Four Ways To Keep Your minis Working While You're Working From Home

Working from home has become the new normal for many of us. Many of our offices have limited staff (or are totally closed in some cases) to keep up the WHO and CDC recommendations for social distancing. These limitations can leave some of you in a bind - not everyone can access your Macs as easily or you’re experiencing downtime if something causes your Macs to shut down (power issues in the building, internet blips, you name it, we’ve experienced it). While we know there’s a better way and a better solution for your DIY closet-racked Macs (we can help with that), we have a few ideas on how you can keep those Macs working while staffing is limited.

Use a Secure Shell (SSH) to remote into your Mac.

Download TeamViewer or another remote desktop software – that will allow you to access your Macs remotely, making sure that you and your team can continue to work on those machines (as long as they don’t need to be reset!).

Setup a smart home device for the office.

If you need to power cycle your minis, setting up a smart home device like Amazon Alexa or Google Home and connecting your mini via a smart plug could be a great way to handle this normally hands-on task. Once you have the device set-up, just connect the mini (or minis) to a compatible smart plug. If they need to be power cycled, you can handle it remotely. However, if the internet goes down in the office, someone will have to be there to reset the router.

Give your minis some busy work instead.

If you’ve found a better solution (maybe moving to MacStadium), let those old Macs fight COVID-19. We recommend putting them to good work with the fine folks at Folding@home. Not familiar? F@h is a distributed computing project for simulating protein dynamics that utilizes citizen scientists and uses those insights from that data to help scientists better understand biology, and provide new opportunities for developing therapeutics. And right now, you can even prioritize your Macs to fight COVID-19.

Not appealing? Consider remote hands and expert support.

While these are all great ways to use your machines, nothing can replace having remote hands and expert support in case anything goes wrong - even after we start returning to the office. Ready to get started or interested in learning more? Reach out to us at sales@macstadium.com, and one of our expert sales engineers will help design a solution to fit your needs.