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Using actual Macs is the only way. Apple does not care about helping cloud providers in any way (e.g. even just an exception to the 24h rental requirement would be huge for them, but not even AWS got that).

I saw a video of a mac only data center and they made customized racks to optimally fit real consumer Macs into those racks.

They had those for the trashcan/cheese-grator macs, mac minis and well as the all-in-one macs for special use cases (yes they put those all in ones in a rack)

I believe it is Mac Minis but I would think they strip them of the case.

The aluminum case is a massive heat sink, no reason to remove it.

If it's already in a cooled data center, removing it could mean being able to fit more Minis in a rack with little downside to thermals. The aluminum case makes sense when you're not in a climate-controlled environment.

They use real retail macs. As for the modifications i don't know.