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Mac Mini Hosting, - Questions to community.
Hello, I gonna try be straightforward, to the point no AI slop 
I want to know if there are any obvious issues, or concerns with my proposed hosting model, e.g laws, security concerns and most importantly viable?
I own multiple complex's of apartments, in multiple countries of Europe, all of my buildings have similar setups, they are well connected with lease business lines, 10gbps, only one building below this.
I have a unique partnership that allows me access to large number of Mac Mini's in all configurations for pretty much free (70% off), I love tech always been in hosting scene, but never considered doing it while focusing on my other passions.
Is there a market for this? I personally use them for private AI model usage, I ask as the cost in utilities for these devices, and use of the network will be negligible, majority of our apartments are residential, and would fit within normal usage allowances we pay for.
So the question, can I host 30-40 or so, per complex legally? should I? and would people even buy them because of the setup no Tier 3 DC, just a full time staffed apartment block. Even if I could be 1/3 of the price of any provider?
Comments
That sounds pretty HighEnd to me
I used to rent one at Hetzner for app development, which worked well.
Apple Neo hosting when?
At this point might as well host some iPhones
The idea stems from upgrades to one of our facilities, really good tech infrastructure for future plans, goal to set ourselves ahead of the property market.
It would really be some extra cashflow, but I do think it could be a solid service I think Mac Mini's are really powerful, stocking only m4+ chips, I'd aim to be at around 30/m for a base model.
Really just wondering if anyone had perspective on the laws of doing this in a commercial building, and if mac's have enough of a market since the AI boom, and there chip's being in a really good price / performance range.
There is definitely a market for them with app development and AI workloads. The performance is really good considering how much power it draws.
Oh yeah renting mac vms are relatively expensive and kept me away from purchasing for app development. I don't care about Tier DC for such a use case assuming you're providing cheaper price than what is out there. Legal part I do not know about. Good luck with determining if you're going ahead with this project.
That depends entirely on where you're located in Europe. But, this would generally be unproblematic as it's not using space that is allocated for living/residential purposes.
If you're honest with your customers about the conditions they are hosted in, you'll probably do okay. People here will buy servers hosted anywhere.
My only words of advice, don't underestimate how much heat a significant amount of these will put out, they will still require some sort of cooling solution.
I think it'd be pretty interesting for people just starting out and looking into iOS dev but don't have a Mac
$7?
Well, not sure what I was expecting but I feel sentiments have been shared for most part, could work but small market which was expected, so I'm going to heavily consider it and reach out to some advisors.
Countries for note would be UK, NL and Spain, but maybe not UK as internet has never been perfect, no matter how much we pay.
Wouldn't the better business plan be selling these mac minis at 50% off RRP?
If your client logged in into his iCloud and turn on Lost mode. What's your next move?
https://macstadium.com/orka-desktop
https://al-support.apple.com
As one who ended up on LET while looking specifically for a macOS VPS for a once-off usecase, I can certainly say that more competition and price pressure would be welcome to see in that niche. In fact, I did contact a guy who had a set up along the lines you're thinking of, so I can confirm it was not a barrier in my eyes.
I have given a thought about racking some Mac Mini's, you can circumvent that with setting up a MDM, there is even some free and open source versions for this technology.
One's with 10G network card, even have LOM, so you can remotely stop/start/reboot even if they are powered off, if you sacrifice one mac mini to be a controller for this operation.
@3K33 sadly it may work only on 10G = more money.
https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/lights-out-management-payload-settings-dep580cf25bc/web
I have mentioned it in my original message already
Apple docs on iCloud lock/Activation Lock https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/activation-lock-depf4ab94ef1/web
good idea. this is often how companies start. Cutting costs by using available free space and available bandwidth. But at some point these costs will show up maybe not now but when you outgrow your environment or want to professionalize your bedroom datacenter.