Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?

#21

Post by bgaid » Tue, May 31, 2016, 2:44 AM UTC

spriggan3 wrote: post #16

The only reason why I would personally do that is to run some continuous integration for OSX software. Otherwise I can't think of any reason why one would run a OSX server,which implies owning a Macintosh. Some legacy frameworks like web objects might run better on OSX. At a previous job, we used a server on a mac mini that ran a proprietary software which did 3GP video encoding with DRM. We had to buy a mac mini for…

> run some continuous integration for OSX software

I can confirm this (I work at MacStadium). We've got 1. a large number of CI SaaS companies that run their OS X/iOS builds on our hardware and 2. at least several hundred companies that run their own custom build tools or Jenkins on individual or clusters of Mac minis, Xserves, and Mac Pros in our data centers.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?

#22

Post by NathanKP » Tue, May 31, 2016, 3:15 AM UTC

The only webservice I've run on OSX was a Jenkins webserver to provide an HTTP dashboard for an automated ios app build system running on the same machine. And it was not a pleasant experience at all. I do not recommend using OSX as a webserver unless you absolutely have to (for example to run Xcode builds).

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?

#23

Post by brbsix » Tue, May 31, 2016, 5:07 AM UTC

I've used Filemaker Server to host it's web interface. I probably wouldn't use it again, but I didn't know of any simple self-hosted alternatives at the time.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?

#24

Post by King-Aaron » Tue, May 31, 2016, 5:33 AM UTC

I've spun up OSX Server instances to run 4D databases in the past, nothing in production with the sort of users you're looking at however.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?

#25

Post by ksec » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:05 AM UTC

netik wrote: post #8

detaro wrote: post #3

There is an image CDN (EDIT: imgix, as tristanj linked below) which runs OS X for their image processing servers and I've seen pictures of rack holders for Mac Minis for build servers, but in general OS X isn't a very interesting choice. Running it on non-Apple hardware is legally questionable at best (the EULA forbids it, if this part of the EULA is applicable in your country is a question for a lawyer), Apple doesn…

You're correct in that Apple doesn't manufacture server hardware like the Xserve anymore, but OS X, Server edition is still available and it will manage Apache for you (albeit in a terrible way, I don't like the excessive configuration they apply) Many of Apple's own web sites run Apple hardware for outward facing, large scale serving (I used to work there). At the end of the day, Unix is Unix. I run nginx on OS X on…

>Many of Apple's own web sites run Apple hardware for outward facing, large scale serving (I used to work there).

Does that mean Mac Mini? Or Custom Hardware like Xserve.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?

#26

Post by em3rgent0rdr » Tue, May 31, 2016, 7:52 AM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #19

itomato wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name one cloud hosting provider who offers Mac OS X.

http://xcloud.me http://www.macminivault.com https://www.macstadium.com There are plenty more choices, those were just the first few I found.

Nothing says stuck with a Mac mini like "Mac Mini" Vault :P

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?

#27

Post by stephenr » Tue, May 31, 2016, 8:52 AM UTC

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #26

stephenr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://xcloud.me http://www.macminivault.com https://www.macstadium.com There are plenty more choices, those were just the first few I found.

Nothing says stuck with a Mac mini like "Mac Mini" Vault :P

Before the last refresh, they could actually be quite powerful little servers with the i7 option.

I think a lot of people over-estimate the resources they will require (and either end up paying huge amounts for an over-provisioned service, OR end up locking themselves into an 'infinitely scalable' cloud provider that they never end up scaling.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?

#28

Post by throwaway2016a » Tue, May 31, 2016, 12:44 PM UTC

I have some OS X machines on the LAN for things like dashboards but I wouldn't dream of using one on production web servers.

I really like OS X, I've been using it on my personal and work computers for 9 years. But for server sit is Linux all the way.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?

#29

Post by taknil » Tue, May 31, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

I did serve a company internal tool written in PHP/mysql from a white macbook. It was served to all our retail locations (under 100 DAUs). It was a "but it works on my machine" - "back up your email, your machine is going into production" situation. It ended up taking almost two years to migrate the application away because it just worked. Picture of said server macbook https://flic.kr/p/DY4k1U

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?

#30

Post by gatesphere » Tue, May 31, 2016, 1:38 PM UTC

IIRC, a few years back http://iolanguage.org/ was hosted on an aging Macbook. I'm not sure if that's still the case.