Ask HN: Apple webserver hardware

2 pointsmechanician2 comments

I am trying to decide what type of hardware to buy to use as a personal webserver. I am an Apple guy, so my initial thought was to go with a Mac mini. Is there value in going with a laptop instead? Yes it is more expensive, but it also seems like a more compartmentalized solution as well. Regarding the mini, is it worth it to spend an extra $400 for the server version that comes with OS X Server?

View on HN

I don't have the mini, but I'm running os x 1.4 server on an old G4 xserve. Coming from a graphic design/mac background, the initial server setup was dead simple. The workgroup and server admin tools are excellent and allow you to administer every function of the server remotely. It ships with Apache, tomcat and jboss and mysql, etc. and provides nice interfaces to administer all services. When I bought the xserve it was running server 10.2, I considered updating it to a regular 10.4 or linux install, but found the tools and other utilities (and stability) convenient enough to purchase a copy of 10.4 server. Hope that helps.

All said, I love my mac server :)

I'm using a mini for a server in the home office. Basically, it's just a file server but I do have Tomcat and MySQL on there as well. Like the other poster said, it's dead simple to set up and work with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com