Which Companies Use Mac Servers?

macdaddy5 said:

I heard that Facebook primarily uses Mac servers. Is this the case?
What other large tech companies use primarily Mac servers?
Are there certain industries that use more Mac servers (such as entertainment)?

I am not just referring to website servers but internal servers as well.

Click to expand...

Watch this.

No large website in the world uses Mac servers. The current hardware is simply not made to be used in large systems. Besides, Mac OS does not bring anything special to the server world, it is in that usage only one more Unix / Linux type system.

You might find Mac servers in smaller companies as main server. Or as specialist function in a larger corporation -- example might be to simplify program distribution to a group of Mac machines.

// Gunnar

my company uses OSX servers - not for hosting any sites but for managing our network of... macs!

that's about the only thing OSX server is good for, and even then it's not fantastic

My company uses a Mac mini server for .local hosting of in house applications.

We use ubuntu for hosting to the world.

PS We dropped our Solaris servers last year. I'm still pretty sad about that.

960design said:

My company uses a Mac mini server for .local hosting of in house applications.

We use ubuntu for hosting to the world.

PS We dropped our Solaris servers last year. I'm still pretty sad about that.

Click to expand...

I loved Solaris and Sun. But the world has moved on. UNIX/Linux is still my choice though. Can't stand Windows.

Back on topic, I don't think companies use Macs for servers. Workstations? Sure. General computers? Sure. But not servers. That belongs to *NIX.

The problem with Sun is Oracle got there grubby hands on the company and charges the crap out of people for support contracts. That's why we dumped them and went back to SGI.

dmax35 said:

The problem with Sun is Oracle got there grubby hands on the company and charges the crap out of people for support contracts. That's why we dumped them and went back to SGI.

Click to expand...

IRIX!!! Awesome OS

Linux is a pile of dung, it's bloated and a podge of crappy packages and is just bad (apart from say, gentoo). I don't get why Ubuntu has so much love it's absolutely horrific, I've seen better Windows Servers that are much more reliable than Ubuntu boxes.

OSX Could be great in the server world, mach microkernel + BSD networking & userland.... would be a sysadmins wet dream, unfortunately they killed of Darwin as a standalone OS, bring that back for servers!!

A ton of schools, like the one I work for. Unfortunately I'm finding that a lot of core functionality is slowly being stripped away.

I'm also transitioning several medical practices I work for to Mac. One is almost completely transitioned, and won't need a server at all once it's done (cloud medical software). Another has Mac workstations virtualizing ancient medical software in XP linked to an old Server 2003 box. The third is the most complex, but will soon begin to transition. For them, we'll virtualize Windows 7 on workstations, as well as virtualize 1 or 2 Windows Servers on a Mac Pro.

The original advice I was given was that all this virtualization was way too complex and that I was pointlessly pushing for a switch. Turns out things are MUCH more reliable this way. An added bonus is that any issue with the medical SW / Windows can be cured by copying a virgin VM over. Windows is so much nicer when it has a nice stable sandbox to play in.

Medical systems and information on the cloud?!
While it's probably fine in reality, this goes against all our information security rules and is not at all feasible

There's pretty much no macs (and certainly no servers) in our healthcare environment. We get a fair bit of pressure from doctors/clients that see TV adverts of doctors strolling around with iPads flicking through patient notes and viewing pictures etc, but unfortunately none of these apps integrate with our systems.

The cloud-based medical SW is actually a proprietary thing anyway. That practice is a locally-owned franchise of a national company; corporate cooked that system up. I don't have to care about the security — it's corporate's problem!

it's called encryption, VoR

the lack of any clustering capability, hot swap power supplies, rack mounting etc etc...

I look after some creative studios where they still have x-serve's running as file servers with FC-AL arrays attached, but they are now on "life support" and just used for nearline archive storage which can always be restored from tape if they die, their main file servers are now either Windows or Linux.

I also look after small number of kerio installations on mac mini servers, but these are generally being transitioned to windows servers that have considerably better redundancy built into the server, or cloud or Exchange...

The mac as a server for anything more than OD (with more than one mac server for availability) and deploy studio is long gone. Apple lost money on the x-serve, even the Intel ones where Intel designed the boards for them...

macdaddy5 said:

I heard that Facebook primarily uses Mac servers. Is this the case?
....
I am not just referring to website servers but internal servers as well.

Click to expand...

More likely internal than external servers. Tech companies that have grown up over the last 10-12 years tend to have most of the employees on Macs (e.g, Google , Facebook, etc. ). If running a 80-90%+ Mac shop then having Windows servers doesn't really make sense. Email, calendaring, etc. is typically done on solutions that would run on Linux/Unix/OS X. Standard internet services DNS, etc. can be done without Windows/Exchange/Active Directory.

A mix of Linux and OS X servers would work. For very small companies one OS X server would work. As company grows, a mix of departmental (OS X) and core services (Linux) would work.

Very large scale data centers for huge web traffic like Facebook, Google , Microsoft don't run anybody's servers. Typically custom modules these days for new ones. At best a custom Dell , HP modules in a few cases. There will be small fraction of off-shelf-servers in secondary roles but vendors don't really play there.

garybUK said:

IRIX!!! Awesome OS

Click to expand...

This isn't SGI from 20 years ago.

Linux is a pile of dung, it's bloated and a podge of crappy packages and is just bad (apart from say, gentoo). I don't get why Ubuntu has so much love it's absolutely horrific,

Click to expand...

Gentoo/Ubuntu ? For servers? How about Redhat or SuSE. That is what current SGI boxes run. If just don't want to pay there is CentOS ( Redhat stripped of markings and add-ons).

OSX Could be great in the server world, mach microkernel + BSD networking & userland.... would be a sysadmins wet dream, unfortunately they killed of Darwin as a standalone OS, bring that back for servers!!

Click to expand...

Darwin not equal OS X. The underlying core isn't very interesting once decoupled from the proprietary parts. Linux and various flavors of BSD has more active support. Darwin pragmatically just waits on the drops as they come out of Apple. At a run rate of 10's of millions per year there is no other competing user for the direction that is going to pop up. Back when Apple was in low, and shrinking, numbers alternative folks might have leverage but now; not really feasible.

Mach has upsides and downsides. There is no activity at all in very high performance drivers for Mach (e.g., Infiniband).

You are thinking too small, Apples proprietary parts generally sit around core audio etc. if they supported Darwin with no fancy UI + some proprietary packages such as core data, they would have a killer server OS why is red hat, suse enterprise paid for? Because they offer non open proprietary services
Like Redhat and spice.

Ubuntu for servers look at the openstack from rack space etc.

OpenBsD, netbsd and FreeBSD are far better operating systems for heavy duty workloads than Linux.

freejazz-man said:

it's called encryption, VoR

Click to expand...

Thanks for your valuable input, but it doesn't work like that outside of individual private practices

garybUK said:

OpenBsD, netbsd and FreeBSD are far better operating systems for heavy duty workloads than Linux.

Click to expand...

Stability, security, features, performance, support, development - Linux is a fair bit ahead in all areas.
So many big name, Internet facing services that were running bsd have been switched in recent years. Both my nas and router are running FreeBSD and nanobsd, but trying to be completely unbiased, I can't really think of anyone that should be using bsd over Linux for anything other than licensing reasons.
The only exception to this is with ZFS, a fantastic product that unfortunately has oracle's 'hands of death' looming over it, ready to snap shut at random

So you claim that a 12,000 employee hospital is an "individual private practice"?

http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/profiles/ottawa-hospital/

VoR said:

Thanks for your valuable input, but it doesn't work like that outside of individual private practices


Stability, security, features, performance, support, development - Linux is a fair bit ahead in all areas.
So many big name, Internet facing services that were running bsd have been switched in recent years. Both my nas and router are running FreeBSD and nanobsd, but trying to be completely unbiased, I can't really think of anyone that should be using bsd over Linux for anything other than licensing reasons.
The only exception to this is with ZFS, a fantastic product that unfortunately has oracle's 'hands of death' looming over it, ready to snap shut at random

Click to expand...

Consultant said:

So you claim that a 12,000 employee hospital is an "individual private practice"?

http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/profiles/ottawa-hospital/

Click to expand...

My original post simply mentioned that we can't store data in the cloud for security reasons (rightly or wrongly), my second one was a sarcy reply aimed at the guy who mentioned encryption.
It's an unfortunate truth that we can't integrate them although realistically, manageability isn't brilliant (mainly VPP) and recent horrendous bugs like with the lock screen doesn't help credibility. If we're playing the numbers game, there's roughly 1.5million employees in our healthcare organisation But, you don't need to bite!

So you are saying your company is "larger" than Pepsi, which has 300,000+ employees. Sure.

Oh, Pepsi uses Apple products.
http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/profiles/pepsico/

FYI if someone else has physical access to your devices, I bet they can find "horrendous bugs" to access your devices.

VoR said:

My original post simply mentioned that we can't store data in the cloud for security reasons (rightly or wrongly), my second one was a sarcy reply aimed at the guy who mentioned encryption.
It's an unfortunate truth that we can't integrate them although realistically, manageability isn't brilliant (mainly VPP) and recent horrendous bugs like with the lock screen doesn't help credibility. If we're playing the numbers game, there's roughly 1.5million employees in our healthcare organisation But, you don't need to bite!

Click to expand...

Consultant said:

So you are saying your company is "larger" than Pepsi, which has 300,000+ employees. Sure.

Oh, Pepsi uses Apple products.
http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/profiles/pepsico/

FYI if someone else has physical access to your devices, I bet they can find "horrendous bugs" to access your devices.

Click to expand...

Oh you did!!

If I've done my maths correct, 1500000 is a bigger number than 300000 - so yes it is (coke too).
Are you just clicking through the apple marketing blurbs/testimonials? Shame we're not on there, according to you we're worth 5x PepsiCos

VoR said:

Oh you did!!

If I've done my maths correct, 1500000 is a bigger number than 300000 - so yes it is (coke too).
Are you just clicking through the apple marketing blurbs/testimonials? Shame we're not on there, according to you we're worth 5x PepsiCos

Click to expand...

Oh so you claim a number but can't back it up with a business name.

By the way, the thread is about "Which Companies Use Mac Servers?" And your answers are not relevant.

Simple maths, simple deduction (how many health care organisations in the world, let alone the UK have 1.5 million employees?), simple reading comprehension Not entirely sure why I keep replying to you, but there's definitely been relevance in some of my posts - and I don't particularly care for your ignorant opinions, while I am very interested in the non-administrative use of iOS (and to a lesser extent, macs) in the healthcare industry.

VoR said:

Thanks for your valuable input, but it doesn't work like that outside of individual private practices

Click to expand...

I don't expect you to know everything, but as a former security analyst for a company that served a number of hospitals, that is how it works.

HIPAA and any other regulations still apply in the cloud. I'm not sure what you think the cloud is that it isn't like any other computer farm. Do you think there is any difference in storing data in the cloud over an encrypted tunnel vs. storing the data in a colo facilitiy over an encrypted tunnel when both destinations are compliant with the same regulations?

I'm not sure why you have such an attitude problem.

Exactly, it's collocated, patient identifiable data - and the rules are very strict (for us in particular obviously - my first post...).
Don't really have an attitude, I'm just a bit defensive when people can't read between the lines and spout assumption