About This Site



Macminicolo.net is the leader in colocating Mac minis to be used as servers. We've put together this site for those considering a Mac mini as their own dedicated server. Please let us know how we can help.

From our experience, the Mac mini as a server has been quite reliable. In our 3+ years of hosting hundred of Mac minis, we’ve seen only 7 hardware problems. Six of those were hard drives that died in their third year of hosting. (All six were original G4 Mac minis.) The seventh hardware problem was a power brick that went bad.

This is a very low percentage of failures.

Part of the reason our numbers are so good is because of the optimal environment. The temperature, power and humidity are very closely controlled.

The biggest worry is the laptop-style hard drive that a Mac mini uses. However, they tend to be quite reliable becuase unlike a laptop, the Mac mini is stationary and doesn’t get moved, dropped, and jostled.

If you want to serve up your Filemaker Databases to the outside world, Filemaker Server and a Mac mini make a great combination.

For an Intel mini, Filemaker recommends any a Dual Core CPU, 2GB of RAM, and an 80+ GB hard drive. All of these specs can easily be matched with a Mac mini.

We have a lot of customers who needed to get their databases in a place that they could connect from anywhere in the world. Filemaker Server, a Mac mini server, and Macminicolo.net fit the bill perfectly.

With more and more of our lives becoming digital, it is important for people to have access to their data all the time. The Mac mini is a great tool for serving files.

Mac minis come with up to 160GB hard drives now. They also have plenty of ports where you can connect multiple terabytes of data.

To create a file server out of your Mac mini, you just go into System Preferences and click on the “Sharing” pane. There you will see a checkbox next to “File Sharing.” Just click on that box and you’re ready to go as an AFP server. (Connect to it using afp:// followed by your ip address.)

A few things to consider:

• Under the options tab, you can also choose to serve files using FTP and SMB.
• To get the most from your machine, you’ll want to have a static ip so it can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
• The “Sharing Pane” also allows for you to set different folders with different permissions. You can set up each user with their own logins so they can access only their own files.

Daylite is becoming more and more popular. It’s a powerful tool that will let you keep your business organized and productive. A couple years ago, I setup a law firm in Las Vegas to run all of their clients with Daylite and it has worked great.

Since Daylite acts as both a server and a client, the Mac mini is a popular option to run the server part. Obviously keeping the database off the workstations will help you avoid trouble.

Many people want to be able to access their databases from anywhere in the world. To do this effectively, you’ll want a static ip address for your Mac mini and fast upload speed.

We’ve seen an increase in our customers running Daylite. It’s obviously becoming a popular Mac application.

If you’re looking to have your database more accessable, here are ten reason to host Daylite with Macminicolo.

A Mac mini works great as a Remote Time Machine. You just need to:

• Enable File Sharing
• Give each user their own login for security.
• Plug in an external hard drive for plenty of space

After that, the user will just need to connect to the drive using afp://000.000.000.000 (ip address) and they can backup using Time Machine.

Another option is using a Time Capsule for an Remote Time Machine. The benefit is the huge, server grade drive. The drawback is that there is only one login available so each user will have to use the same one. At Macminicolo.net, we colocate Time Capsule for Time Machine.

A Mac mini can run (and restart) without using a monitor, keyboard or mouse.

No, Mac OS X is incredibly capable right out of the box.

With the regular Mac OS X (Leopard) you would be able to host multiple websites, act as a file server, have remote control, and run PHP, mySQL, etc. All of this can be done with no extra cost.

There are also a lot of third party applications under $20 that will help you set up mail servers, databases, TFTP servers, and just about anything else you’d want to do.

It used to be that to have remote control ability on Mac OS X it took third party applications. In Tiger they introduced a built in VNC server which is convenient. Now in Leopard, they include a built in VNC client called “Screen Sharing.”

This is actually the application that is used for “Back To My Mac” or to “Share Screen” with local machines on your network. But, it can also be used as a VNC client to any machine. It’s probably most convenient if you take the app and put it in your Dock. It’s located in /System/Library/CoreServices/Screen Sharing.

There are also other ways to open the app on demand.

In Safari, you can type “vnc://ip_address” in the URL bar, replacing “ip_address” with the actual address of the remote Mac.

In Finder, you can “Connect To Server” (Commank+K) and type it there as well.
Doing either of these things will open the application, begin the connection, and return asking for your login.

(Of course, to have any of this to work, you’ll need to be sure to have either “Screen Sharing” or “Remote Management” activated in your System Preferences -> Sharing panel.)

The Mac mini has no problem with high traffic sites. The processor is more than powerful, and 2GB of RAM really helps with database lookups. (i.e., mySQL lookups for Wordpress)

When I owned FreeMacWare.com, we were averaging 1.2 million hits per month on our wordpress install. Our Mac mini handled it without a problem.