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Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
- youngtaff 11mo agoI’d like to know what’s on the baseboard that the Pi is attached to
- elcritch 11mo agoLooks like some sort of power supply converter? Maybe a USB-C power splitter.
- Havoc 11mo agoLooks like a relay so probably to powercycle it. Don't think everything needed is included in the picture. Definitely additional cables for power and networking would need to be added
- hinkley 11mo agoAnd yet they have the pi backward so the networking ports are buried. I have no idea what’s going on here.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Topgamer7 11mo agoTodays game of was it AI generated? > The compact size of the Mac mini, which packs a powerful System on a Chip (SoC) into a tiny footprint.The energy efficiency of Apple silicon (M-series) chips, which allows high density without overheating or excessive power draw. This really adds nothing to the article, and looks like AI fluff to me. Combine that with there being a bold section in like every single paragraph, I'm going to assume yes
- jaffa2 11mo agoIf it smells like ai…
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- fragmede 11mo agoIt doesn't? If you didn't know those two things, they seem highly relevant to the subject being discussed. They define SoC, which might be an acronym you've known since high school (I did, but I'm a total nerd), and it justifies why use Mac minis instead of what usually gets used. As to whether it was AI generated or not, who cares? It's useful information if you didn't know it already, and if those words came out of matrix math or someone non-technical with a BS in communications, does it really matter to you? Are you going hungry tonight because the money that went to creating those words went to Nvidia and not Sarah in Marketing? Sarah in Marketing might be out of a job soon, but her boyfriend has a good job that's not threatened by AI, so I hope she'll be fine, but I don't know. Is that the underlying worry here? There is an emdash in the article though, you didn't think to call that out too?
- fiddlerwoaroof 11mo agoThe thing that got me was always referring to Scaleway in the third person. e.g. this read like the response I get when I ask AI to review code: > Scaleway’s solution to that problem was ingenious: embedding a Raspberry Pi module with each Mac mini. (I realize this may be an artifact of a corporate style guide, but I'd much prefer "Our solution to that problem was embedding . . ." Both because the "was ingenious" doesn't add a ton and reads like puffery and because this is Scaleway's own blog and referring to yourself in the third person is grating.)
- bityard 11mo agoTo me, it just reads like their marketing person's first language is not English. Which tracks because I believe the whole company is based on France.
- pzo 11mo agonot sure why the attach rpi for every mac mini, wouldn't it be cheaper to have one rpi and 9 mac minis connectd to 10 port switch? I also wished one day to make cluster out of Apple TVs - they are very cheap (~150usd for version with ethernet) and most likely the new upcoming version will have more powerful A-series apple sillicon. I guess tvOS is just very restricted.
- stereo 11mo agoYou mean a kvm switch?
- azinman2 11mo agoWhat would you do with a cluster of Apple TVs?
- jitl 11mo agorun computer programs probably
- mschuster91 11mo ago> not sure why the attach rpi for every mac mini, wouldn't it be cheaper to have one rpi and 9 mac minis connectd to 10 port switch? Simple... they're (likely) running something on the Raspberry Pi's that sets them up as USB gadgets, aka the Mac Mini "sees" a virtual keyboard and mouse. That's enough to manage remote provisioning. To replicate that they'd need a KVM switch which doesn't have some weird edge case in how exactly it does USB-C switching, and it needs to be remotely controlled. A Pi is cheaper plus the failure modes of a Pi are more understood than the failure mode of some weird ass KVM switch someone cobbled together in China.
- nodesocket 11mo agoHow does the Pi communicate with the Mini? Software stack? Zero details and useful information in this post.
- khannn 11mo agoAI slop
- mtlynch 11mo agoYeah, I was hoping for more detail as well. I'm guessing they did something similar to what I did to make my Pi control computers.[0] The Raspberry Pi 4 can emulate a USB keyboard and mouse, and there are inexpensive adapters that allow it to capture display output. You can also hook it up to a relay to cycle power for an external device. [0] https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot/ https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot/
- tracker1 11mo agoYeah, my guess was something like pikvm as well.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- ey3ball 11mo agoAs others have pointed out, keyboard / mouse emulation is pretty useful, but it's also quite quirky. We use MDM to automate configuration delivery as much as possible, I think it's been mentioned as well (although we're not zero touch yet). You might want to look at Asahi Linux's Central Scrutinizer for some insights on the fancier stuff that can be done over the USB-C port.
- hinkley 11mo agohttps://www-uploads.scaleway.com/Mac_mini_rack_1_e31ad1da6e.jpg https://www-uploads.scaleway.com/Mac_mini_rack_1_e31ad1da6e.... This is not the image I expected to encounter under the title, “high density”. Make those sleds taller and do three, maybe four per sled with a pair of large diameter fans. That’ll would be high density. This is medium at best.
- PunchyHamster 11mo agoSeriosuly, like surely they could've at least used 1 rpi per rack ? Or find cable with matching length?
- jcheng 11mo agoInteresting that they run them upside down.
- teaearlgraycold 11mo agoIt’s because the power button is on the bottom.
- jitl 11mo agoalso hot air rises, and the vent is on the bottom
- matthews3 11mo agoFans can move a lot more air than convection.
- 3eb7988a1663 11mo agoWhy are they still even in the cases? I would assume that shucking them would ever so slightly improve thermals.
- joahua 11mo ago
- mikepurvis 11mo agoUnlike the old rack mount options for the trashcan Mac Pro units (eg https://photos.imgix.com/racking-mac-pros https://photos.imgix.com/racking-mac-pros), it doesn't seem like much thought has been given here to a front-to-back airflow. I'm also surprised they're touting the density of this solution— seems like the obvious thing would be to put the Minis on their sides. A 4U chassis has 17.5cm vertical space in it, and a Mac Mini is 17cm wide. With the Mini being 2in in height, that suggests 8-9 Minis in a 4U rack, vs 2 Minis in a 2U rack for Scaleway's trays. EDIT: Here's a commercially-available solution that's 6/4U: https://www.mk1manufacturing.com/Rack-Mount-for-6-M4-mac-minis-p102.html https://www.mk1manufacturing.com/Rack-Mount-for-6-M4-mac-min..., you'd think it could basically be this but with the management plane behind or in front. And as others have said, making the management plane be more shared, so it's not 1:1.
- tecleandor 11mo agoYep! I would have thought about doing a 3d printed "tray" that goes under the mini and routes front/cold and back/hot air to the exterior of the rack...
- notpeter 11mo agoThis is what MacStadium does. Here's a drawer design for the previous gen intel macs: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687e650a56916806eaaf8f62/68eef263ba6df96fa9623c9e_f698c610-29ea-4431-9e95-38eb776a6f9b_dc-minidrawer.webp https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687e650a56916806eaaf8f62/... You can find a bunch more detail in their related patent filings: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240397658A1/en?q=(%22macstadium%22)&oq=%22macstadium%22 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240397658A1/en?q=(%22m...
- mikepurvis 11mo agoI was thinking the units all face the front in a shallow drawer, whereas MS is doing a deep drawer, which is almost certainly even better for density.
- averageRoyalty 11mo agoFor anyone reading along at home, 2 inches is just over 5cm.
- pm 11mo agoI was interested in provisioning one of these a few months back through Scaleway, but couldn't navigate their sign-up process without it dumping me back to the start everytime. Nor did I receive a reply when I e-mailed their support e-mail. I don't know if that's changed (they had odd pricing too, like Startup vs. Business, of which the difference wasn't clear), but aware. I hope someone has more success than I did.
- sparrish 11mo agoScaleway's site and support is horrible, as you've found. But their pricing and offerings are solid and their network is... OK. For the price, they're better than Hetzner... if you can get signed up!
- BozeWolf 11mo agoTotally different experience here! For a project I wanted to try “euro cloud”. Something comparable to digital ocean. No need for hyperscaler functionality. It has been great. Good terraform provider and reliable service. I like their console, although the design feel very vaporwave to me. Of course stuff can be better, but it is rapidly improving. The way they implemented grafana + user management was shit. But that’s fixed. Grafana still feels bolted on however. And login is a bit weird with their dedibox or whatever button next to the cloud offering. But no where near as confusing as aws is! Also bumped on a bug in their terraform provider, found a related bug report, contributed some info and it was fixed within two weeks. Quite happy so far. Running serverless sql, serverless containers. Secrets management and some iam config. No big stuff but quite sure it is capable to run a decently sized saas.
- pm 11mo agoI won't comment on the reliability of their services, as I've not experienced it. I was signing up specifically to provision a M1 mac mini, and couldn't navigate it. It was unfortunate, but worth a comment, in case others experience the same issue (or someone else could point me in the right direction). Glad to know you've got good experiences though.
- summarity 11mo agoWe also have a video of how we built the (then-M1) infra at GitHub: https://youtu.be/I2J2MzKjcqY?si=piMVam3qUpJGeW9Q https://youtu.be/I2J2MzKjcqY?si=piMVam3qUpJGeW9Q With 60 minis per rack, and custom sled cases.
- tecleandor 11mo agoOh nice! That quite more complex, but I like it!
- rvz 11mo agoScaleway has some of the best prices for cloud Mac Minis and has better deals than the scam that is AWS's overpriced cloud Mac Minis. Going with AWS for cloud Mac Minis is the quickest way to lose a lot of money if you don't know what to do with it and to flush as much cash down the drain as quickly as possible.
- cactusplant7374 11mo agoWhat do people use mac servers for?
- fragmede 11mo agorunning macOS, which runs Xcode, which is required for making and signing iOS and macOS apps, Witcher, then sold on the App Store for money dust justifying spending money on their, or a similar service.
- trebligdivad 11mo agoMacOS dev and CI.
- throw_m239339 11mo agoRunning CI for Iphone / Ipad dev? 20 years ago the company I worked for used a Mac-Mini for video transcoding, because there was some DRM issue we had to deal with, I don't remember the specifics.
- IshKebab 11mo agoTo compile and test software for Mac.
- mystifyingpoi 11mo agoIt's not strictly speaking a server even. Just a rented personal computer.
- itrash 11mo agoGenerally the main purpose was CI, blockchain mining and AI training
- trebligdivad 11mo agoYou'd think that from an environmental point of view, Apple would be able to sell packs of Mac Mini boards without the case and packaging for people doing this; with no physical board or electronic change, it would be easy.
- Linkd 11mo agoI get it, but I’ve never really bought into the idea that Apple optimizes for the environment out of pure altruism.
- knowitnone3 11mo agobut they make more money selling the whole thing
- itrash 11mo agoYes, and the actual license is pretty limiting as we have to sell the mac for at least 24h, not less, and no virtualization.
- jandrese 11mo agoIt's kind of amazing to offer this service at all when the vendor is so blatantly hostile to the idea.
- itrash 11mo agoThis project was actually kickstart to compete against AWS launching the first apple as service, there were no consider about this.
- kccqzy 11mo agoIt’s madness that Apple can dictate that you have to sell it for at least 24h, not less. Ideally the manufacturer shouldn’t dictate how the property is being rented.
- jsheard 11mo agoThe annoying thing is that Apple still makes proper servers, they just don't sell them anymore. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/in-the-loop/2025/10/shipping-apples-american-made-advanced-servers/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/in-the-loop/2025/10/shipping-... I guess the Mac Pro Rack Edition technically exists, but that's needlessly huge (5U!) for a single node, ungodly expensive, and doesn't have server amenities like a BMC, so it's not exactly flying off the shelves.
- jagged-chisel 11mo agoThis sounds rather entitled. They’re building their own servers for their infrastructure needs. No different than any of the other behemoths with their own data centers.
- hmokiguess 11mo agoReminded me how Victor Taelin built his distributed computing cluster using those. https://xcancel.com/VictorTaelin/status/1901661374444392951#m https://xcancel.com/VictorTaelin/status/1901661374444392951#...
- bigyabai 11mo agoHope the resale value is still good on those machines, he hasn't mentioned the cluster on his Twitter in months...
- ravetcofx 11mo agoAre they powering them with USB-C? I didn't think that was possible/supported.
- tecleandor 11mo agoThat's just for control, in the photos they still have no power connected, not even for the Raspberry Pi...
- itrash 11mo agoNo, the USB-C is just there to act as a KVM for administrating purpose, as the MDM hasn't enough administration capability
- itrash 11mo agoI was part of the team that built this project at Scaleway, ask me anything
- Reventlov 11mo agoMy experience with a mac mini in a small R&D team has been a nightmare : the OS sucks so much for anything that is not a single user (at a time) on the machine, coming from the Systemd/Linux world What was your experience ?
- itrash 11mo agoYes, the experience is pretty bad, we were doing baremetal, so I assume there were only a single user on it. The tooling and its documentation was really bad too, actually we based ourselves on the asahi project and its documentation and some open-source project that did a lot of work on reverse engineering all of the system we used. From a user based perspective, using the remote desktop feature was a pain and I don't think any of our users were actually using it, the main use was : CI, AI training and bitcoin mining.
- ey3ball 11mo agoI'm part of the current team ! Ask me anything itrash doesn't know ;)
- kindermoumoute 11mo ago
- hamonrye 11mo ago[dead]
- schmuckonwheels 11mo agoContinuing to act like these ugly hacks are a normal way of doing business, is a continual signal to Apple that they don't need to build a rack-mount PC or server ever again. If their developer community grew a pair and made themselves heard, then maybe the billion dollar company would do their effing job and provide a proper rackable development platform. Which they had many years ago, before they morphed into a company that builds telephones and furniture that occasionally functions as a computer. Instead we pretend like extension cords and gluing Raspberry Pi's together is totally ok for professional purposes.
- itrash 11mo agoTrust me, at our scale ... Apple didn't care at all about us, even if Scaleway is one of the biggest cloud provider in France. And actually the project was made to be faster on the market than AWS on their M1 offer, not to be industrialized at first.
- schmuckonwheels 11mo agoI get it, you did what you had to do, but you're not the only example. They have the knowledge and it's existed in the past (Xserve) but they will never do it again because they design and sell furniture now. Tell me they couldn't design a Mac Mini with holes for rack ears, built in BMC or serial console.... even if it was a specialty product people would pay a premium
- itrash 11mo agoI totally agree on your comment by the way, it's not ideal at all, I'm not even working on the project anymore, every update, every feature is always a pain as we had to do reverse engineering. Everything on this project is "hackie", it is not a solution for the future, the day Apple will change their license or break retro compatibility, the project will have no chance to survive. So yes, the mac mini is absolutely not designed to be placed in a DC, a special product for that purpose would be better. So it's a risky bet from a technical point of view.
- 11mo ago
- keeda 11mo agoHah so, I have a couple of old Mac Minis in my homelab that I use very occassionally but would like to access over the Internet (say, via Tailscale etc.) Ideally they'd be sleeping most of the time to conserve power, and only be kicked awake when needed, e.g. by a Wake-on-Lan packet. Unfortunately I would need another device active at all times to listen for commands and send that packet on demand. I was toying with the idea of using a Raspberry Pi connected to the router to perform that specific function, but I never got around to it. Funny to see that idea scaled up to a server rack!
- ballpug 11mo agoIdentifying MAC spoofing in client network interfaces, which allow DNS poisoning or encrypted layer credential from a client address. Whether there is pragmatic use to spoof, or a secondary drive with no identifier.