn't giving you any advantages over a generic piece of hardware running a Linux distribution. The hardware costs more and is less upgradable than off-the-shelf hardware. Servers should not run desktop environments because they are a waste of resources and widen the attack surface due to having more components installed and running. And even if you want a desktop environment for your Linux server, Linux most certainly has a wide selection of mature stable desktop environments. If you need to do development work or just achieve the goal of running Linux applications on a Mac, that can be easily done via virtual machines, containers, etc.
- astrange 2y agoIf they work on a BSD they should work okay on macOS. (Not because macOS is exactly like FreeBSD, just that it means the project has been tested cross-platform.)
- nikcub 2y agoI'd like to replace my NAS using a mini - but Apple segment the market on disk. A "dumb" NAS 2.5" SSD drive array plugged into one via ~~firewire~~, and then out to the network via the Mac Mini would work. edit: thunderbolt!
- marxisttemp 2y agoFireWire? Once I have some more disposable income I plan to buy a Thunderbolt RAID array and a mini. FireWire hasn’t been on Macs for at least a decade. Apple’s internal storage pricing is absurd but you wouldn’t plan to use a NUC or a Raspberry Pi SOC’s onboard storage for a NAS anyways.
- nikcub 2y agohah! meant thunderbolt :) > Thunderbolt RAID array this is interesting: https://www.owc.com/solutions/ministack-stx https://www.owc.com/solutions/ministack-stx
- MBCook 2y agoWhat would those be?
- bryancoxwell 2y agoI’ve never tried turning a Mac into a home server. What features do you need that it’s missing?
- toast0 2y agoDepends what 'home server' means. MacOS would need syncookies to be a viable tcp server on public IPs, IMHO, but MacOS pulled FreeBSD's TCP stack a couple months before syncookies were added, and they never rebased or otherwise added syncookies later. I haven't looked into if they pulled any scalability updates over the years, but I kind of assume they haven't, and the stack would have a lot of lock contention if you had more than say 10,000 tcp sockets. Given that, if I were Apple compatible, I might run a mini as a LAN server, but my home servers provide services for the LAN as well as some public services (of limited value and usefulness, but still public).
- astrange 2y agoThe network stack is very different now - BSD doesn't run on cell phones after all. But no syncookies, no. But IMO the real advantage of ARMv8 for a server is that it has better security.
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoPerhaps they would be good execution nodes if not good endpoints.
- saagarjha 2y agoI don't really think ARMv8 has anything useful to provide here?
- astrange 2y agoIt's all in there, it's just optional. Plus it doesn't have variable length instructions.
- lurking_swe 2y agoi’ve found it pretty easy to run my “homelab” with docker compose. Traefik binds to port 80 and 443, and all my apps are accessible behind the proxy. Docker desktop can be configured to start on login. For keeping the mac awake “forever”, i’d suggest the Amphetamine app. I also appreciate that you can easily use the macOS screen sharing app to login and manage the mac from a laptop.
- manmal 2y agoThat certainly works, but Docker will use a Linux VM, right?
- echoangle 2y agoYes, docker desktop uses a Linux VM to run the containers.
- lurking_swe 2y agoyes, unfortunately. Doesn’t really matter for the web apps i’m hosting, but I could see it being an issue for certain apps/workloads! I suppose you could try running Asashi Linux in the future? I think it only works on m1 and m2 mac’s at the moment but don’t quote me on that.
- mbs159 2y ago> For keeping the mac awake “forever”, i’d suggest the Amphetamine app. macOS has a built-in console command for that: `caffeinate` [1] 1. https://ss64.com/mac/caffeinate.html https://ss64.com/mac/caffeinate.html
- prewett 2y agoMaybe they already have, depending on what you need. Settings >> General >> Sharing provides lots of options. "Remote Login" is SSH and SFTP, and last time I used it, "File Sharing" was SMB. "Screen Sharing" and "Remote Management" seem useful, too. I assume that "Media Sharing" is supposed to allow iTunes on your network to see media files, although I've never used it and the information on the dialog is limited.
- ideashower 2y agoCan you run it headless? Like, if I have it power on after a reboot, is it possible to log in remotely?
- rcstank 2y agoYou can enable SSH to do this
- tylerflick 2y agoYes it supports remote admin via terminal or virtual desktop. I currently use mine like this for transcoding while freeing up my macbook.
- matwood 2y agoMy old mini ran just fine only accessing it over remote desktop. I assume the new ones will act the same.
- ideashower 2y agoDid your old mini have FileVault enabled?
- matwood 2y agoI don’t think so. It was a x86 that I upgraded to 16gb ram and 1 tb hd.
- int_19h 2y ago
- spacedcowboy 2y agoI have a Mac mini backed by an Areca 24-bay Thunderbolt disk-array in the rack in the garage. Works like a dream.
- objektif 2y agoSorry not knowledgeable about this but do you use this as NAS? What software do you use?
- spacedcowboy 2y agoMacOS has built-in file sharing via SMB. It also has built-in VNC for graphically administering the server, built-in ssh/sftp, built-in rsync for backup, etc. etc. Basically I just use the OS.
- objektif 2y agoI see thank you. I dream to setup something like iCloud but with open source software and hosted at home :) Not sure if there is anything like that out there.
- awiesenhofer 2y agonextcloud.com comes to mind.
- objektif 2y agoIs that something that can be setup on Mac OS? Or do I need to install Linux on Mac Mini?
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoSuch as?
- mannyv 2y agoFunny, I've been using Mac Minis as servers for more than a decade.