I bought a Mac Mini instead of a $10,000+ Server

Making videos takes up a lot of storage space. Literally terabytes. And while I

space. Literally terabytes. And while I do have this epic 45 drive storage, 200 terb of hard drives in there, 18 ZeonW cores, many gigabytes of RAM, heck,

there's even a GPU for transcoding. Hard

drives, they're just not that great for video editing. I mean, sure, they can be

video editing. I mean, sure, they can be made to work. You sprinkle a little SSD and RAM caching in there. But this NAS, it was never built for that. And as it's gotten fuller and fuller, it's gotten

slower and slower.

>> Fortunately, our friends over at Kioxia heard my cries and sprung into action, sending over this pair of absolutely

insane 30 terbte CM7 Enterprise NVME SSDs. These are PCIe Gen 5, baby, for me

SSDs. These are PCIe Gen 5, baby, for me to build my very own high-speed video editing server and give old Bessie here a break. It's just that things have been

a break. It's just that things have been really busy. And in those few months of

really busy. And in those few months of procrastination, everything computer related has gotten obscenely expensive. I think my dream editing

expensive. I think my dream editing server is just going to have to wait.

What can't wait is the YouTube videos.

So, I need something else to plug these into. What about a Mac? I've never used

into. What about a Mac? I've never used a Mac as a NAS before. I mean, I do have this Mac Mini conveniently sitting right here. You want me to pair that with 60

here. You want me to pair that with 60 TB of enterprise SSDs? Huh. When you

think about it, these Mac minis, they're so cheap for $3.99 USD with an M4. It's

base as it gets. It doesn't have 10 gig Ethernet. We don't need that where we're

Ethernet. We don't need that where we're going. But what it does have is a heart

going. But what it does have is a heart of gold. 10 Apple M4 cores, 100 plus GB

of gold. 10 Apple M4 cores, 100 plus GB of memory, bandwidth, only gigabit Ethernet, but it doesn't matter because we have not one, not two, but three

Thunderbolt 4 ports. All of that for $3.99. It's frankly overkill if we were

$3.99. It's frankly overkill if we were to plug hard drives into this, which to be honest, I probably should have started with that before jumping all the way up to these.

Now, these aren't the actual drives we're going to be using. These are some mixeduse PCIe Gen 4 drives. These are

quite stout. They are 6.4 TB, but the main story here is being mixeduse optimized. Their right speeds are way

optimized. Their right speeds are way faster than the SSDs I've used from Kyokia before, but we're getting some 30 TB drives. They're in the mail right

TB drives. They're in the mail right now, but I simply could not wait to try this. It's not like we need the 30 TB

this. It's not like we need the 30 TB drives if I can't even get this to work.

Anyways, and this is how we're going to do it. At least in theory. I don't know

do it. At least in theory. I don't know how to say the name. Treb trebblelet.

But Inside this very box. Oh my

god. Oh boy. You know, I could have done this in a tasteful manner. Is this

Thunderbolt to U.2 enclosure. And not

just one of them. I've got two. I even

got this freaking 25 gigabit Thunderbolt dock. So, we're going to be taking

dock. So, we're going to be taking advantage of all three of our Thunderbolt ports. And I didn't even

Thunderbolt ports. And I didn't even realize, but this actually has a pass through port. So, I could probably take

through port. So, I could probably take like two more of these and use four drives, but it would start to get kind of expensive. I mean, they have a

of expensive. I mean, they have a Thunderbolt 4 version, but I think it's getting phased out. So, this is definitely on the pricier side. We're

not going to be able to take advantage of all of that speed, but we still have 40 Gbit or so to work with. So, we

should be able to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to 4 GB per second out of each of these SSDs, including the 30 TB drives when we get those. So, we can have a 60 TB Mac Mini. I do wonder how

loud this is going to be. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it's going to be way quieter than a proper server. So, I

mean, I'm not going to complain too much. I think there's the power brick.

much. I think there's the power brick.

12vt, 4 amps, 48 watts. I could actually replace this with USBC if I wanted, maybe. Huh. Hey, look at that. So, I

maybe. Huh. Hey, look at that. So, I

mean, the cooling design, I think, makes a lot of sense. It's just a giant block of like extruded aluminum on the bottom there, and then the fan blows right on the SSD. It's just that like every

the SSD. It's just that like every commercial SSD like this is not designed for air flow from that direction. It's

meant for the air to flow front to back like it would in a server. This is going to be the easiest server build of my life.

And if you're interested in this Treble Thunderbolt 5 U.2 enclosure, they also have some M.2 two enclosures or the 25 gig dongle or a Mac Mini. I'll have

links down in the description where you can get all of those. This thing is so cool. I've bought 25 gig dongles for

cool. I've bought 25 gig dongles for Thunderbolt before from I think Sonnet or ADO and they're like a,000 USD plus.

This light one from Raiden Digit is a dual 25 gig hub. So, it also has SD cards. It's got Thunderbolt passer. It's

cards. It's got Thunderbolt passer. It's

got type A ports. It's got display port.

It's got a fan. And I think they're like 360 USD right now. And look how cute it is. They even include the Thunderbolt

is. They even include the Thunderbolt cable. You need a power cable, 140 watt

cable. You need a power cable, 140 watt ready, and 140 watt gallium nitride charging brick for that money. Honestly,

kind of a steal of a deal. Of course,

since this dock is only Thunderbolt 3, we have a max of 40 GB before overhead even. So, we're not going to be able to

even. So, we're not going to be able to take advantage of like 50 GB of networking here. But you can at least

networking here. But you can at least use the two ports for say high availability to a switch and our definitely very highly available Mac NAS. At a certain point, the story isn't

NAS. At a certain point, the story isn't so much the raw read and write speed. I

mean, sure, we can ingest media from a bunch of cards really fast, and that's great, but my hard drive NAS can do that, too. The story here is about

that, too. The story here is about random reads and writes. When an editor is editing away on a video and they're scrubbing around the timeline or they have to change a bunch of clips or search the directory for a bunch of

clips, it'll be fine until that hard drive NAS runs out of cash. And at that point, it'll become dog. One of these SSDs could run laps around all 30 of the

hard drives in my hard drive base NAS.

Multiple laps.

And that's what we're going for. Let's

turn the Mac on. I'm so nervous. Well,

look at that. Thunderbolt Ethernet slot one port one. That's working. How fast

it's at 10 gig right now. That's good to see. Okay, so we've got at least 10 GB

see. Okay, so we've got at least 10 GB Ethernet. Wow, that thing's getting

Ethernet. Wow, that thing's getting warm. And look at that. Both of our SSDs

warm. And look at that. Both of our SSDs are detected. This is good news. The

are detected. This is good news. The

core pieces here are working. All that

we have left to figure out, very small, very, very small part of the puzzle is the software. It's not actually a small

the software. It's not actually a small part of the puzzle. It is this kind of the whole it's the whole thing. I

honestly have no idea if Mac OS has like a built-in software raid. Windows of

course does. I mean, it's not great, but it at least works. Yo, there is. What I

mean, I guess it makes sense. I just had no idea. We're not going to do this in

no idea. We're not going to do this in the long term if this system actually works at all. But I'm going to do a RAID zero. So, we'll be splitting any files

zero. So, we'll be splitting any files we write to it across both of the drives and getting the performance of both. I

don't know what's going to be the best chunk size. If you're using this for

chunk size. If you're using this for something like a database where the file entry Harlo, what are you doing?

Can I help you? When you're making array, you want the chunk size, which is the pieces it breaks the files into, to be sized according to your workload. So,

if you're running a database on this, you would want the chunk size to be as small as possible. Because if they're giant chunk sizes, anytime it needs to access say 4 kilobyt of data, it's going

to have to read 128 or 256 kilobytes, which is really inefficient. For my use case where it's big video files, I could make this pretty big. Give me a slight benefit for sequential read and writes

maybe, but this is all so overkill.

Anyways, I'm just going to do 128k. Look

at that. We got speedy boy 12 terabytes.

Can't wait till that says 60.

Ew, it's reading at almost 7 GB a second. And okay, to be clear, one of

second. And okay, to be clear, one of these SSDs can read easily at 7 GB per second. They can hit that all day pretty

second. They can hit that all day pretty much, which is kind of the glory of these Kyioci SSDs. But to see that on this Mac and soon to be with 60 terb of storage, boom. Oh, that's cooking. It's

storage, boom. Oh, that's cooking. It's

hitting like 2.6 GB a second. That's

pretty quick. That's about as fast as our network speed will probably go. So,

at the very least, we should be able to saturate this network card. And the SSDs work. I mean, even just with Mac OS

work. I mean, even just with Mac OS native RAID. Is Is this just going to be

native RAID. Is Is this just going to be that easy?

The 30 TB SSDs arrived. Woohoo. Give me

all the terabytes. Oh, look at that.

Treble TBT5. Let's go.

Both of our docs are showing, but neither of our SSDs are showing. they

might not be compatible with these docs.

There's some weirdness with PCE Gen 5, certain firmwares on certain drives not being compatible with certain like U.2

U.3 controllers. So, I'm not entirely like shocked. Let me try it in the Mac

like shocked. Let me try it in the Mac Mini. They're probably not going to work

Mini. They're probably not going to work with the Mac Mini either, but at the very least, we can put the CD6 drives back in and then uh I'll still have a very fast NVME NAS on a $400 Mac Mini.

Let's see.

Nope.

H I feel so destroyed right now. Usually

when you just plug a Gen 5 drive into a computer that's only Gen 4, the drive just goes, "Oh crap." And then slows itself down to work. But in this case,

it is not. But we are not lost. We will

put our these ones back in and continue forward. Clearly, our SSDs are plenty of

forward. Clearly, our SSDs are plenty of fast in this configuration for what we're trying to do, which is great to see. But for this Mac to become a NAS or

see. But for this Mac to become a NAS or network attached storage, we need to get this storage not just attached to the Mac, it also needs to attach to our network. And luckily for us, Apple

network. And luckily for us, Apple actually includes a way to share the storage on your Mac across the network.

You just go into system settings, search for file sharing, and turn it on. We

also need to select what folder we want to share because by default it's just going to share the public folder. So

we'll go in here and select our speedy boy. And now our RAID zero SSDs are

boy. And now our RAID zero SSDs are being shared across the network. And to

test that I have my personal MacBook Pro over here also with another one of our fancy 25 gig dongles. I've connected

them both together with a Ubiquiti 25 gig SFP28 cable and then configured static IPs on both sides so that we can individually mount each Mac. This is not the long-term plan. and we'll have to

put it down in the rack in a little bit, but for now, we can at least test it and see how fast it goes. And then we'll click connect. Hey, look at that. You're

click connect. Hey, look at that. You're

also going to want to hit the options button over here and enable Windows file sharing for the user that you're using.

Otherwise, non-Maxs won't be able to connect properly. But if you're like me

connect properly. But if you're like me and you want to be able to access the files on your Mac Mini Nest when you're not home, an awesome way to do so is with today's sponsor, Twate. Twate lets

you access your network remotely in a secure way, kind of like a private VPN.

But unlike most of those, it's actually really easy to set up. You just install the Twin Gate connector. We'll use

Docker Desktop on our Mac Mini for that.

It even generates the command for you.

And within seconds, our Mac Mini is ready to be accessed from anywhere without the security risk of port forwarding. I mean, check it out. I'm

forwarding. I mean, check it out. I'm

watching a video on my iPhone from our Speedy Boy NAS with Twin Gate over cellular right now. And now that the connector is installed, you can share other devices on your network, too. You

just have to add a resource in Twing, like this cute dashboard I vibe coded for our Mac Mini NAS, set a policy, and you can access that from anywhere as well. And as a Twin Gate customer of

well. And as a Twin Gate customer of many years, I can confidently say that it is indeed awesome. And best of all, Twing starter plan lets you invite up to five users, deploy it across 10

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and try it out right now. What? Like

just go, man. Go. I've got the Speedyboy drive up here on the left. I copied over a few more files. We got a 50 gig file here, a couple 10 gig ones. And then on

the right is my desktop on my MacBook. I

really want to see if we can saturate this 25 gig connection, which, you know, accounting for a bit of overhead would probably put us just under 3 GB per second if we're actually hitting it. So,

this is going from our Speedy Boy NAS to my MacBook. Oh, okay. It's not quite

my MacBook. Oh, okay. It's not quite saturating it. I was getting 1.7 GB per

saturating it. I was getting 1.7 GB per second. I'm only going to be connecting

second. I'm only going to be connecting to clients that are connected at 10 gig, but I don't know. I kind of expected it to go a little bit faster than that.

Let's try going the other way. 1.2 GB

per second. That's actually slowing down quite a bit. Let me do some looking.

Okay, so I did a little bit of perusing in the SMB settings that you can change on Mac OS. A lot of the settings that people recommend you to change in here are defaults already, like signing

required equals no, which disables mandatory file encryption on the transfer. I think streams equals yes is

transfer. I think streams equals yes is already set to yes. The main thing that I changed was increasing the number of RSS channels. That's receive side

RSS channels. That's receive side scaling, which allows the file transfer to split into multiple streams. And in theory, use multiple threads on the CPU and go a little bit faster. The default

is four. I changed it to 8. Don't know

if it's actually going to work or make any difference, but worth a shot. Let's

see if it's any faster. Before we were at like 1.7 GB per second. Holy it

actually worked. 2.5 GB per second.

Damn. Let's try a second copy at the same time. Maybe we can get closer. I

same time. Maybe we can get closer. I

think that this is probably getting close to capping out our kind of network link here. 2.6 GB per second. 2.62. 62.

link here. 2.6 GB per second. 2.62. 62.

It's not hitting the like crazy speeds I'm getting from server to client on the right speed, but it's doing, you know, 1 to 1 and a half GB a second, which is a lot better. I'm happy with that as long

lot better. I'm happy with that as long as it stays consistently that good. I

did find some stuff online about the Mac OS file server not being able to handle RSS streams in high quantity when you're writing to it very well. So, that might be why. I'll have to do a bit more

be why. I'll have to do a bit more tweaking and see if I can get the right speeds to be a little bit faster. But in

the grand scheme of things, each individual like editing machine is only going to ever be writing at 1 GB a second at the absolute most pretty much the same when we're ingesting footage.

So this is fine, but we need to test a uh video project and see what that's like because that's really what this is for. I've got Da Vinci Resolve open on

for. I've got Da Vinci Resolve open on my MacBook here with the Sennheiser HDB 630 video I made. Let's see how the timeline performance is. This is

interframe footage, which is really not the most optimal for timeline performance. So, I suspect that part of

performance. So, I suspect that part of it hiccoping is my MacBook Pro having an aneurysm over it. But, I mean, other than that, it is working. Maybe I should have transcoded some footage. It was

being a little cludgy when I first opened it as my MacBook tried to cache some of the effects at the start here, like the rotoscoping around my head. But

now that that is cached and rendered, I mean, this is working flawlessly. And if

I switch over to the proxy media, which is ProRes. Oh, look at that. Look at

is ProRes. Oh, look at that. Look at

that scrubbing. Oh my god. Wow. It

doesn't actually push anywhere near as much data as you would think. I mean,

you can look at our Mac Mini and it's like 6 to 10 megabytes per second as I'm scrubbing around. That's because the

scrubbing around. That's because the proxies are intra frame rather than interframe. So every single frame in

interframe. So every single frame in that let's say 30fps video is stored essentially as like a photo rather than how it's done with interframe where in

broad terms it just stores the differences between the frames. So

really as I swipe through here resolve is just grabbing each individual frame.

It's really efficient in its accesses.

But that does mean as I'm swiping around like this it's doing a lot of random reads and writes and it's handling it flawlessly. I mean, as you move it

flawlessly. I mean, as you move it around, like it it doesn't even pause and it's just like it's not even there.

Look at how beautiful that is. Holy. I

mean, all right. This is all I needed to see. That's way more responsive than my

see. That's way more responsive than my hard drive base NAS. That's phenomenal.

Before we go to deploy our Mac Mini NAS actually in the rack and start using it, there's a couple more things we need to change. First, in the system settings,

change. First, in the system settings, we're going to go to the energy tab here. We're going to enable prevent

here. We're going to enable prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off so the Mac Mini doesn't just go to sleep. And then I'm also going to enable

sleep. And then I'm also going to enable start up automatically after power failure so that if the power goes out and our UPS dies, at least our Mac Nash will turn back on. The rest of the stuff in here can stay the same. You just

might want to make a user. I I'll name it editor. Add editor to the Speedy Boy

it editor. Add editor to the Speedy Boy folder. Have read and write access. And

folder. Have read and write access. And

don't forget to enable Windows file sharing access for that editor user. And

we're good to go. Cool. Now, when we map it on a new machine, we'll just use that editor user and we'll be a little bit more secure. You also might be wondering

more secure. You also might be wondering if a setup like this can handle apps like a lot of other NAS systems can do, like a Plex Media Server or Jellyfin Docker containers. And the answer is yes

Docker containers. And the answer is yes and no. For a lot of things, you can

and no. For a lot of things, you can actually just install their desktop app.

There's the Plex Media Server desktop app. That's probably easier to get

app. That's probably easier to get rolling than a Docker container would be for normies. If you need Docker, you can

for normies. If you need Docker, you can just run it from the Docker desktop app and you can set up a little interface like Dockage or Portainer so that you have like kind of a visual way to manage

it. All of that is super easy to do,

it. All of that is super easy to do, maybe even easier if you're not command line friendly than it would be to roll your own NAS with Trunass or something.

And it is worth mentioning that while this Mac Mini is not repairable, neither are those like offthe-shelf 2 4 6 8 bay NAS units that you can buy on Amazon or whatever. And this setup does actually

whatever. And this setup does actually have an advantage over those, at least some of them, in that it's upgradeable.

You can start with hard drives and the onboard networking and maybe upgrade to a SATA SSD or two or NVME drives if you're crazy like me and 25 gig networking. It the world really is your

networking. It the world really is your oyster. Which I guess brings the

oyster. Which I guess brings the question, is this the most cost effective solution? For most people,

effective solution? For most people, probably not. On one hand, you could

probably not. On one hand, you could just buy like an old Dell Optiplex with an old Intel CPU for maybe 50, 60, $100 on eBay that's already ready for you to

slap in a hard drive and would support more mainstream NAS operating systems. But if you already have a Mac Mini, an iMac, a MacBook Pro, any of those things just kicking around in your closet that

you're not using. Sure, I'm using a brand new Mac Mini and some ballin SSDs and a ballin network card. But this

could legitimately be a pretty sick way to make use of a machine you're not already using. Just use some hard drives

already using. Just use some hard drives in a one bay hard drive dock or this dual bay one for 58 bucks. And you also don't have to go for a $400 25 gig

dongle like I'm using. They make 10 gig dongles that are less than $100 or 5 gig dongle. You can get those for 30 bucks

dongle. You can get those for 30 bucks and still get quite a bit of performance. Heck, you could even use

performance. Heck, you could even use the onboard gigabit port. The point is this works pretty great and honestly was really easy to set up. You could

probably do it for less money, but I wouldn't have gained this knowledge along the way. And you can't put a price tag on knowledge. And you wouldn't want to miss out on getting some knowledge.

Uh maybe about how this setup works in the long term. So get subscribed so you don't miss that because I'm actually I'm going to daily drive this for a bit and and see how it is. Hopefully it doesn't

go terribly and hopefully my editor doesn't hate me for doing this. Love you

long time and maybe I'm sorry. So thanks

for watching. If you like this video, you want to check out any of the products we showed off, there'll be links down in the description down there. You can also get subscribed and

there. You can also get subscribed and comment what you think about this Mac Mini NAS setup. It's not It's not pretty, but it does work.