5 ms·

Mac mini is hyper threaded so appears in the OS as 8-cores. The OSX Server edition starts at $999. Replace the two hard drives with two SSD ($200) and add 16GB

Mac mini is hyper threaded so appears in the OS as 8-cores. The OSX Server edition starts at $999. Replace the two hard drives with two SSD ($200) and add 16GB RAM ($100). Now show me a Supermicro that will have two nodes in 1RU for equivalent price. Then remind me how much it is going to sell in a year when I decide to upgrade. I guarantee that the Mac Minis would sell in a day on eBay.

theatrus2 14y ago
You're not going to beat the two-nodes price. If you're fine with a single-NIC single-disk server, Minis are not a bad deal. However, you're not going to get dual-NICs, ECC memory, or multiple "spindles" in a Mini formfactor.
- taligent 14y ago
  Actually you can get dual SSDs. But sure. The Mac Mini are not real servers and if you treat them like they are then I am sure you will have problems. But for use cases where you just have dumb nodes they are perfect.
frozenport 14y ago
The PowerEdge R210II Rack Server at http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-r210-2/fs http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-r210-2/fs fits in less than 2k. Any beowulf setup would be cheaper. But, as mentioned, the guy had special software constraints.
- taligent 14y ago
  Unless I misread something that is a single node. The key point about the Mac Minis is you can have TWO nodes in 1RU. And given that the data centre costs will be more than the hardware it makes the overall proposition very compelling.
  - maratd 14y ago
    If you look at the picture carefully, it's clearly 4 minis in 1RU. The problem isn't that. The power draw and heat generated will be ridiculous. You'll pay big $$$ to keep them running 24/7.
    - taligent 14y ago
      Right. I use more established solutions which only allows for 2 Mac Minis and has roughly same power draw/heat as my previous dedicated. http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html
  - virtuallynathan 14y ago
    If you want 'real' servers with that density: http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/FatTwin.cfm http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/FatTwin.cfm http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/2UTwin2.cfm http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/2UTwin2.cfm http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/MicroCloud.cfm http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/MicroCloud.cfm Those would all be cheaper than the Mac Mini
    - taligent 14y ago
      I already mentioned those. They aren't cheaper.
      - moe 14y ago
        Sorry, that makes no sense. For around $1200 you can buy an 1RU supermicro with 6-core i7, 32G Ram etc. that will smoke your mini ($1500, 4 cores) on every metric. If your rackspace is precious you could fit two of them into one RU with a half-sized case or by leaving out the case altogether (not much more esoteric than stacking mac mini's imho). I love the mini (I have one under my desk!) but suggesting apple consumer gear (including the apple tax) would be a cheaper alternative to generic x86 consumer-gear is a little nuts.
        14y ago
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equalarrow 14y ago
This is exactly what we did. I bought a mini, replaced the hd with a 128gb SSD and then maxed the ram out at 16gb and installed CentOS on it. The machine works great and if we start getting a lot of traffic, I'll just get another one and move postgres off onto that. At some point if the need arises, I'd love to look into getting a thunderbolt nas for the db storage. That would be fun.
- wolfhumble 14y ago
  From my reading on the subject I am not sure if the current Linux kernel will support a thunderbolt NAS. That and the lack of ecc memory is what currently holds me away from buying mac minis for hosting.
kalininalex 14y ago
Hyper-threading doesn't mean you magically get extra 4 cores. It's a technology that works well for _some_ workloads, and for those it achieves up to 30% performance boost, per Intel claim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading). So, at best you could treat it as approximately 5-core. This may not change the original argument, but mac mini is not an 8-core computer. A true dual 4-core CPU server will have significantly more CPU capacity.
- hosay123 14y ago
  Hyperthreading works by duplicating just enough circuitry to allow use of CPU resources for a thread while another is stalled on a load, nothing more. No "5 cores" about it, it's simply a hardware assisted scheduling trick.

theatrus2 14y ago

You're not going to beat the two-nodes price. If you're fine with a single-NIC single-disk server, Minis are not a bad deal. However, you're not going to get dual-NICs, ECC memory, or multiple "spindles" in a Mini formfactor.

taligent 14y ago
Actually you can get dual SSDs. But sure. The Mac Mini are not real servers and if you treat them like they are then I am sure you will have problems. But for use cases where you just have dumb nodes they are perfect.

frozenport 14y ago

The PowerEdge R210II Rack Server at http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-r210-2/fs http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-r210-2/fs fits in less than 2k. Any beowulf setup would be cheaper. But, as mentioned, the guy had special software constraints.

taligent 14y ago
Unless I misread something that is a single node. The key point about the Mac Minis is you can have TWO nodes in 1RU. And given that the data centre costs will be more than the hardware it makes the overall proposition very compelling.
- maratd 14y ago
  If you look at the picture carefully, it's clearly 4 minis in 1RU. The problem isn't that. The power draw and heat generated will be ridiculous. You'll pay big $$$ to keep them running 24/7.
  - taligent 14y ago
    Right. I use more established solutions which only allows for 2 Mac Minis and has roughly same power draw/heat as my previous dedicated. http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html
- virtuallynathan 14y ago
  If you want 'real' servers with that density: http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/FatTwin.cfm http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/FatTwin.cfm http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/2UTwin2.cfm http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/2UTwin2.cfm http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/MicroCloud.cfm http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/MicroCloud.cfm Those would all be cheaper than the Mac Mini
  - taligent 14y ago
    I already mentioned those. They aren't cheaper.
    - moe 14y ago
      Sorry, that makes no sense. For around $1200 you can buy an 1RU supermicro with 6-core i7, 32G Ram etc. that will smoke your mini ($1500, 4 cores) on every metric. If your rackspace is precious you could fit two of them into one RU with a half-sized case or by leaving out the case altogether (not much more esoteric than stacking mac mini's imho). I love the mini (I have one under my desk!) but suggesting apple consumer gear (including the apple tax) would be a cheaper alternative to generic x86 consumer-gear is a little nuts.
      - 14y ago

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equalarrow 14y ago

This is exactly what we did. I bought a mini, replaced the hd with a 128gb SSD and then maxed the ram out at 16gb and installed CentOS on it. The machine works great and if we start getting a lot of traffic, I'll just get another one and move postgres off onto that. At some point if the need arises, I'd love to look into getting a thunderbolt nas for the db storage. That would be fun.

wolfhumble 14y ago
From my reading on the subject I am not sure if the current Linux kernel will support a thunderbolt NAS. That and the lack of ecc memory is what currently holds me away from buying mac minis for hosting.

kalininalex 14y ago

Hyper-threading doesn't mean you magically get extra 4 cores. It's a technology that works well for _some_ workloads, and for those it achieves up to 30% performance boost, per Intel claim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading). So, at best you could treat it as approximately 5-core. This may not change the original argument, but mac mini is not an 8-core computer. A true dual 4-core CPU server will have significantly more CPU capacity.

hosay123 14y ago
Hyperthreading works by duplicating just enough circuitry to allow use of CPU resources for a thread while another is stalled on a load, nothing more. No "5 cores" about it, it's simply a hardware assisted scheduling trick.