Ask HN: Os x hosting
I'm building a service that runs on os x. I'm really enjoying heroku and amazon ec2 for other projects. Ideally, I'd spin up os x instances on their ec2, but they don't have os x as an option. And from what I can tell, VMWare is technically capable of running a virtualized os x, but have been prohibited from doing so by Apple, so I can't even start up a linux instance on ec2 and virtualize an os x server. So I'll need to look elsewhere.
But maybe I missed something. Is there a way to run os x on ec2?
Failing that, does anyone have a recommendation for an os x hosting service?
5 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 24.9 ms ] threadYou should carefully evaluate whether or not you truly need OS X Server for what you'd like to do and see if you can migrate your service to a more traditional hosted *nix solution.
Is this some sort of service which is tightly coupled to OS X-specific dependencies?
I can tell you that your options are pretty few. http://www.macminicolo.net/ has been around for a while, but they specialize in the hosting of Mini's.
Another option is http://www.forest.net/ who has been around since nearly the dawn of the Internet, and who have always had Mac Servers as a specialty. Originally, they had a large number "Classic" Mac servers prior to OS X.
As I understand it, Apple allows VMWare to run OS X virtualized under Mac OS X server, but no other configurations. So your could talk to forest.net about running a dedicated Mac Pro tower running Mac OS X server and VMWare.
(Of course, you could try this on a Mini too, but I don't think a Mini will go far running multiple virtualized servers in production)
Other options available depending on what you want.
Class A datacenter, generator backup, secure access, hot hands service included.