[MW Forums]

Hosting services company XrackHosting, which focuses on Mac-based solutions, on Wednesday debuted dedicated hosting packages that feature Mac OS X Server v10.3 running on a Mac mini. In addition, they include Apple's GUI-based server administration tools, which include Apache, MySQL, WebObjects and other services. Monthly pricing starts at US$199.95 for the 1.25GHz G4 mini, which includes 256MB RAM, a 40GB hard drive and 100GB of data transfers per month. $229.95 per month bumps customers up to the 1.42GHz G4 mini with an 80GB hard drive; more RAM, a backup drive and larger and/or faster hard drives can be added for an extra fee. Until April 15, XrackHosting is giving a free iPod shuffle to all customers who sign up for the new service. more

[leicaman]

Bait and switch.
How can OS X server run in 256 megs of RAM? And why would anyone pay that much when you get a Mac Mini doing the serving? Shoot, two month's bull pays for the Mac, another four months pays for OS X Server with unlimited license. (And that's not educational pricing.)
Do the math. How much is a T1 line these days? /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

[Joris]

hmm.. seemed a little high at first until you really add it up. You are getting a dedicated server all your own in a datacenter that you as a consumer cannot get space inside of. That's a 100megabit redundant connection, as opposed to running a 1.5megabit connection to your office with no failover.
In addition someone else is taking care of the server so you don't have to worry about it going down at all, just do your thing.
Seems like a good deal to me.

[smllpx]

Joris,
it is still high, you would really need to use mac os x for a task that freebsd or linux couldn't do. theplanet (which has a great data center) can give you a dual 2.8Ghz Xeon 1000 GB Bandwidth 1GB RAM 2x80 GB Drives for $200/month (vs the 1.25 Ghz 100 GB Bandwidth 256 MB RAM 40 GB Drive)

[Nobody]

What a joke!
Why would someone use a machine like that as a datacenter based webserver?
As mentions there are numerous places where you can get a dedicated server or colocate your own server. There are even hosts that focus on dedicated XServes.
Running the mini as a datacenter based webserver would be like putting a lawnmower engine in a big rig. It's possible but not the smartest thing to do.

[osxfoundry]

Yeah, $200 a month is really a lot especially on a Mac mini. They should definitely charge less, these puppies takes maybe 1/10th of the place of what a 1U rack server takes.
Plus it does not make sense. If you're gonna get 100 Gb of transfer or more a month, it means you have a lot of traffic, and a Mac mini isn't going to make it.
You can get 100 Gb transfer/month for $80/month on a Dual XServe.
But remember a 100 Gb a month is a lot. 1Gb might be just enough and you can get that for $15/month.

[Zwilnik]

This seems really expensive compared to the original www.macminicolo.net service. Although you've got to buy your own Mac mini, their co-location cost is only $29.99 a month for 10GB or an extra $44 a month for 100GB. Unless you're only planning on hosting a site for 3 months, I can't see why you'd want to pay $199 a month ?

[jmenna]

I'm generally surprised by the " the mini is a Joke" factor in the mac community. It seems to be based on conjecture rather than system tests.
We did a rather exhaustive series of load tests on the mini a few months ago. The short is: "The mini will handle the needs of 95% of all the domains out there"
The long is the full test results: http://www.macminico...et/results.html

[machineman]

Some of you that posted suggested using linux or bsd, remember this is a Mac site... there may be reasons that Mac users want these as dedicated servers. Perhaps they need AppleShare, or perhaps they want to control it using Apple Remote Desktop. You can't do either of those on the other platforms.
And the fact that it's in a Level 3 datacenter should only count as a positive, and somehow you managed to turn it into a negative.
As for transfer, as the poster above referenced in the link, the mini can definitely handle the load... remember there was a time not too long ago when we were hosting web sites on quadras, original Power PCs, and G3s. They all could do more than flood a T1, which is actuallt 480gb of transfer a month. THe mini wont even break a sweat pushing 100gb
also these guys are including Mac OS X server, if yo were to buy your own mini and colo in, that's another $500-$1000 you would have to spend on top of the price of the mac.
anyway, it seems like a good deal and the mini, also as the above poster mentioned, can handle 95% of the sites out there. be open minded and you can save some money!

[tflight]

It seems to me that a Mac Mini would be a great intermediate product for lots of people. I've got an older, dedicated single processor G4 Xserve with 32 websites running on it. It almost never goes above 10% of CPU resources and pushes about 70GB of transfer per month. Until just recently it had only 256Mb of RAM and I only upgraded because I had some extra kicking around.
So comparing a Mac Mini with 256Mb RAM and a 1.25Ghz G4 versus my Xserve with a 1.33Ghz G4 seems to be a fair comparison. Plus I hear that XrackHosting's customer service is second to none. Being inside a Level3 Communications datacenter should be on everyone's wish-list.
Tim

[thornrag]

First of all, you can do a lot with a server with only 256 MB RAM. It's all most small businesses would actually need for simple web and e-mail service. OS X Server is remarkably efficient with resources -- Mac server admins know this. It's a matter of matching the resources to the applications, and for a large segment of the co-location market, the Mini is more than sufficient. Look at it this way: one Mini all to yourself is better than sharing one Xserve with the arbitrary needs of 50 (or more) other customers.
A company like Digital Forest charges a great deal more, for considerably less with their colo packages. Other companies promise at least to plug your mini into a good surge protector and try to keep their cable modem up for you, while you pay just pennies a day. Xrack is somewhere in the middle here. I don't think it's an insane proposition.
In my two-year experience with Xrack, their responsiveness was superb. Even for my shared hosting account, they were willing to make special arrangements for my e-mail service, and they did their best to keep things running through a spectacular disaster: hard drive failures in the middle of two florida hurricanes. That they kept it running at all is testament to their tenacity, if nothing else.
I canceled my service because I wanted more control than I could get with a shared hosting plan. So far, it just doesn't seem feasible to run shared hosting services on an out-of-the-box OS X Server platform without sacrificing end-user autonomy. I can't say I'd have paid $200 a month to regain that kind of exclusive control, but my needs are miniscule, and the Xrack crew was always happy to handle everything for me. In fact, I somewhat preferred just telling them what to do in order to have it done.
For the needs of a small business or large personal site, it's arguably better than getting business-class Internet service to your site and running your own Mini. Will it meet the needs of a bloodthirsty amateur administrator "hosting" things from dad's old PC in the basement? Probably not. But it might fit the bill for the kind of person who doesn't spend all day arguing about midrange hosting services on MacWorld discussion threads.

[MoscowZonker]

Does anyone here still use XRackHosting?

While they normally have been very responsive, I have been unable to reach them for almost a week. There is no phone number to call them and their homepage hasn't changed in months, even though it says "X squared. In 48 days." But it's been there for over two months!

So my site is still hosted there, but is anyone home?

[wbradmc]

I have a couple of sites hosted with Xrackhosting. My sites are up most of the time but the email has been down for two weeks now with no response at all to several attempts to contact them.

And that '48 days' screen... sigh!

I've used them for years with no problems. Now it's starting to stink like when Feature Price flaked out.

I've moved on already. I'm considering the money lost. Not that much anyway.

Hope you have better luck then me!

Brad