Macs as Business Servers?

Question

Can someone tell me some companies and businesses (big or small) that use Macs as their servers? Or maybe some who are currently switching over?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Not sure if this is quite what you're getting at, but I do some hardware support for one of the research  clusters of XServes. I wouldn't call mine professional advice, but it seems that the XServes are in the shop a lot, and repairs tend to get expensive very quickly.

I don't have any knowledge though of how well the software works.

Answer 2

I always wondered the same, actually Macs are kind of cheap for servers compared to the prices you get from building their equivalents on say maybe HP or Dell hardware, and Macs are now using Linux 2.6 kernels in their OS, This would mean that they now have a native relationship with hardware, I've used desktop leopard if that has anything to show for what the server side of Apple produces then i wouldn't be surprised if they run smooth, however one main issue is most "Server Software" thats industry standard isn't built for a Mac, and therefore wont run on them,, I can't imagine more than maybe a small company that 'just likes apple' might run a all mac network, I've seen some Call Centers and Support Stations running all mac,, it would be cool though =), They dont provide many of the solutions that many of the more popular server hardware vendors provide, for instance, HP , Dell and IBM use emergency remote services to access server hardware at a BIOS level remotely, to maybe reboot the box and watch the boot messages from a remote console, or jumpstart a server image remotely, via iLo, DRAC, and Blade Management Centers, these companies provide these services and many others, Next how global are Macs, outsourcing is a big business, who will provide service for a Mac in a datacenter in germany on a service call from NY with replacement parts if neccesary, that would probably be way harder to find than maybe on more popular systems, all to say it would be nice, but it's not common