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Is it practical to host a real production app on a Mac mini?

4 points by yesiamsumit ↗ HN
I want to try out some personal projects, and although personal projects often don't get much traffic, I'd like to make it capable of scaling upto tens of thousands of users. I've seen free tiers of DB providers like cockroachdb, supabase etc, but they seem to be very limited in storage and usage. Will running my apps on a mac mini (each app would have its own docker image) and opened to the public via cloudflare tunnels be a practical approach?

My concern right now is whether the latency would be too high, since I have a residential internet connection (200mbps); and whether I will be able to SSH into my machine if I am not in my hometown (which is like ~50% of the time).

When I say apps, I mean wordpress site, some APIs for mobile apps that I vibecoded, a mysql db, elasticsearch, mongodb etc. Even though I don't have much users right now, I want the infra to be capable of handling it upto ~50k daily users.

Also, any cheaper option than a Mac mini? its pricing has almost doubled in last 1 year

7 comments

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jll29
Wouldn't a virtual cloud server better (e.g. Hetzner) suited for this, at least at the beginning. (Once you know some visitor stats, you can right-size the box and move away from the cloud.)
yesiamsumit
visitor stats is barely anything - almost 0 for now :'( but I want my apps to be able to support a large number of users in case there's some sudden jump.
AnEro
It could be practical, internet speed will be a limitation for sure if it’s hosting a website not just apis. It really depends, also consider vps from hentzer auctions for splitting some services or even a refurbished server from 2016 era they are under valued for sure. How I like to think this through on how much everything is worth is measuring my (personal/organization) capabilities, capacity and quality of life for on going ops and in crisis. How big of an impact is it when things go wrong, how could I fix it and is there a chance it’s irreversible. Basically frame it around risk and your risk tolerance, I prefer to focus spending on ways to make my 2am crisis least stressful budgets allow.

At work I’ve moved us to a hybrid solution where we use cloud for managed database and storage solutions and compute on local servers. I personally prefer to have the budget be spent on the ops/maintenance of the scariest thing losing company data and somehow failing to maintain securing that data. Compute is almost easy to me in comparison, disaster strikes I just switch to another server local or in cloud, let it talk to the database, secure out going access, run my docker compose. More time spent on the write up than the fix. Someone that is a seasoned dba may choose the exact opposite.

dominikz
I was hosting on a PC at home like 10 years ago. The problem was that when I wanted to go to sleep, it was just too noisy. Even if the box was running in a different room. It was also an issue that my ISP was changing the IP from time to time, so I had to update my DNS. And it does not happen in an instance.

15 years ago we also were trying some other approach with friends. It was the time when cloud was not still the buzzword, and buying a dedicated server in a datacenter was just too expensive for us students (back then). So we bought back then a bare-metal Hetzner machine with friends and shared the bill (for a few years). The problem was, as always, when some time elapsed and some folks wanted out, you needed to re-split the bill. As you can imagine it all collapsed.

Today, what I do to solve both problems? I just buy cheap Hetzner Cloud virtual machines. The cost is marginal. Even with their latest price bump. And it solves the other problem I've had with old approaches. When you pack everything on one box, you have a problem after 2-3 years that it's hard to upgrade the OS ... without taking everyting down ... and possibly not be able to take it back up - the OS upgrade is scarry. The small cheap virtual servers allow you to take the OS upgrade risk-free.

Have you considered how much electricity will that computer @home eat? My hosting at home made me learn it the hard way (it was a regular linux based PC eating a lot of current). I think you have to factor in the hardware + electricity cost in order to estimate what's cheaper.

yesiamsumit
Mac mini won't consume too much electricity, its processor is ARM based. It'll probably cost few cents a day to run.

with hetzner, the closest comparable option (16gb ram, 8 core ampere cpu) with a base model mac mini will annually cost almost 50% of the mac mini price. so cost wise, mac mini is equal to 2 years of hetzner vm. (comparing prices as of today for both, earlier mac mini used to be quite cheap).

I already have residential internet. The only downside is having to ensure uninterrupted power and internet. and also the friction of connecting remotely via ssh.