[iRock]

I've been hearing about some companies offering the option of dedicated hosting on Mac Minis.

Sounds interesting to me.

But I have been wondering will I be allowed full access?

What I want is to have full control over the Mini, being able to remote into it. Is this possible?

[supergper]

Originally Posted by iRock

I've been hearing about some companies offering the option of dedicated hosting on Mac Minis.

Sounds interesting to me.

But I have been wondering will I be allowed full access?

What I want is to have full control over the Mini, being able to remote into it. Is this possible?

Full Access is up to the host company. Is it possible, absolutely, all you need is Apple Remote Desktop, an IP to connect to, and the proper ports opened on their firewall. This would give you the ability to log on to that machine as though you were sitting in front of it. You could also SSH into the machine and have full control if you know how to do what you want to do on the command line.

[xstep]

Perhaps digging into these sites will help answer your concerns. The different things they charge for are interesting. Like remote reboot capability.

From what I understand, these are your dedicated box and you can do almost anything with them. Except illegal things.

macminicolo.net

xservhosting.com

SolidSpace

[iRock]

Interesting stuff. Looks promising, I'm just trying to justify the cost now.
Just imagine what you could do

[wylie]

What about hosting on one's personal Mini? From one's own home, anybody have any tips on how one might go about that?

[xstep]

Hosting from a home computer is easy. There are two problems. First, many or most service agreements with your internet connection provider disallow running services such as a web server. At least in the US. In some cases they actually block some common port numbers. Second is an issue of bandwidth in that if your web site gets popular, the connection will be too slow to support many people.

Also note that you may not be able to get a fixed IP address, so you have to adjust that issue with possible connection consequences.

None of the above stopped me from creating a private server at my residence. My main use for it was to post pictures and video for family and friends to see. I also placed some documention on it so I could always find it. The system also had other duties.

[iRock]

Did you run this on the machine that you worked on everyday?

I've been thinking about doing it... for my Blog.
As far as a static IP address goes, isn't been always on almost as good as a static IP address?

To the best of my knowledge this wouldn't be very complicated, Mac OS X even has Apache with it - You just have to enable it.

You could use something like dynDNS:
http://www.dyndns.com/support/clients/mac.html

This would take care of the DNS problem.

After this, well you'd have to get configure your Firewall so that Apache can serve on Port 80.

Better still you can have it on 8080.

As for security - well I am still unsure how this would go on Mac. I know more about Windows as I work as a Junior Network Administrator working along side engineers everyday. Its like having your own personal instructor - anything you want to know they can tell you. However, Mac isn't so popular here in Ireland so they wouldn't be so familiar with it.

[xstep]

I had setup a PC with OpenBSD. The point of it was to be used as a server and web development system. So, no, this was not used via a GUI system.

As you said, services like dynDNS will virtually solve the changing IP addresses your provider gives you. In my case I used EasyDNS and also rarely saw the address change. I own a domain that I pointed to the address. On the server, I had a small script that would occasionally trigger to make sure the IP address was up to date on the EasyDNS entry.

I believe the fact of starting Apache opens port 80. Of course you would have to adjust your router to allow it through and to the specific machine if you have more than one. For different reasons and experiments I've had several port numbers open for web access to more than one machine.

Apple currently uses ipfw for the firewall. Searching on Google (for "OS X" network security) brings up tons of links. These two I found somewhat interesting. Apple, Macgeekery.

Originally Posted by iRock

I've been thinking about doing it... for my Blog.

Is that the one with the annoying popup 'snapshots" overlays?

[iRock]

Originally Posted by xstep

I had setup a PC with OpenBSD. The point of it was to be used as a server and web development system. So, no, this was not used via a GUI system.

As you said, services like dynDNS will virtually solve the changing IP addresses your provider gives you. In my case I used EasyDNS and also rarely saw the address change. I own a domain that I pointed to the address. On the server, I had a small script that would occasionally trigger to make sure the IP address was up to date on the EasyDNS entry.

I believe the fact of starting Apache opens port 80. Of course you would have to adjust your router to allow it through and to the specific machine if you have more than one. For different reasons and experiments I've had several port numbers open for web access to more than one machine.

Apple currently uses ipfw for the firewall. Searching on Google (for "OS X" network security) brings up tons of links. These two I found somewhat interesting. Apple, Macgeekery.


Is that the one with the annoying popup 'snapshots" overlays?

Thanks for that. Interesting stuff actually, I don't know why I find it so interesting but I am amazed so I have decided to set up my own.

I'm documenting it over a series of posts on my blog:
http://tigerplug.wordpress.com

I know.... I haven't got a domain name yet. But I will very soon!

[xstep]

Here is another Mac mini hosting company, mythic-beasts.