Figured I'd see what the minds here know.
So my district has about 150 iPads. To manage them, I have an old macbook with 2gb of ram with os mavericks and is os server.
Now it runs fine with one exception: VPP(volume purchase program) tokens. I hate these things. To explain: apple allows you to assign an app to a user and push that app. The VPP allows you to do that. It also links to a special iTunes account that let's you buy the apps.
We have roughly 7 of these tokens. Why? Because you don't want to mix money from the various departments. Special Ed, for example, has their own budget and thus their own VPP account.
Now the server can only handle 1 token at a time. So if I want to push out apps for specialed, I load the token and push the apps. If I want to push out apps for the HS, I swap the tokens and push. However, swapping tokens also stops all pushes and prevents any future pushing or authorization until I put it back.
To this end, I want to virtualize the servers so I can have 7 servers on one box. We already have a windows server VM farm so it fits in our overall technology plan. However, apple are dicks and refuses to allow virtualization on any non-apple hardware. So... I'm debating what to buy. I can get a Mac mini with 16GB of ram and hope that'll work (2gb for each server which is minimum) at $1,500 or the Mac pro with 32 gb of ram (upgradable to 64) for $3,500. I'd like to go cheap as most of the servers won't be doing much most of the time but each server requires a minimum of 2gb and the Mac mini maxes out at 16.
Also: Mac pro is a god damn canister. Mounting it is not really an option. But the mini is a box.
Thoughts? The pro is definitely the server choice as its hardware is the upgrade for the old apple xserver. But the mini may do what I need for many years. I just don't have enough Mac hardware experience to know which is the best option.