As we’ve gone thru the steps of getting your Mac mini set up as a server, we’ve focused on free software and options that are available with Mac OS X. This sure makes it easy to set up an inexpensive server that you can host at your house of office.

But once the machine is set up and running, you may find that the slow or unreliable connection at home is not enough for you. Power outages, theft or slow upload speeds can be barriers when hosting at home. If you want a more reliable server, you’ll probably want to consider a data center to host your machine.

In a data center, you are paying mostly for the space. It can get quite expensive to host a full server. But with the small size of the Mac mini, you can colocate your server for much less.

I’ve mentioned from the beginning that I work with Macminicolo.net. We host hundreds of Mac minis as servers and that is how I’ve become familiar with the setup of these machines. In this video, I answer the most common questions asked and walk thru the signup process. Hopefully, this will show you hosting in a data center doesn’t need to be intimidating or expensive.

Watch it here: Getting The Mini In A Data Center

Shownotes:
- Macminicolo.net
- Server Video Series

I’ll be happy to answer any more questions here or from the Macminicolo.net contact page.

VNC is a convenient way to control a remote computer. The problem is that VNC isn’t secure. But with a little effort you can create an SSH tunnel that will keep your VNC connection safe and secure. This video shows how.

On the remote (controlled) computer you’ll need a VNC server, such as the free Vine Server, or you can turn on “Apple Remote Desktop” under the System Preferences Sharing pane.

On the local (controlling) computer, you’ll need a VNC client like the free Chicken of the VNC.

To create the SSH tunnel, you’ll need the free application JellyfiSSH (if you don’t want to type the SSH commands in the Terminal yourself.)

Watch it here: How to create an SSH tunnel for a secure VNC connection

We already showed you how to host multiple web sites on one Mac, but that tutorial assumes you want them all to have the same ip address. Sometimes, you’ll need multiple IP addresses for instances like installing a SSL Certificate. This video shows you how to have two ip addresses on one connection.

Watch It Here: Configure Two IP Addresses on One Mac

Show Notes:

• Hosting Multiple Websites On One Mac
• Macminicolo.net - Host Your Mac Mini in a data center. Starting at $34.99
• Tabstop - You may have noticed that when I tried to close my Safari window with multiple tabs, I was given a warning. That was thanks to Tabstop.

Today is a short tutorial but is important for anyone using a Mac as a server. I look at a free program that will show you how much upload and download bandwidth you use in a month.

Video Link: How To Monitor The Bandwidth on your Mac mini server

Shownotes:

-SurplusMeter - A free application that will allow you to see how much bandwidth your machine is using.
-Macminicolo.net - Macminicolo.net provides the bandwidth and hosting for these tutorials. Once you have your machine set up to run as a server, you may consider hosting it in the macminicolo data center. Starting at $34.99 you are provided with reliable power, a 100mb connection, and a static ip address. More on pricing can be found here.

Note: I am the one that manages all of the minis in the macminicolo data center.

One of the most popular reasons to have a server these days is to run a blog on it. Using an install of Wordpress is one of the easiest ways to do this.

This video tutorial shows you how to install wordpress by using MAMP. It’s very simple.

Movie Link: Install Wordpress On Your Mac Using MAMP

Shownotes:
- MAMP- Our post on FreeMacWare explaining MAMP
- Wordpress.org- the free wordpress install
-Macminicolo.net- turn your Mac mini into a server and share your blog with the world

Usually our Server Video Series has a video involved, but there are a few tips that I thought were useful enough to throw out there.

• Over on FreeMacWare today, I wrote about a program called Lithium. It’s an incredibly app that I saw at Macworld. It monitors remote computers and servers so you can keep tab on them. If you are running a Mac mini as a server, this will be a good way to monitor it. And lucky for us, they offer a free “Lite Version” that will only limit the amount of machines you can monitor.
• The most requested video tutorial is how to set up a mail server on your Mac mini. We’ve been working on it, but it’s much more in depth than you’d think. But, we don’t blame you for hesitating to spend the $500 on Mac OS X Server just to get a mail server. Over on MacSoftwareReviews.com, I’ve posted about an app called Postfix Enabler. It’s a very well done app that will set up a very capable mail server in about 60 seconds and it’s under $10. That is a very good way to go.
• My company just finished the week at Macworld. We had a booth there and were able to meet a ton of great people. (including some of you) As part of our Macworld week, we offered Macworld attendees a discounted price to get their Mac mini in our data center. We took our most popular package, waived the sign-up fee and discounted it by $10 per month. I thought I’d extend that same offer to the FreeMacBlog readers. If you were waiting for the right time to get your Mac mini into the data center, now would be a good time. You can take advantage of that discount here. It should be good for another week or so.

Alright, that’s what I have for you right now. There will be more videos coming soon. Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed so you’ll be notified when then come.