Customer Reviews

Apple Mac Mini MC438LL/A Server (OLD VERSION)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's been a few days since these were announced and we've already installed 30 of them here at Macminicolo. (We host them as servers in our data center.) Here is what you need to know:

1) The image above is not correct (as of 6/18/10). This mini does not have an optical drive and instead has two hard drives. You can use optical drives of other Macs on your network though.

2) The two drives total 1TB. YOu can use them separate or in RAID configurations. New in this version are the 7200RPM drives (up from 5400 in the last version.

3) Apple now officially supports 8GB of RAM in these minis. Eight GB was unofficially supported in the last version, but did work fine.

4) These minis are quiet, don't get hot, and use hardly any power. Amazing build and design went into this machine.

5) If you buy this mini and want to upgrade the RAM, Apple has made it very easy. Just twist the bottom and put in the RAM. No tools required.

6) This Mac mini comes with an unlimited license of Snow Leopard Server. No yearly seat costs, not license per user. Totally unlimited.

7) The SD card slot can read SDXC. That's not a big deal now,but will definitely be so in the future. That standard can support up to 2TB. So, as that technology comes, this mini will be future proof. (In Theory, this means you could have 3TB of data in this mini. Incredible.)

8) The video card has been upgraded and is a great addition.

9) The power brick is now inside the Mac mini. (It used to be a huge white brick nearly the size of the mini itself.) This is very much welcome.

So overall, great machine. Nice to see the nice new look.

I bought this Mac Mini Server basically because it was the quietest machine I could find that could also function as a HTPC/media player into my TV ( a projector actually). I could have bought the regular version but chose the server edition so that I could get a full 1TB of storage space, which allows me to also use this a as a quiet NAS for my home network.

Now I'm not really a computer geek but I liked the convenience this thing could offer. Setting it up wasn't easy but with some reading the manual as well as some guides on setting up OSX server I was able to succesfully set it up to play to my TV was well as to link up to the home network on my router so it can network with the three laptops we have in the house running Windows 7. So in that sense it doable for the average user, but you do have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and learn a bit about networking and server management. It's not stuff I knew about before - but I sure do now. That said, in all fairness the server control panel on this Mac Mini Server is a lot more user friendly than on my Windows server.

I wanted to control the Mac Mini server without having to turn on the projector that it feeds. I found that I could do this with a software called a VNC client. I use one by Mocha. I works perfectly well. As a backup to that I have a wireless Mac keyboard and trackpad, as well as an iphone VNC client. I would caution that the iphone VNC client is really mostly a gimmick, as the screen is very small and its really more useful for just checking that all is well than actually doing anything heavy duty. For real work the laptop-based VNC client is far better.

With the server set up with VLC media player and Plex, this box has replaced both my Squeezebox music and my Popcorn hour media player. Which is no mean feat, as both of those are pretty good in their own right.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this thing. It is dead silent sitting in my living room, yet it does everything I need. That's just a whole new ballgame when it comes to PC's to be honest.

The only criticism I would make is that so far there are no matching external hard drive out there that go with this new Mac Mini. So if you want to extend the storage then you have to either accept tacking on an ugly, non matching drive, or hiding the whole set up.

No, that's not true - I do have another criticism, which is that at a thousand dollars the price of this thing is quite high. That said, there simply are not other full power PCs that look this good or can operate at 14 decibels of silence in the middle of your living room, so I guess I didnt have a choice really. But I do hope more companies try to take Apple on here - so we can get this sort of thing cheaper!

This is an amazing little box. I replaced a big loud HP server at my home office with the mac mini server in about a day. Not only am I able to host a site using Apache, PHP, and MySQL but I was able to install Windows Server 2008 using Parallels and host sites using IIS, ASP.NET, and MS Sql Server at the same time. You can get the best of both worlds using this server. I used Apple's USB ethernet adapter (which you can find on Amazon) to give the virtualized Windows Server it's own network interface so I can treat it as a completely separate entity on the firewall.

So far it's been running just fine with the 4 gigs of RAM but you do have the option to upgrade to 8 later if you need to.

I highly recommend this server to anyone who needs one at a home/small office. Even if you need to run Windows Server, this little box can handle it.

I do not recommend this for the average user, stick to the regular mac mini if you do not need a server.

Of course, another wonderful product from Apple. We use it for hosting Subversion repos, file serving, VPN connections, and so on. It handles all of these tasks beautifully. The remote Server Tools and built-in screen sharing making it a joy to run this machine headless. And like many have said before, Remote Disc is as easy as you could possibly want borrowing another machine's CD/DVD drive to be.

But I do have some complaints.

For starters, it's pretty chilly in the office since replacing the old server and I don't like the cold. Not one bit. The old server put off so much heat that it did a good bit to combat the draftiness of our giant-windowed office. If we did get cold, we could go sit by the server and warm ourselves up. Or we could just run some crypto to really get it generating some BTUs. Not so with the Mac Mini--it's barely warm to the touch.

Second, it's far too quiet. In fact, it doesn't make any noise at all. Sometimes I freak out and think "OMG, is our server still on?!" Then, I open up a Web page it's serving or access a file on one of its bountiful hard drives, and breathe a sigh of relief. But still, those momentary freak-outs can't be good for my heart. I'm not twenty anymore.

Lastly, it's barely larger than our router. Sitting over there with the rest of the networking equipment, one might confuse it for a common network appliance. Come on! It's our server--it should look menacing and massive. If thieves broke in, they might not even think to steal it. "Oh, what's that over there?" said Bob Thief. "That's just the modem and stuff; they give that stuff to you," replied Roger Thief.

Long story short, the Mac Mini server version is a fantastic machine but don't count on it to keep the office warm.

I got the server version of the Mac Mini because of 3 main reasons:

1) Comes with two 500GB hard drives for a total of 1TB. Yes, you do not get a DVD drive with this. I was able to use a 2 year old USB Sony DVD writer no problem. I only had to use the drive once when I first installed additional software onto the machine, and I have not found myself missing the DVD drive at all since then.

2) High performance 7200 rpm hard drives

3) Faster 2.66 process standard

4) Has all kinds of server goodies built-in for free. It's like a Small Business Office In A Box. By the way, you don't have to use the server features if you don't want to.

* Best of all, you can run all the normal desktop apps on it just like on a regular Mac. We have Aperture, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. running on it no problem.

Other PROS:

- Compact. Great looking design.

- Very Quiet

- Great as a central photo store for the whole family. We used the Aperture 3 library management feature and are able to merge photos in from multiple people. Users can also "checkout" a subset of the library for editing, and them re-merge it back it. Pretty handy.

- There is a feature for you to take over (remote control) the server remotely over the network, from another Mac. This is very handy.

Cons:

- Keyboard and mouse not included (I guess I am used to getting these with a PC)

It's a very good compact machine. It sexy and runs quiet! However the super compact design does raise the temperature quickly to 80 C mark and stays there when the CPU is above 95% for a minute or longer. You can cool down external body temperature by using small external fan blowing air toward the unit.

It's fully loaded with server applications. You may also install Windows OS on the second drive/partition, after installing Windows OS run BootCamp installer to install drivers and enjoy both at native speed.

One star is taken out because BootCamp is not included in supplied software discs, you may need to use Mac Mini Desktop software disc for bootcamp.

I think the pic is the desktop. The server doesn't have the DVD drive, requires external.

I bought and loved the last generation of the mini server, with the 5400 rpm drive. And this new one is even better.

I have mine hosted at Brian Stucki's macminicolo.net service and have not actually seen my unit, but it performs amazingly quickly with the improved processor and drive and can handle the server load of a small business. Brian's review hit the strong points well as he's an expert, hosting a multitude of these machines for his business.

I'd add that I would recommend it as a server or an all around personal computer. (You get the amazing OS 10.6 Server OS included in the sub-$1000 price, but can install plain OS X if you like). It's fast and with the dual drives you have options for mirroring, backup, or even a full 1 TB of drive space.

Also the standard speed and 4GB of RAM makes it a very capable machine for both OS X server apps and custom server software processes (both of which I have been using steadily with total satisfaction).

This box has to be the best server for the money Apple has offered yet. Don't be fooled by the form factor. This box rocks!

I just wonder why Apple hung on to this size computer for so long. If they wanted to offer a better/faster server they could have continued the X-serv line. But I'm just blown away with the horsepower of this little gem.

This little server is capable of just about everything advertised. The only caution is even though Mac Server OS can support multiple NICs, you only get one with the Mini and there is not the option of adding another.