Mac Mini Homelab

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Hands on learning aka cosplaying a Sys-Admin

Hardware Options

I've left out the SSD Storage from all of these options since that wouldn't change much between the choices.

The Choice

❌ Raspberry Pi

Why not? I had a Pi 3b, 4, and 400 to use in the Raspberry Pi Array. However, while running the PhotoPrism server on the Pi 4, I burned through my second SD card. On that same day, my Pi-hole instance running on Docker on my Pi 3 caused the logs to overflow, which must have been the final blow because it swiftly ended its life on decision day. Much of this could have been user error, but that was enough of an omen for this boy from Salem, MA.

❌ Mini PC Intel NUC

Why not? Articles like this one scared me away from the Intel NUC (opens in a new tab).
Also I'd needed to figure out a place to put this mini computer and I started to wonder if I'd be listening to these fans run all day.

❌ Build my own Desktop

Why not? Honestly, because I wouldn't be able to help myself and keep myself to a reasonable budget. I also didn't know where to put a tower in the office and didn't want to tradeoff fan noise for the size of the tower.
Do I regret not building a tower with a beefy GPU in this new age of LLMs? Not yet. I'm able to run local LLMs on my macbook but anything I want to test out I can run via an API and pay a few dollars instead of the additional cost of a wild GPU.

✅ Winner: Mac Mini

Mac Mini Performance

Why? First thing is first, the 8GB of Ram almost was a dealbreaker, but so was the initial SSD storage on this base Mac Mini. The Apple tax is too high for storage and I even was frustrated with myself for deciding to support this poorly speced base model machine. The limitations are obvious but real. I don't have much of an issue with the Jellyfin server or the PhotoPrism server (stores 20k photos).

Ease of Use

I'm able to quickly view the screen of the mac mini from my Macbook to debug any possible issues. The ease and speed of the Mac Screen sharing software doesn't get its flowers very often but it does today! The sharing was an unintended benefit of the Mac Mini. While running a Jellyfin Server, my wife is able to go into finder and download any files from there onto her macbook.

Electricity Comsumption + Fans

The Mac's M Series chips made it so the power draw for this homelab would be nearly as minimal as the other options (excluding the Desktop PC build) while being more performant while being silent in the office.

Unintended benefit

I'm able to use the Mac Mini for Github Actions local runner for a Swift App's Build/Deploy

Runner Up - Build your own Destkop

Maybe next time... Then again, by then I'll be running LLMs locally on a low-powered server...

Final note: I'm working on a way to leave comments... I'm between using a Mastadon server or setting up Disqus