I Tried Using my M1 Mac as a Server (It did not go well)

[@WolfgangsChannel]

Power efficiency spreadsheet docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LHvT2fRp7I6Hf18LcSzsNnjp10VI-odvwZpQZKv_NCI/edit (Source: Hardwareluxx.de)

[@ChuckNorris-lf6vo]

Change some things on this channel things do not look OK. A 19 minute sh!t story about crap? The entire video does not look good and does not have good content. Change many things.

Can you make 2024 update of M1 mini as home lab server, please?

[@5urg3x]

Few things… 1.) The air will thermal throttle since no active cooling. Mini is better since it actually has a fan. 2.) Thunderbolt networking uses a software based network adapter, YMMV! 3.) PCIe pass through (IOMMU virtualization) is not supported on any version of Mac OS including Intel kernels, but on Intel macs you can run other OS like a true hypervisor like you said. Theoretically, the M1 platform supports it, but there are no APIs for VMs to actually use it on Mac OS. Possible that the Asahi Linux folks can figure it out. 4.) You’ll need to enable write back caching to get fast write performance on any RAID controller. This will almost certainly be turned off by default as power outrages can result in corruption. Make sure to use a UPS & journaled file system if you enable write back caching.

[@ldersovski5245]

Is it possible to make a home server using an android phone??

[@virusz4274]

@@ldersovski5245 did you try ubuntu touch or similar ? Im not sure i have installed docker on ubuntu touch and ran an nginx server.

[@mikevelasquez02]

It depends on what you plan to do. Running a web server, sure. You can also run chroot containers within termux, and run python, nginx, php, etc. I have even run a XFCE desktop environment and remote connect with VNC. Of course, there are limitations due to HW capabilities of a phone. As other comments have pointed, I have also run a WordPress site within termux and using cloudflare as CDN cache. Having a custom kernel unlocks more features, and if that custom kernel has KVM enabled, you may run faster VMs with qemu than software emulation

[@abdel8507]

yes

[@Hairybarryy]

I use an Android TV box for a pi hole and samba. Check out armbian

[@anormalladd]

I've heard stories about the battery exploding after a couple months so maybe remove that if you do plan to use a android

[@ivanmalinovski7807]

I installed Debian on my M1 Mac Mini, mostly for the purpose of a Minecraft server, but it also ran other services as well through Docker. The Minecraft performance was nothing less than amazing and everything else worked, provided you weren't trying to use features that are not implemented (like USB3, Thunderbolt and GPU acceleration). Docker performance is also much better on Linux than on MacOS due to much less overhead; world generation in Minecraft was 20-30% faster than in a Docker container on MacOS. Once the Asahi team is closer to being done, the M1 Mac Mini is going to be phenomenal for home servers.

[@sergsergesrgergseg]

are there any other ARM alternatives of similar performance? i like the idea of having a strong local server, but not a power guzzling one

[@Ghfvhvfg]

@@sergsergesrgergsegI don’t think you can’t get anything as efective for the money saidly

[@KalosLikesComputers]

14:12 I've done a whole video on Apple Silicon virtual machines, it's actually quite a capable platform for VMs!

[@prispalos]

omg ive seen your virtualization video nice

[@chris11d7]

Be careful with the HighPoint controllers, they bricked a few of my WD Reds a few years ago. The drives would not work on any card other than a HighPoint controller (no spin-up on SATA, SAS, toaster, etc., etc.). Took me 3 years to figure it out, but the reason was the HighPoint 'spin-down on idle' modified the FIRMWARE of the hard drives, and the only way to fix it was to plug the drives in to a HighPoint controller, and turn the power efficiency settings back off. It took me 3 years to figure this out because I sold the Highpoint cards as soon as I bought LSI RAID cards, and I by chance, by luck, plugged these in to an ancient 2760A I got from school a bazillion years ago. I'm happy to have saved 8 8TB WD reds that I spent like $2k on at the time, but what the actual heck HighPoint. My job is in enterprise networking, and the whole DAS concept scares me, I know it's fine for home use but still. You should look at setting up an ISCSI SAN, you can use ISCSI multipath for network redundancy, and a performance gain; Plus you can use one system to create ISCSI volumes for multiple servers, or have a single ISCSI volume to multiple "cluster-aware" servers. Only problem is that you'd want to set up VLANs to do it "right", and not have block-level storage accessible to your noob devices. I feel like I comment on all your videos now.. I do like your content, keep up the great work!

[@Timmy111888]

I use M1 as a virtual pedalboard for my guitar or virtual piano for my keyboard. Since power consumption is so low I run it 24/7 and my instruments are always ready to go. on my M1-Server I run: - Reaper - Keyscape - AmpliTube 5

[@JCavLP]

Do youi have Display/Mouse/Kb connected or how do you control it?

[@sknny_t]

Im currently running an old mac mini as a headless server and there is no need to use a hdmi dummy. Great video keep up the work!

[@Jannickjay]

Cool, which os?

[@jaguarke069]

I can tell you that with ubuntu desktop; headless remote desktop required a dummy display setup (either software or hardware); however, the lock screen produced other issues (you couldn’t allow remote connection to a locked desktop). I ditched the whole idea of a base desktop os (had tried with macos too, no display dummy necessary here, but it ate too much ram on its own for little purpose) so I decided on proxmox with a vm (for now will probably migrate to LXC soon for improved efficiency). Mac mini 2014 with 8GB RAM.

[@Teluric2]

Storing a bunch of files on any computer makes it a server. Can sustain an 6 month uptime load?

[@WolfgangsChannel]

@Teluric Actually it does. By definition en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_(computing) Those of us who don't use our home servers to larp as a SRE at a big tech company are okay with some downtime. I don't have thousands of customers depending on my cheapo i3-6100 machine and would prefer to have regular kernel and security updates. As long as you have a UPS, I don't see what would prevent you from having a 6 month uptime on consumer hardware, if you wanted to brag on the Internet

[@rivvvers]

I’ve gotten around it quite easily by using SwitchResX. You can set the desired resolution from the menu bar item then you can configure the settings to automatically use the last used resolution at boot if you need to restart.

[@jaguarke069]

Great video, thanks for sharing the experience. I was contemplating the usage of a M1 for server purposes; but I will wait until more progress is made on Asahi (which is already amazing if you consider their mission). By then M1 can probably be picked up cheaper too. All good things…

[@aloispetutschnig8342]

I have pretty much server experience with M1 MacMini at this point. I use it as a server for testing for about 10 months now. - VNC connections work even without a dummy HDMI plug. I use just the built in screen share of MacOS as VNC client. - There are running two instances of Minecraft server (not containerized) for a few months without any issues. - I didn't have any issues with external drives because i just use an external thunderbolt drive with 2 HDDs. (Raid1) - With docker i use nextcloud, directus, vaultwarden, watchtower, glance, fireflyIII, mariadb, nginx proxy manager and redis. If you want to virtualize Linux i suggest RockyOS. It works great on UTM and Parallels. But pleas just don't buy Parallels.. The overall performance may be better but they charge at least 50$ for every update additionally. It isn't worth it and OpenSource projects are much cooler anyways 😎 RockyOS because it is built for HPC like RedHat enterprise and CentOS. RedHat enterprise isn't free. Also RedHat enterprise and CentOS don't work on AppleSilicon because of the page size. Since CentOS has a rolling release it isn't that stable anymore.. Just a playground for RedHat. I also would like to run GitLab in a docker container but they don't support arm64 yet. For me it's a no go to run amd64 applications on an arm64 machine for performance and power consumption reasons. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

[@OpinionsKaDailyDose]

can we use the thunderbolt port of mac mini to connect directly to the laptop's usbc port since my laptop's usbc supports displayport 1.4 over usb and mac mini's thunderbolt also supports displayport???

[@aloispetutschnig8342]

@@OpinionsKaDailyDose I guess if there is a software available that addresses this feature. But usually not, because these ports (and ofc the software behind it) are meant just to send display data and not to receive it

[@yunomi1950]

We have a 2012 mini working as a headless print server. I use the macOS screen share option to access it without a virtual display. Simple set up for simple requirements.

[@KrzysztofBob]

I use it as a Plex server. Combined with arm based synology NAS (HDD storage only as it’s focused more on storage rather than speed), so far works great.

[@ReganMcCullough]

I'm looking at this use case as well, and am particularly interested in the transcoding abilities of these m1/m2 chips since my synology can't keep up with any real transcoding needs. Any downsides you've seen other than price? It seems there's a fair amount of people trying to offload their m1 minis on ebay.

[@Timi7007]

Running 5 M1 Mac Minis as App Store/iCloud caches for larger wifi networks in schools. An HDMI dongle isn't needed, I use VNC for local connections as it shows the boot screen and thus makes system updates easier, TeamViewer for remote management once the Macs are online. Since the Macs only act as caches I don't have any issues. Using the internal SSDs is plenty for the main goal of speeding up app installations for our set of managed apps and saving bandwidth on the 1gig uplinks. Some connected at 1gig, some on 10gig, depending on the school's network. All powered with a UPS in climate controlled network-closets. Power consumption isn't relevant at this scale.

[@OpinionsKaDailyDose]

can we use the thunderbolt port of mac mini to connect directly to the laptop's usbc port since my laptop's usbc supports displayport 1.4 over usb and mac mini's thunderbolt also supports displayport???

[@jefftidwell77]

I just setup something very similar, I used an M2 Mac mini base, attached to a OWX Mercury Pro U.2 via thunderbolt and a OWC thunderbolt 10Gbe adapter. I'm getting nearly 5Gb/s to my MacBook Pro. My limitation here is ram, but this was really a POC. Will probably add another machine at some point with more ram. I have 4 x Crucial P3 4tb NVME drives for reference.

[@alexey_kazakov]

Спасибо, Вольфганг, как всегда очень познавательно.

[@ChimpRiot]

I tried using a few different Macs as servers and just couldn’t get good SMB speeds compared to Windows and Linux - despite what I tried, enabled or disabled.

[@csh40]

Unclear why, but in my limited testing, Mac SMB file-serve speeds are poor. Given that Apple uses this as a default file-share method, I would have thought they would do better. Again, this comment is based on not-very-rigorous testing.

[@KeithBoehler]

Kind of crazy how the end of the video turned into a post of why linux has the software i need rather than the typical reverse of that (in a desktop sense).

[@AllPurposeBen]

I use an Intel Mini as a NAS, Plex Server and host for a few virtual machines. It's got a 5 bay Orico JBOD enclosure over USB3 and is in a raid5 through SoftRAID. AFAIK SoftRAID works on AppleSi. I used to use OpenZFS but it's gotten less and less reliable over the last several years.

[@ilikemyrealname]

I have a headless hackintosh running 9x3tb HDDs in RAID 5 using SoftRAID. Works perfectly and has been for many years. I use screen share to log in when needed.

[@clixt984]

Funny I’m actually switching from my M1 Mac Mini as a server to a custom PC build. I was using Parallels to virtualize my Home Assistant and Ubuntu (with Docker). Once Asahi Linux is released (not alpha or beta), I’ll use it in my M1 Mac Mini.

[@howardthompson3543]

As others have written, there is no need for a HDMI dummy plug while running a(n base m1) mac mini headless. Run the ' sudo fdesetup authrestart' terminal command to restart the server. See 'fdesetup help'. As far as I know, a headless mac with filevault encryption enabled cannot be made to restart gracefully after a power loss.

[@ChuutheworId]

you forgot to mention the screen sharing app built into macos built for remoting into other macs LOL

[@CharlieMartorelli]

Great Video, I'm a Mac user and run a 2012 intel mini as my main server. I use a mix of USB3 and TB2 disk enclosures for the NAS part. The NAS part is mostly for archiving and a backup of my main Mac which has a DAS, so speed in not important. I also use the server as a iTunes server, IOS backup (imasing software) Cloud backup with backblaze, torrent client, plex. I run a few docker containers with a Ubuntu VM. VMware's fusion is free for personal use and works well on both intel and m1 Macs. I also have a few raspberry pi's, nuc and soon a Zima board for home lab experiments. I also have a risen 3 system running open media vault as a data hoarding server. Were a Mac household so the mini Macs sense for us. Thanks again

[@vicmac3513]

In the most recent Apple launch, they advertised M2 Mini as a good server base.

[@accountid9681]

I have a mac server, it's used exclusively as an android imessage bridge, I tried to do other stuff with it, but it was hopeless

[@peterwan816]

I owned an M2 Mac and the first thing I did was to test the maximum speed of the 2 on board thunderbolt ports (M2 Mac mini 16GB ram 256GB SSD). It turns out that one port is significantly faster than the other (like 2 times faster), so I reached out to Apple. The Genius Bar staff told me that the test result came straight from Apple Park that the chip suffer from software switching issue that impacted the up/down stream performance. After so many OS updates, I have yet to test and see if the problem has been resolved in a software manner. I would update this post if I can still find it later and have done the test with OS information and test equipments as well as software used (most likely black magic disk speed test with an thunderbolt NVME drive).

[@aliazimi91]

any updates? considering getting this setup but would love to know your results.

[@HowToLinux]

Correction BTRFS is not a Linux Exclusive. There is WinBTRFS what works greate, and macos-btrfs but this one i never tested.

[@andybuck2949]

Not sure it would help at all but mac os does allow for software RAIDs via 'disk sets'. In theory you could avoid the DAS controller and just have mac os run the raid.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

I’ll try it, thanks

[@andreasn455]

Your power efficient video brought my attention to fujitsu mini pcs. I now have a fujitsu mini pc running ubuntu with zfs with i5 6500 and 4tb ssd 8gb ram wich consumes 1.9 Watt idle!!! Phenomenal power consumption. M1 macs use 2.5x that at idle! Plus i can install 2 Sata and 2 m2 drives (1 2280 and 1 2230) Best server bought ever!

[@Airbag888]

Whick exact model did you get.

[@massimogiussani4493]

Is it a futro, right?

[@LA-MJ]

Bookmark

[@andreasn455]

Its a Q956

[@Airbag888]

@@andreasn455 Esprimo Q956? I can see that 1 m2 slot is for the wifi only and the other one is a SATA m2. Could not see if you could in addition add 2 more sata drives.

[@stk3171]

My dream is broken...

[@danielbaldwin8871]

I use a m1 Mac Mini as my server and have never used a dummy video adapter. I use Apple's Screen Share feature to connect to it and it works very well. Easy to access with the share screen button in the Finder. I have a OWC RAID drive attached to it over USB3.0.

[@asireprimad]

if macos has access to the individual drives, you could run software raid from the host

[@matuslivora7469]

Great video! Thanks! ... I was actually thinking of buying an M1 Mac mini as a home server & NAS ... but this just assured me that I'll propably stick with some 9th gen Intel ThinkCentre Tiny or something similar with Ubuntu Server running on that.

[@hansschmidt4416]

excatly on the same topic and thankfull for this hands on test

[@maxarendorff6521]

How are you going to fit drives into that tiny thing though?

[@hansschmidt4416]

@@maxarendorff6521 probably using the internal 1TB & some DAS via THunderbolt 3 at 40GB/s which is not quick, but enought for some long term redundant storage. Maybe a practice run is needed to see actual transfer rates though.

[@maxarendorff6521]

@@hansschmidt4416 I don't see why people insist on using mini PCs as a makeshift NAS. Just because of the power usage? I just bought an old Fujitsu office PC on Ebay for 50 Euros, put a bunch of WD Red drives in it that I had lying around, and it's been running in my basement ever since. The bigger case allowed me to put the drives in without having to resort to some kind of external solution. The machine is also fairly power efficient because of the old dual-core processor.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

@Max Arendorff I second this. Thunderbolt devices can waste a lot of power compared to pure PCIe, and enterprise mini PCs aren't cheap. If you want a small form-factor NAS, you can get a Fractal Node 304 and a miniITX system. You'll get 6x 3.5" HDD slots

[@d4nny_216]

Connecting to .Mac mini 2017 works fine with team viewer without hdmi.

[@dnagecko4081]

I use tnterviewer with a mac mini and it does not have a display plugged in at all.

[@ComradeRachel]

I think the original M1 macs had more limited support for thunderbolt and etc. So you may get much better results with future chips updates. Though with Apple killing off their own server app product, they will just not be that good for server uses. Though I think ARM chips are still the future and there are other platforms that run with ARM that work with Linux like raspberry pis and Ampere ones that Oracle is offering in their cloud services.

[@Teluric2]

Arm servers cant replace x86 and risc on mission critical workloads or heavy number crunching. Stop dreaming

[@WolfgangsChannel]

Wake up to reality techmonitor.ai/technology/cloud/google-arm-chips-cloud-data-centers www.theregister.com/2022/03/29/aws_arm_servers_datacenters/ www.hpcwire.com/2022/04/05/microsoft-rolls-out-ampere-altra-arm-cpus-in-azure/

[@CampervanCookout]

I got rid of my 2013 iMac recently and got an m1 Mac mini. The longer I've had it the more I realise the performance is not anywhere as good as early reviewers would have us believe. Sadly many tasks it struggles where my very old mac did not, multiple programmes running it really shows its weakness against an intel. Yeah it uses a lot less power I guess...

[@Deathman670]

All Apple Devices have a Build in VNC Client. You only have to launch "Connect to Server" an use "vnc://IP"

[@moncyn1]

Its a interesting video from a standpoint that you can succeed with one type of hardware but fail when using another set, using new and expensive thunderbolt stuff like this has some drawbacks like poor price/performance ratio, maybe look at older hardware, that can be sometimes acquired for free given there are no power supplies given together and its marked as unknown state. Would be nice to compare this old and cheap thunderbolt NAS from manufactures like Lacie, Caldigit, Drobo and others compared to some normal server equipment in terms of power draw, noise and reliability.

[@-aexc-]

4gb for base?? I thought gnome was heavy with 2ish (on arch on my 16gig machine atleast)

[@WolfgangsChannel]

*Up to* 4GB. macOS caches a lot and not all of that RAM is wasted on base system bloat

[@-aexc-]

@@WolfgangsChannel ah that makes sense

[@jasonmeehan6080]

I use a Mac mini with a 10gbe connection to my Synology NAS. Run Plex natively in MacOS and all of my docker containers. I don’t use it for virtualization as my VMs don’t need to be powered on 24/7.

[@elonburgers5308]

Nomachine also isn't bad for viewing a mac remotely (I actually use this for my Linux server instead of VNC) but its still no RDP

[@yagoa]

just use the inbuilt MacOS raid-Assistant and you will get good performance

[@josebarona6341]

and screen sharing? is pre built in Mac OS, great for controlling a Mac from another Mac

[@jonjohnson2844]

I think everyone in Europe is concerned with power efficiency right now! My unraid/homelab uses about 30w idle with a 4590T...running a ton of dockers and a few VMs 24/7 but, let's be honest, 95% of the time there is hardly any load on it so I'm pretty happy with it for now.

[@Dave102693]

I wished that North Americans weren’t overobsessed with more power consumption=better. That, and the heavier the final product is, the better.

[@adiyodha3725]

people be launching MacBook Air outta space and turning it into a satellite at this point

[@i0ntempest]

Running a Mac mini 2018 as a server. You don't need a dummy plug to get an image, you just get it at a very low resolution (maybe 480P).

[@BR0KK85]

You're a mad man for unscrewing the handle bar.

[@nnaaaaaa]

At work we have a Mac mini as a ci runner. We re provisioned it recently as it used to have hfs+ aaaaand the "upgrade" to apfs killed the io perf REALLY HARD. it was kinda amazing how bad apfs is in comparison to a 30 year old filesystem like hfs+

[@untitledsurfer8503]

You don't need (and should NOT) to change file system on HDDs to APFS. I also use a Mac mini as CI runner and I run all my HDDs on HFS+, and all my SSDs on APFS.

[@rodrimora]

Parsec now runs on mac os, with a dummy hdmi works really smooth if you don't have a display.

[@RocketLR]

Ive been using the m1 mac mini as a server and desktop. Need to dockerize the services on my other servers and move then over to the m1. So far its been doing great.

[@clomads]

Had issues with Unraid again so on a whim I tried to get what i needed running on my M1 mini i was planning on selling. No need for a dummy hdmi, but can’t use encryption on the boot drive if running headless. Unfortunately no RAID, but I have 3 5TB usb 3 drives for all my archive and slow media and a 2TB NVME external drive for footage in an order that makes sense and is all backed up. Also, a lot cleaner connections from my other Apple devices. As for apps, the full Arrs stack is native, transmission w/flood, Plex, main node for Resilio sync, backblaze.. etc Docker desktop sucks and i feel worse for trying it so i have UTM running Ubuntu Server for my dockers. Overseer, Unifi, portainer and some things im just testing. Honestly works great and i dont have to worry about it and plenty of headroom, but low idle since i live in a bus w/solar. I did a few streams on the whole thing. At some point ill be removing the psu to run it direct on DC and 3D print a new enclosure w/ drives.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

Ooh, nice!

[@domrepenrique]

what about Neural Engine? I would like to run a local LLM on my server. Is mac mini a better alternative?

[@juappdev]

For running some isolated linux services, I found UTM to be pretty useless since there seemed to be no inbuilt way to get it to launch vms on startup which ended up being a huge hassle when I had a power cut. VMWare fusion on the hand works flawlessly for me, plus it even has opengl acceleration for linux guests. Definitely looking at installing Asahi in the future though, I can easily see it being useful for using as a docker or CI box for about a decade.

[@linuxuser2928]

Automator script / Shortcuts?

[@r0galik]

I run TerraMaster D5-300 connected to an Rpi4 as a NAS. Works OK but the driver isn't UASP (only usb-storage). The raw read/write speed is 100 mb/s, enough to saturate a 1Gb link. Somewhat slower through the network.

[@Timi7007]

4k transcoding is always a mess thus far, but things are changing with newer Intel iGPUs. BiteMyBits recently had a video on that.

[@DesktopChronicles]

Apple Remote Desktop and HDMI dummy are game changers when it comes to accessing the desktop of a Mac mini. Also you should consider iSCSI and NAS with 10G. Great content as always, keep up the good work!

[@davidmullins3802]

Last time I knew they were still working on the bugs with iSCSI on M1 computer. Most vendors that support iSCSI don't support it with M1 Mac's because of the Kernel update to macOS. Did this change?

[@Humuku]

I ran a Mac Mini 2018 as 10 Gbit Server for NAS and TimeMache, iCloud-Caching and HomeBridge. Replacing it with an M1 Mac Mini did help save a lot of power. But the best way to save energy is to lower ones expectations and to get rid of 10 Gbit, RAID-Boxes and NVMe. But oh well....instead I replaced the rest of the 1 Gbit switches with the QNAP 10/2.5 Gbit ones...

[@Sparky400]

Why not use mac os's native software raid? Im sire its not as good as what linux can do but i have been using it in my mac pro for s few years now and works great.

[@beauregardslim1914]

I wonder if the Thunderbolt Bridge you were using was responsible for slow disk access over the network. I've always found it slow and buggy.

[@arnone1862]

9:00 I'm pretty sure MacOS and iOS uses the BSD kernel, which is indirectly based on but not completely the UNIX kernel

[@WolfgangsChannel]

macOS is officially UNIX-03 compliant and is certified by The Open Group www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3688.htm

[@iamcRuNcHiE]

I’m using a broken-screen M1 air as a server. Home assistant Os (supervised) runs perfectly in UTM as there is an ARM64 version. Docker I have found has v slow disk access speeds though.

[@skullleader-hw9hi]

SoftRaid and OWC Thunder bay or other JBOD thunderbolt. Using it for network backup target.

[@iblackfeathers]

have you tested your remote connection without the dummy hdmi plugged in to see if it actually made a difference? on the raspberry pi 4 sometimes it is used so you can have better control over the screen resolution remotely independent of what is plugged in for a primary physical monitor. or even used headless so you have different screen options. but in this setup it looks to be plugged in “just in case”. i haven’t plugged in a dummy on my mac mini since i had no remote display issues on any of its implementations and just wondering what benefit it would provide for that setup and what difference that would make.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

I didn’t have to use a dummy plug, like I mentioned in the video

[@davidmullins3802]

I have a 4K one on my Mac Mini. If you have a 4K or 5K Monitor it makes all the difference. If I didn't have to Studio Display I probably won't have wasted my money on the HDMI dongle/ dummy plug. I didn't buy a cheap one either. Mine was like 8.80 off Amazon. If you purchase a 1080p one you get a better resolution but not much for what you pay. Most of the time you are in the Server you are going to install something and get out. Most people aren't in and out of their server like I am.

[@W4ldgeist]

No need for a custom VNC Client. macOS has one built in. It's passable. It's there.

[@bladeart1]

I have a 2011 Mac mini that I want to set up as a server. I’ll be grabbing some of your ideas herein though I know you made everything arm based but you also mentioned Intel equivalents. Thanks for sharing this amazing video

[@samjohnson4831]

Can't get truenas to install on my Mac pro. It'll boot trurnas and I can hit jnstallI on this machine but as it begins to initialize it keeps saying "pci8b power fault error". Any advice?

[@jimcallahan448]

Perhaps a NAS instead of DAS because a NAS would have a CPU and Linux to manage RAID arrays and the file system. The problem is how to get cost effective high speed connectivity. If one could do it with a USB 3.2 cable that would be terrific, but apparently requires ethernet and 10 gig ethernet becomes expensive at both ends. Curious how you get Docker and Rosetta to work together to be able to run amd64 software?

[@ARTCHANIFY]

Really compelling and well-delivered video. Thanks.

[@nichtgestalt]

Thank you very much for the video! I always enjoy your content!

[@Airbag888]

The m1 apple cpu would be amazing on a proper motherboard

[@BaDitO2]

x86 really got good over the past 6 years or so in terms of power efficiency in low to medium loads.

[@timothyvandyke9511]

Oooooh baby I’m excited for the start of the cursed section

[@Putter137]

For vnc client, on the max there’s one built in: command + k

[@davidmullins3802]

Lets me first ask, why use another VNC client? You know Apple has one Built into MacOS it is Screen Sharing. I don't need another VNC client unless I am using my ThinkPad to connect to my Mac Mini. With that question out of the way, I don't own an M1 Mac Mini yet. I am waiting for the M1 Pro chips to come to the Mini lineup. The Mac Studio is overkill for what I need a server for and the M1 is to slow. Besides if I purchased the Studio I would have to buy a new Rack. I do run a Mac as my home server. It is an Intel i5. My software will work on both the M1 and x86 architectures. What do I use my home server for? Well just about everything on my network work. It runs as a Media Server with Apple built in Media Server apps. I am deep in the Apple Ecosystem with the Apple TV and Home Pod. I don't need Plex another Media Server software as of now. I use an app called Subler to get the Meta Data for Media I would like to place on my server that isn't purchased through Apple. It works Great so far. I even run DotNet Core Apps, SMB, Docker &. Time Machine on my server. So, yes it is the Central Part of my network work. With that said I do have a Synology DS920+ as a Backup just in case something fails on the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini is connected to an OWC Thunderbay Mini dock with SSD in it. The only thing my Mac Mini doesn't server up on my Network is DNS & Reverse Proxy. These are done with Synology software. It was quicker and more stable than anything else I could find today. The Synology also backups all the raw apps and files just in case the Time Machine doesn't work correctly if I ever need it. With all that said, let talk about power. While the Intel Machine is idle it draws 15W and the Thunderbay draws 7W. When the Mini is active it draws about 25W with the Thunderbay about 7W. With the Mac M1 Mini only supporting 16GB of ram, that is my biggest reason why I haven't updated it yet. The Intel has 40GB of Ram and can be upgraded to 64GB if I need it. Trust me I can use the 40GB as well. Mac Mini being the center part of my whole network brings great pride to me. Because most people do run all the private software I have on my network. This is my Personal network! Yes, I know that Mac Mini doesn't support ECC ram or at least I don't buy it. I don't really care about it. Yes, in a matter of minutes I could switch to Synology of something else as a home server, but why really. When my Mac Mini just works. I almost forgot, I have all my data SSD in a Raid 0 with Apple Raid software and haven't had an issue yet. I can take the Tunderbay and move it from on Mac to another Mac without an issue.

[@danielriossuarez]

Looking forward to thunderbolt support on Asahi Linux. eGPU, external SATA or NVME…

[@mcguillotine]

The air thermal throttles WAY more than the Mini, it doesn't have active cooling, just passive. So if you get very active sustained stuff the air is gonna poop the bed

[@WolfgangsChannel]

I've been editing and rendering 4K ProRes footage on the Air for over a year, with very decent performance. The claims about thermal throttling are exaggerated

[@singularitatem]

Not to sound like a know it all but there are multiple things wrong in this video. Don't know if this is apple bashing or just being unfamiliar with how it all works. I may have more to say after I complete the video

[@timothyvandyke9511]

“Dig up its corpse” 💀☠️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️

[@ampmx]

Hi Wolfgang, thanks for your videos. I am very interested in the idea of using Thunderbolt for the connection between Macbook and SSD-based NAS instead of expensive 10Gbit adapters. Do you know: can this be implemented on a self-assembled NAS with Thunderbolt? Would any NAS operating systems support this?

[@WolfgangsChannel]

chrisbergeron.com/2021/07/25/ultra-fast-thunderbolt-nas-with-apple-m1-and-linux/

[@guyincognito5663]

Интересное видео, спасибо. Я использую M1 Mac Mini как гибридный девайс, выполняющий некоторые функции сервера (Nextcloud, Jellyfin, etc.). В этом плане он вне конкуренции.

[@trumanhw]

I don't think you have to use RAID with the HighPoint controller, and can instead just use it as an HBA.

[@hstrinzel]

Thank you, Wolfgang, for trying exploring all that. Now I won't feel bad about my simpleton setup: Just a hard disk toaster, plugging in HDDs as needed, and otherwise offline. Also here in Florida we have way lower power costs, as low as 6 cents/kWh

[@lenaisx]

6 cents/kWh is for free on my end!😆

[@barbietripping]

I also use Edovia Screens for remote management because it is so much better performing

[@shalak001]

From the fast glimpse I see You've setup the VNC in macOS using user+password method, right? Did you had any luck using any of the options under "Computer settings" (like "anyone may request" or dedicated VNC password)? I tried using them with VNC Viewer with no luck...

[@zaberchann]

Alternative vm option is orbstack, More suitable for server

[@a.g8517]

great video, thank you so much for your time

[@_jerieljan]

- Transcoding should definitely run on VideoToolbox to be worthwhile. I get significant speed increases when transcoding via ffmpeg or Handbrake on them, so seeing Jellyfin without it kinda hurts to watch. Tdarr maybe? But honestly, the VideoToolbox encodes also take a significant quality hit and is noticeable enough that I actually don't use it for my permanent transcodes. - Stable Diffusion definitely works, but always consider the part that running that consumes a lot of RAM, and Apple Silicon Macs share its VRAM with system memory and is non-expandable. Mine's having difficulty with larger resolutions on a 16GB M1 Pro, I can just imagine the abysmal performance on a base model M1.

[@KimberlyWilliamsch]

"kind of sucks when it comes to server staff" 😂😂😂

[@jjmmfi]

#1 think I would like Apple to add to Macs is wake on lan from shut down stage, whatever c-state Apple would call it. That way you can remotely access your mac without it being always on. The only way to start mac remotely is Apples version of RDM: Enterprice MDM with one Mac with 10G ethernet always running.

[@SilentdragonDe]

Meanwhile my server is still running on X79 with a Xeon 1680V2. But I did get the power consuption below 100 watts at idle, so that's something, right? :D

[@jonathanschober1032]

I’m not sure if CoreStorage can do RAID, but did you investigating using that file system? It’s how macos handle Fusion drives

[@StopTheDictator]

There is new powerful ARM Rockchip rk3588 that can handle 8k. Raxda rock 5b with sata m.2 adapter is good nas/server solution!

[@magicpoopfart8363]

What you said about Docker on Mac is wrong. It doesn't use Rosetta 2, but QEMU to run non-ARM64 images.

[@russt4882]

I ran a OMV5 vm in UTM with a QNAP TR-004 in HW Raid 5 and BTRFS for a while and it worked fine, but I got bored and reconfigured everything again.

[@GbengaOguntuase]

Do you have a video explaining why or how hardware RAID is in fact dead?

[@WolfgangsChannel]

Level1Techs has a video on that: kzbin.info/www/bejne/omaYeJl3rMZriKs

[@swixx55]

So I'm an sever noob, and my needs are small, so if I have an m1 macbook air with an external 4tb ssd (which is enough for me) I want my macbook to be my plex homeserver and nas and minecraft/other game server for 2 a 3 friends. is that possible?

[@WolfgangsChannel]

For sure

[@digitalbarrito3555]

On the note of Jellyfin, I'm fairly certain there is an arm64 image for Jellyfin, at least I assume so since I'm running Jellyfin off of my raspberrypi cm4.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

There is one for Linux (the lsio Docker image I'm running in the video is arm64), but not for Mac unfortunately

[@digitalbarrito3555]

@@WolfgangsChannel Ahhhh, yeah, okay, no clue why my brain decided to disregard the fact that this video was about using MacOS as much as it was the M1 xD

[@theorganizationXII]

Hi! Can you please make a video about something like that but with normal hardare? I was thinking about building a NAS with an Intel NUC or something like that+ a USB enclosure with 4/5 HDDs slots. My biggest fear is if USB is safe to use for mostly a media storage+documents!

[@jimbolia7559]

I didn't see anywhere in your video what you set your allocation unit at when you format your volume. If its too small the parity bit will be larger than the allocation unit causing degraded performance. The default of 4k that Windows uses is only good for small single drives or drives that only write a lot of small files. Typically you will want to up that to 64k or higher.