MacLochlainns Weblog

Michael McLaughlin's Technical Blog

Site Admin

Mac Mini to the rescue

with 7 comments

In teaching, I had a problem because my students have different base operating systems, like Windows 7, Windows 8, Linux, and Mac OS X. I needed a teaching and lecture platform that would let me teach it all (not to mention support their environments). That meant it had to virtualize any of the following with a portable device:MacMiniConsole

  • Windows 7 or 8 hosting natively an Oracle Database 11g XE, 11g, or 12c and MySQL Database 5.6
  • Windows 7 or 8 hosting a Fedora or Oracle Unbreakable Linux VM (3 or 4 GB) with Oracle Database 11g XE, 11g, or 12c and MySQL Database 5.6
  • Mac OS X hosting a Fedora or Oracle Unbreakable Linux VM (3 or 4 GB) with Oracle Database 11g XE, 11g, or 12c and MySQL Database 5.6
  • Ubuntu hosting a Fedora or Oracle Unbreakable Linux VM (3 or 4 GB) with Oracle Database 11g XE, 11g, or 12c and MySQL Database 5.6

I never considered a manufacturer other than Apple for a laptop since they adopted the Intel chip. Too many of the others sell non-hyperthreaded laptop machines that they market as i5 or i7 64-bit OS machines when they’re not. Some of those vendors disable the hyperthreading facility while others provide motherboards that can’t support hyperthreading. The ones I dislike the most provide a BIOS setting that gives the impression you can enable hyperthreading when you can’t. All Apple devices, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro do fully support a 64-bit OS and their virtualization.

A MacBook Pro came to mind but the disk space requirements were 1 TB, and that’s too pricey. I went with the Mac Mini because with 16 GB of memory and a 1 TB drive it was only $1,200. Add a wireless keyboard and mighty mouse, and an HDMI and mini-DVI connections, and I had my solution. Naturally, my desktop is a one generation old Mac Pro with 64 GB of memory and 12 TB of disk space, which supports all the virtual machines used for testing. Note to Apple marketing staff: The prior version of the Mac Pro let you pay reasonable (3rd party) prices for the additional memory and disk drives.

The Mac Mini means I can travel anywhere and plug into the console and demo tools and techniques from a myriad set of platforms without the hassle of moving on and off to frequently VM images. It’s a great solution with only one downside, HDMI to DVI sometimes creates purple toned screens. It’s unfortunate because some venues have monitors that don’t support HDMI).

Written by maclochlainn

February 6th, 2014 at 12:17 pm