

Media Temple launches VPS running Leopard Server - rob
http://mediatemple.net/labs/xv/

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PStamatiou
I had the pleasure of visiting (mt) offices last month as I was in the area
and have been a long-time vip program customer. They talked with me about this
(xv) for quite a bit. Here's what it's about:

Targeted at smaller design firms/consultancies - the 37s crowd that likes
productivity. They will be able to do iChat, iCal, use collaborative wiki/blog
software built-in and back up with time machine, etc. The huge thing for me is
the server admin application that makes it incredibly easy to
administer/maintain/manage the box from any mac... just a great UI for those
that don't necessarily want to always have a terminal open.

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iamelgringo
So, why can Leopard server be virtualised, but the desktop version can't be?

I run VMware on XP so I can use whatever *nix I want at the time. I'd love to
be able to use OSX that way, but Apple won't allow it. This drives me nuts.
I'm fairly platform agnostic. But, people used to complain about Microsoft not
being open. Why aren't more developers making noise about this?

~~~
boucher
Because the license for Server permits it, and the license for client does
not.

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iamelgringo
It was more of a rhetorical question than technological.

~~~
wmf
Virtual Leopard -> VDI -> thin clients -> fewer Macs sold.

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snewe
Is this mainly for people who want to run iCal or iChat servers? What
advantage does this have over the standard Linux webserver?

~~~
xlnt
One advantage is for people who already use Leopard on their primary computer,
and don't want to bother with a subtly different flavor of *nix.

~~~
snewe
Do you mean the command line differences? Or will people who use this
effectively screen-share the Leopard server and see it "as is." I know very
few developers who demand that.

~~~
xlnt
I mean command line differences.

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ComputerGuru
IMHO this is a PR stunt... there's no real benefit to using a OS X server
instead of FreeBSD or even Linux... if I'm wrong, please enlighten me as to
any tangible benefits to using Leopard purely as a webserver...

~~~
wmf
Who said anything about "purely as a webserver"? There's iCal, iChat, wikis,
Open Directory, etc.

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bayareaguy
Depending on the price, it could be a reasonable option for people who want a
place to do some porting or qa work on OSX but otherwise do most their
development on some other platform.

~~~
wmf
This service will probably be over $100/month; for development purposes a Mac
mini would probably be a better option.

~~~
bayareaguy
Their website says _During the Private Beta period we intend on splitting the
server in 1/8th partitions. Each virtual machine will be guaranteed 2GB of
memory and two cores of CPU resources._

That sounds close to a small ec2 instance _1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute
Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage,
32-bit platform_

So if you have to pay by the month a Mac mini could be better, but if you pay
by the hour I could see using one for an hour or so a day as a build slave.

~~~
rcoder
Unlike an EC2 instance, though, these are going to be running on expensive,
single-vendor hardware, and won't be able to take advantage of much higher-
density blade configurations to decrease space, power, and cooling
requirements. There's also the matter of a non-trivial per-image OS license
cost from Apple.

In other words, expect to pay a premium even over what you would for a normal
full-time VPS, and don't count on hourly billing.

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chaostheory
to me this only becomes attractive a few years from now, when Snow Leopard +
ZFS is out

