Ask HN: Os x hosting

[rfzabick]

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?

[leejoramo]

Over the years (decades now?) I have looked into hosting on Mac OS. The times that I have actually done so have allows been done in-house at clients site as part of an intranet.

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)

[cylo]

OS X hosting options are VERY scarce. Your best bet is going to be checking out http://www.macminicolo.net and seeing if they'll suffice for you.

You 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.

[brk]

$50/mo shared 5mbps connection, BYOS. No limits.

Other options available depending on what you want.

Class A datacenter, generator backup, secure access, hot hands service included.

[yuvadam]

I am curious as to why you need to deploy on OS X.

Is this some sort of service which is tightly coupled to OS X-specific dependencies?

[rfzabick]

Thank you for your advice, everyone.