We have webservers running BSD, Linux, Windows, but when it comes to OSX, I have only seen people installing server software on it because they do development on it. Does anyone here run/administrate a big website (say with a million users) on OSX? Why did you (or your company) choose OSX? Can you compare it to hosting on other platforms?
Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?
1–10 of 34 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?
#2Not me personally, but Imgix uses Mac Pros in their datacenter for graphics related work.
http://photos.imgix.com/racking-mac-pros
And not directly what you asked, but a thread that comes to mind is this one, where an unnamed company (presumably Mathworks) built a rack of Macbook Pros for testing purposes.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?
#3There 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't do server hardware anymore, it costs money and you don't get support or special software from Apple for server-usage for it, and since nearly nobody runs it as a server OS it probably isn't very high on the priority list to support that usage for other software vendors or open-source project.
A lot of things probably will work well since they are made to run for developer usage, but if you do not absolutely need integration with something apple-specific or just want to reuse an old mac lying around for a hobby project it doesn't give you anything over other OSes as a normal web server.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?
#4I would think the main barrier to doing this is the tie-in between the hardware and software. Mac hardware doesn't even really have a "large server" piece. And certainly if they did it wouldn't be very cheap compared to a Linux box. Since basically any software you would run on OSX to run a server you would presumably be able to run on Linux as well (e.g. nginx, etc.), I don't know what the advantage would be.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?
#5A few of the continuous integration companies that support iOS/Mac development run fleets of Macs. If you need info, talk to the folks at bitrise.io or CircleCI
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?
#6Serving HTTP requests has been commoditised, there is a hundred cheaper, better, ways to serve a webpage.
The only sensible case is non-mission critical SOHO scenario where you happen to have a mac mini or iMac idling around and gathering dust otherwise.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?
#7used to have a few Xserves when they were a thing, never a million users though.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?
#8There 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 a number of Mac Minis without issue and long uptimes.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?
#9Edit: Offtopic but interesting.
I definitely don't have millions of users, but there are hosting companies that do mac only. You can ask them if they have large clients.
(My needs are a node.js based site on virtualmacosx.
I had written something locally on Mac, and it depended on things that OSX did different than Linux, and decided I didn't have the time or inclination to fix it, so went with VMOSX.)
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here use OS X as a webserver?
#10I doubt you will fine anyone who does this today for reasons other than a needing to support legacy software that only runs on OS X for some reason.
All modern web application stacks run as well on Linux as they would on OS X, if not better, so there is no advantage to running OS X and lots of downsides.
You need to run OS X on Apple hardware, and they haven't made a blade server for several years, so you'd be stuck with either the mini or the Mac Pro, either of which is going to be expensive for the computing resources you get. You also can't fit them neatly into an enclosure.
Also, if you ever wanted to move your infrastructure to the cloud you'd need to move to Linux anyway.
I can think of no valid reason to use OS X server to host any kind of web app.