Lucid Nonsense


Virtually Interesting

Friday, 27 February 2009

Something that’s not been possible until some recent changes to Apple’s licensing for OS X Server, but Media Temple have opened up a private beta for virtual servers running OS X. Based on Parallels Server it should be an ideal option for companies with OS X experience wanting to use a server that they’re comfortable with.

From our point of view it’s certainly interesting. We currently run our own servers internally for mail, calendaring and some hosted services for clients (I’ll get that link up there updated with a description over the weekend, promise!). Nothing particularly heavy duty, but I can manage cyrus/postfix on OS X in my sleep these days so it’s a nice and comfortable option. However there is a fairly high cost associated with the 3 redundant network connections, maintaining the UPS etc. and while we need servers in house for internal use, if we can move the customer facing services to a proper data centre we could cut costs a little.

To that end we’ve been looking at colocation, but colocation in sunny Middlesbrough isn’t particularly common. There are few options in the North East full stop to be honest, and as a result the offerings aren’t particularly enticing.

So this looks like an intriguing development, it’ll be interesting to see the cost when it goes public.


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