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

Follow me:

Support the channel:

Music:
Lolek – Cruise Control
Meod – Crispy Cone
Kitrano – Slow Evening
Vladislav Kurnikov – Saturday Morning
Steven Beddall – Cuts So Deep (Instrumental Version)
Vladislav Kurnikov – A New Time
Delavoh – Always With Me (Instrumental Version)

Videos are edited with Davinci Resolve Studio. I use Affinity Photo for thumbnails and Ableton Live for audio editing.

Video gear:

Other stuff that I use:

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:05 Hardware setup
03:23 OS and software
05:15 Preparations and benchmarks
08:52 Remote management and CLI tools
10:20 Docker
12:20 Native applications and VMs
15:30 Final thoughts

[mQumboz]

time for an updated video with m4 mac mini! I'm curious to find what people will do with it

[urgx]

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.

[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!

[ivanmalinovski]

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.

[jaguarke]

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…

[chrisd]

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!

[Timmy]

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

[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.

[KalosLikesComputers]

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

[alexey_kazakov]

Спасибо, Вольфганг, как всегда очень познавательно.

[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).

[aloispetutschnig]

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.

[ARTCHANIFY]

Really compelling and well-delivered video. Thanks.

[yunomi]

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.

[nichtgestalt]

Thank you very much for the video! I always enjoy your content! <3

[Timi]

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.

[a.g]

great video, thank you so much for your time

[johnadams]

you’ll have to revisit this with M4 Mac Mini if you get the funds to buy one!

[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

[ldersovski]

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