

Ask HN: Apple webserver hardware - mechanician

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?
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jrwoodruff
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 :)

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towndrunk
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.

