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gonzo

The machine you quote (Mac mini: 8 core i7 / Dual SSD / 16GB ram) does not exist.

The closest thing to it (Mac mini: 4 core i7 / single SSD / 16GB ram) costs $1499 from Apple.

Are you proposing that I can't get a dual i7 @ 2.6GHz, dual SSD, 16GB ram from Supermicro for less than $3,000?

I have a mini on my desk, but even as an Apple fan, I think you're off the mark here.

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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.

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). 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The PowerEdge R210II Rack Server at 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.

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.

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.

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

If you want 'real' servers with that density:

http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/FatTwin.cfm

http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/2UTwin2.cfm

http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/MicroCloud.cfm

Those would all be cheaper than the Mac Mini

I already mentioned those. They aren't cheaper.

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.

Where did you get that price? I just did a server build out and couldn't put together a good 1U i7 for that much.

Well, "good" is a relative term when you use a non-ECC board for a server. ;)

I just summed up the component prices for similar servers that we have built - that's the ballpark if you are willing to assemble it yourself (takes around 45mins when you're not doing it the first time).

For a pre-assembled box google found me this (first hit): http://www.nixsys.com/products/intel-rackmount-servers/intel...

That comes out at $1735 for a 6-core, 12G Ram, 128G SSD or $1385 if you use the 4-core equivalent to the mini.

Rather expensive but in the ballpark and already cheaper than the mini (if you buy RAM and disks separately you can probably shave another $300 off).

I can get a MicroCloud chassis for $500 per server (x8), with the rest of the hardware working out to around another $700-800 per node (x8 again). Slightly lower density, but not too bad.

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