OSX as a web server. Is it worth it?

Anon

Ok heres my scenario. Currently, for business, we have our sites hosted on a external hosting service running FreeBSD 4.2. Recently, my boss came to me about bringing alot of the sites inhouse to the office (run via a T1 or T3) and running them off of the new Macintosh OSX on one of our G4 Macintoshes.

Seeing that OSX runs Apache and has a UNIX core, would it be a smart decision? And is OSX really that good of a server hosting OS?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all for your time.

brandonschnell

OS X hasn't been seriously tested as a server os but would likely make an excellent developer box as more applications appear for OS X.

if the web site has light traffic and isn't too critical for you then testing OS X might make sense.

i'd still recommend running freebsd or linux (2.4 kernel+) for webhosting in the near future.

Pluses:
gigabit ethernet
stable hardware that runs cool and can be inserted into a rack (http://www.marathoncomputer.com/)
webobjects & quicktime streaming

Minuses:
untested by the masses as a server OS
mach kernel tweaked for consumer applications, not server applications
small user base = if its broke its your problem (its still very new, apple won't be shipping OS X in quantity with new systems for about a year)

kparker

One additional thing to keep in mind. While a T3 seems like plenty of bandwidth, if you do literally mean "a" i.e. one then you aren't going to have any redundancy going to the backbone. If your current hosting situation does provide multiple independent backbone links, be sure to consider what you'd be giving up if you move hosting in house.

Anon

What Brandon and Kirk said plus the usual

"If it ain't broke..."

FreeBSD is about as rock solid a server OS as you're going to find (especially for the price). If it's doing everything you need then think about whether it's worth the uncertainty and potential trouble of switching.

Betting your business and money on an untried platform... where does that rank on the scale of good ideas? There was a reason corporations didn't immediately upgrade from NT4 to Win2K.

frymaster

i've had serious problems getting php to work on the consumer release of osx. that could be a problem... however the os itself is actually very solid. i started running the beta back in late september and have had one crash since (and that was from the os9 emulation)

craigh

Actually, OS X SERVER has been out for sometime and was touted as having capability far outdoing competing platforms running apache (of course, what did you expect them to say!). Anyway, OS X SERVER 2.0 is due out soon (like 30 -60 days I believe) and I would say it is worth a serious look. I don't know what the real differences would be, but I'm guessing that it will be prepackaged with a bunch extra stuff that will be useful fromt he server side.

As for the claim that the OS is "new" - Since the whole thing is based on OpenStep and that is based on BSD - I would hesitate to call it "new".

Since you can try all of this for a relatively small investment - I would say it is worth testing the environment and see ho it goes.

kparker

I would say it is worth testing the environment and see ho it goes.

By all means do that--but the question was, "Should we move all our production sites ...", or so I thought, and that is a quite different matter than "testing the environment."

Anon

the key phrase here is "based on"... while it's true that the Mach/BSD guts plus a lot of the dev features (project builder etc.) are pretty much the same from ostep 4.x to os x there are significant differences between the two.

I admit that i was under the impression that osx server was going to be discontinued since the "standard" osx is server-capable (there were a lot of rumours to that effect). the plusses of going with os x would be:

a) mac hardware is a joyous thing. low power consumption, gigabit ethernet, a case that can be opened easily (and locked easily!) that uses standard hard drives and ram (take that sparc!)
b) can be a file server for just about anything (even netinfo, if you're into that...)
c) if you want to build any java projects it has killer java support...

allgood2

My personal thought is if your looking for something to switch all your sites to, and your considering MacOS then at the very least you should be considering MacOS X Server.

OS X Server has been out for awhile, and is rock solid from what I've seen. There are many strong arguments to be made for using Server versions of software, especially if your running multiple sites, etc.

OS X, the consumer version, will run Apache, and other web masters are switching (primarily those who were using WebStar, or other Mac based web servers), because comparitively OS X is a far better web environment than OS 9.

But if your sites are currently hosted on Unix or Linux, then the real consideration should be OS X Server on a G4 box, if you want the same power.

Alnisa

greg252

Running the client version of X, I can say it is great. Comes with Apache and PHP- edited 2 lines of apache config and was running. D/L mysql and installed easily.
Just d/l test of Zend studio and I'm rather impressed.

I only plan on using for development, though I here X server is enterprise level.

Best of luck
Greg