Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s because the power button is on the bottom.
also hot air rises, and the vent is on the bottom
Fans can move a lot more air than convection.
Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
31–40 of 106 posts
Re: Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
#32You'd think that from an environmental point of view, Apple would be able to sell packs of Mac Mini boards without the case and packaging for people doing this; with no physical board or electronic change, it would be easy.
Re: Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
#33https://www-uploads.scaleway.com/Mac_mini_rack_1_e31ad1da6e.... This is not the image I expected to encounter under the title, “high density”. Make those sleds taller and do three, maybe four per sled with a pair of large diameter fans. That’ll would be high density. This is medium at best.
It might be that they're limited by something else in their existing racks; say power or networking ports, so this is an easy hack to get into their existing rack scheme.
Re: Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
#34not sure why the attach rpi for every mac mini, wouldn't it be cheaper to have one rpi and 9 mac minis connectd to 10 port switch? I also wished one day to make cluster out of Apple TVs - they are very cheap (~150usd for version with ethernet) and most likely the new upcoming version will have more powerful A-series apple sillicon. I guess tvOS is just very restricted.
They’re connected to a single USB-C cable. For many technical reasons you can’t have a simple kvm which switches inputs. You’ll need to continuously power all 9 minis some way.
All nine USB-C cables will need a continuous, active connection.
To do this, you will need a smart controller that switches which port it’s talking to.
Or you can stick a relatively cheap device on every mini and and connect it to the network.
Having a “controller” for every mini means you can swap single units in both hardware and software very easily. There’s a one-to-one relationship and you don’t have to deal with pairing.
Re: Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
#35The annoying thing is that Apple still makes proper servers, they just don't sell them anymore.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/in-the-loop/2025/10/shipping-...
I guess the Mac Pro Rack Edition technically exists, but that's needlessly huge (5U!) for a single node, ungodly expensive, and doesn't have server amenities like a BMC, so it's not exactly flying off the shelves.
Re: Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
#36How does the Pi communicate with the Mini? Software stack? Zero details and useful information in this post.
Yeah, I was hoping for more detail as well. I'm guessing they did something similar to what I did to make my Pi control computers.[0]
The Raspberry Pi 4 can emulate a USB keyboard and mouse, and there are inexpensive adapters that allow it to capture display output. You can also hook it up to a relay to cycle power for an external device.
Re: Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
#37The annoying thing is that Apple still makes proper servers, they just don't sell them anymore. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/in-the-loop/2025/10/shipping-... I guess the Mac Pro Rack Edition technically exists, but that's needlessly huge (5U!) for a single node, ungodly expensive, and doesn't have server amenities like a BMC, so it's not exactly flying off the shelves.
This sounds rather entitled. They’re building their own servers for their infrastructure needs. No different than any of the other behemoths with their own data centers.
Re: Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
#38Reminded me how Victor Taelin built his distributed computing cluster using those. https://xcancel.com/VictorTaelin/status/1901661374444392951#...
Re: Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
#39Re: Scaleway turns Mac Minis into high‑density, Raspberry Pi–managed servers
#40https://www-uploads.scaleway.com/Mac_mini_rack_1_e31ad1da6e.... This is not the image I expected to encounter under the title, “high density”. Make those sleds taller and do three, maybe four per sled with a pair of large diameter fans. That’ll would be high density. This is medium at best.
My guess is its the size of the blades.
e.g. https://servermall.com/fr/sets/serveurs-blade-dell/?srsltid=...