Selfhosted

39435 readers

2 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Anyone self hosting on Mac mini M1/M2? (self.selfhosted)

submitted 6 months ago by SuperFola to c/[email protected]

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

since I already have a Mac for work I was wondering how suitable a Mac Mini M1/M2 would be for a homelab?

Suitable yes, if you want to do it... maybe or maybe not. Here's a few pointers:

Debian can be installed on those machines, however I'm not sure how power management works properly:
Installation isn't as straightforward and as easy as in another systems because Apple decided to keep pushing the usual ARM bullshit of not including a proper UEFI with the system;
Some stuff will be broker, but you most likely don't need it for self-hosting;
If you keep macOS around you may have good luck with virtualizing Debian using UTM or VMware. Debian's arm64 images will run at optimal performance on that hardware.

If you're about to spend money I would grab an HP Mini unit with a "T" CPU, those will downclock really hard and you can get a i5-10500T (on ebay) for around 250€... and everything will work fine out of the box. An i7-8500T model also sells for 150€ or something like that.

Have a look at those CPU benchmarks (last one is probably yours):

If you're looking for power efficiency the newer CPUs are always better. Those mini units will downclock and idle at around 9-12W depending on hardware configuration but Apple should be able to do better - at least assuming you've power management working.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4104vs4922vs3768vs3231vs1287/Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MHz-vs-Apple-M2-8-Core-3500-MHz-vs-Intel-i5-10500T-vs-Intel-i5-8500T-vs-Intel-Xeon-X3430