I currently have a server, a Dell T310 with an SSD in it and 12Gig of ram (weird config, I know I messed up but it works fine so I can’t be bothered to change that for now), with all my dockers running in it.

It runs mostly fine, with Debian 11, a VPN so that I can block public ssh and allow it only on the VPN network, an nginx proxy to have services like a forgejo and a music library (ampache).

However it can’t run a Minecraft server with more than a single person on it without stuttering ; so I was considering changing it maybe next year, after more than 3 years of services, for something beefier but also consuming less W/h (current consumption is 80W), and since I already have a Mac for work I was wondering how suitable a Mac Mini M1/M2 would be for a homelab?

Does anyone have such a configuration and how does it work for you? Any hurdle that you should be aware of?

  • jecht360@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    12 days ago

    Everyone else has described the complications that a Mac mini would have. So why not consider something else? Lenovo, HP, and Dell make 1l ultra small form factor PCs and they’re pretty cheap on eBay. They’re also low power. Search for Tiny Mini Micro to find information.

    I have three Lenovo Thinkcentre machines - two with 32gb RAM and one with 64gb RAM - running my Proxmox VE cluster. Highly recommend using those small machines instead of a Mac mini.

  • Ch4s3r@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    13 days ago

    Got an M2 mini and at first had it running with MacOS and k3s (mini kubernetes). What annoyed me a bit was that if you restart you need to login to get kubernetes/docker starting up again. Also you cannot start docker desktop from cli, but need GUI access via apple remote desktop. You could remove the login but then your setup is completely unsecured against local access. After waiting a bit asahi linux supported the M2 mini and I gave it a try. It’s a fedora linux, which I’m not super familiar with, but installing it was quite smooth and installing k3s was also easy and I’m only really using the server via ssh tunnel port forwarding and kubectl which is fine for me. It even uses less watt in this config what I remember after measuring. Restarting also starts k3s without login as with any linux. So quite happy with this config.

  • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
    01·
    13 days ago

    The problem with Mac hardware is that it’s ARM and vertically integrated with everything Apple. Not all hardware is supported by Linux because Apple won’t write any linux drivers and everything is reverse engineered. You’re better off buying something non-Apple which linux properly supports.

    If power consumption is an issue for you get, a R9 7950X consumes as much and at times less power than an M1/M2 (I think even M3). Check out GamerNexus’s charts. IINM AMD in W/Ghz performs better than Intel across the board.

    No idea where you are, but you can get a small factor PC from one of the vendors that preload linux, or configure a small form factor PC of your liking for cheap and put linux on it. You’ll get more out of your money for the same or better performance with about the same energy consumption (or a bit more).
    Somebody I know who happens to live in Hungary got himself this cheap beauty. They deliver all over Europe, but if you live elsewhere on this planet, there probably is something similar like this out there.

    Anti Commercial-AI license

    • paranoia@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      11 days ago

      What benchmark do you have that says a R9 7950X “consumes as much and at times less power than an M1/M2”??? I mean, a) of course that’s a crazy comparison because the M1/M2 is an entry-level laptop chip and the 7950x is AMD’s flagship high performance desktop chip and b) the M1/M2’s power consumption at full load is ~20W and the 7950x idles at 20-30W.

      A reasonable comparable is one of AMD’s monolithic laptop chips like the 7840U or (if you’re willing to consume more power) 7840HS.

      Some actual useful charts: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M3-SoC-analyzed-Increased-performance-and-improved-efficiency.766789.0.html https://www.techspot.com/review/2499-apple-m2/

    • markstos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      12 days ago

      There are plenty of Linux containers available for ARM in part because a lot of developers want to run Linux containers within macOS on Apple Silicon.

      That has had the effect improving the experience of running Linux directly on ARM servers.

      • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
        01·
        12 days ago

        That may be, but buying a Mac Mini is like buying a device made from the ground up for Windows, where any other operating system has to reverse engineer 100% of the things to work well, or you have to emulate another OS on it (which comes with its own pitfalls), and it’s 200+€ more expensive than its nearest equivalent.

        Every single company I’ve worked at which introduced Apple Silicon to its developers has had headaches with compatibility. The worst I’ve seen was it taking a developer a month to get up and running because the specific component we used didn’t have a build for the specific ARM architecture. Multipass, UTM, podman, docker desktop, all didn’t work until colima and forcing the VM to emulate x86 + forcing docker in the VM to use the x86 image worked. There was a persistent problem with disk IO since it used 9p or whatever. Installing dependencies from scratch meant waiting 30 minutes on the M2.

        Why pay a premium for less compatibility and worse specs? Just get yourself something that works, which is cheaper, maybe even supports a company that invests in Linux and its ecosystem, and be able to ask an existing developer community instead of asking the subsection of linux users that run your specific app on however you’re running linux on Appe hardware.

        Anti Commercial-AI license