Scaleway’s Mac Mini Meets Virtual Private Cloud

Scaleway takes another step forward by offering VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) integration for its Apple Silicon Mac mini servers. This advancement allows you to create a private, isolated network, ensuring enhanced security and better control over your infrastructure.

An unique offering

The cloud Mac market is segmented between hyperscalers providing highly customizable, yet expensive, macOS virtual machines (VMs) and specialized providers offering bare metal solutions that require manual integration with other cloud services, resulting in cumbersome interconnectivity and potentially exorbitant egress fees.

With Scaleway, you can now get the best of both words. Our platform combines the flexibility and performance of bare metal infrastructure with the convenience and integration of a cloud service, allowing for seamless deployment and management of macOS environments.

Create an interconnected cloud space

With VPC integration, you can build a fully private and secure cloud environment for your Apple Silicon Mac minis. In practical terms, this means you can deploy a VPC directly from the Scaleway console, create Private Networks, and attach your Mac minis as needed. Explore our documentation.

The benefit? Effortless interconnection between your Mac servers and other Scaleway resources, such as instances, databases, and storage services. This ensures a unified environment where your resources communicate optimally without unnecessary exposure to the internet.

Strengthen your infrastructure security

Implementing a VPC is not just about network optimization—it transforms server management into a highly secure environment. By isolating your machines within a private network, you:

• Eliminate risks associated with public exposure – your servers are no longer accessible to scans and external attacks. Remote Desktop connections are optimized for enhanced security and reliability.
• Gain full control over network traffic – set strict communication rules between your resources.
• Protect sensitive data and critical processes – ideal for businesses handling confidential information.
• Efficiently manage external connections – control and secure access to external resources and cloud services, while preserving the integrity of your private network. Use bastions to establish secure connections to your resources.

To securely access servers within a VPC, a bastion host can be set up as a jump server, providing a single entry point to manage and maintain resources. By configuring a bastion host with a public IP address and restricting inbound traffic to only allow SSH connections from trusted sources, you can create a secure gateway to your VPC. From the bastion host, you can then SSH into private instances within the VPC, using private IP addresses or hostnames, without exposing them to the public internet. This approach enables you to maintain a high level of security and control over access to your VPC resources, while still allowing authorized personnel to perform necessary administrative tasks.

Simplify server management

Attaching your Mac minis to a Private Network simplifies the management of your Mac fleet, allowing you to centralize control and optimize performance, while also enabling several key benefits:

• Infrastructure integration : Privately integrate your Macs with your existing infrastructure, enabling seamless communication with Kubernetes clusters, databases, and private services. This eliminates the need to spend time securing communications with other Scaleway cloud resources.
  To take your infrastructure management to the next level, use Terraform to efficiently manage your resources, ensuring consistency, scalability, and version control across your entire infrastructure, including your Mac mini fleet.
• Simplified file sharing and backup : Easily set up a file sharing server within your private network, allowing you to utilize built-in backup solutions like Time Machine for your entire Mac fleet.
• Streamlined CI/CD workflows : Create faster and more performant CI/CD pipelines, without breaking the bank. Our affordable Mac mini solutions enable you to scale your development workflows efficiently, reducing costs and increasing productivity.

This diagram showcases an optimized CI/CD architecture leveraging Scaleway Mac mini instances within a VPC. By relying on isolated private networks, GitLab Runners on Mac mini seamlessly integrate with Kubernetes and managed databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis), ensuring fast and secure integration and deployment pipelines. The Public Gateway orchestrates interactions with the container registry and artifact storage while providing a reliable environment to build, test, and deploy your applications.
You can also configure GitHub runners on Mac Minis - check out our documentation here for more information.

Unlock new possibilities

The integration of VPC with Apple Silicon servers opens up new possibilities for users seeking a secure and high-performance cloud infrastructure. In the coming months, we plan to deploy a range of advanced features that will further enhance the security and flexibility of our solutions.

This includes default Mac security, auto-configuration of VLANs, advanced file sharing and backup solutions, as well as managed solutions for machine configuration management.

Additionally, we will also offer Mac virtualization capabilities, enabling users to create secure and isolated virtual work environments, as well as containerization features to deploy applications in an efficient and scalable manner.

If you have specific use cases or particular requirements, we invite you to contact us to discuss how we can work together to develop customized solutions that meet your needs.

👉 Ready to secure and optimize your Mac infrastructure? Get started today by checking out our documentation and exploring the full potential of VPC for your Mac servers.