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I'm looking at purchasing colocation services for a Mac Mini with A specialist colocation company - but as of yet I have no experience with OSX Server for hosting websites. I'm looking for a less involved way of hosting up to 80 small (1-20 page, <1000 daily hits) WordPress websites for my clients. All of the websites use caching aggressively.

Does anyone have any experience using OSX Server for WP hosting / any ideas as to how many sites it can comfortably (ie minimal loss of speed) handle? My intention is to purchase one with an i5 processor and 16GB of RAM.

George Pearce
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    If you have no experience in serving sites on a Mac why are you adding that as a constraint? Start with your problem, not a solution – JamesRyan Mar 18 '13 at 13:35
  • Point taken. Problem: efficient, controlled maintenance (I'm a developer not a server guy) of a large number of websites until the number hosted justifies hiring a full time server guy. The reason I thought a hosted mac was a solution is because I can get a 16gb dedicated device for a reasonable amount of money, and because they are easy to manage. I don't want to endanger my customers sites on a dedicated unix server when I don't have the know-how to care for it. – George Pearce Mar 18 '13 at 13:44
  • But you don't mind endangering them on a Mac with equally little experience? Mac minis are 3 times the cost of alternative identical hardware and Apple have a track record of trying to cover up security holes rather than patch them. Not exactly a safe platform. – JamesRyan Mar 18 '13 at 15:29
  • It seems to me that this whole question is highly likely to be turf. Are you affiliated to the mac hosting site you mention? – JamesRyan Mar 18 '13 at 15:30
  • References removed. Once setup, I am of the opinion that continued management will be easier on a Mac, and I will pay someone to complete the setup. The cost of the machine isn't a problem and the cost of colocation is dramatically lower than the equivalent with another server. I'm not asking about personal viewpoints on the platform, merely whether it can cope with the load. – George Pearce Mar 19 '13 at 14:50
  • Voting to close as there's no constructive question here. A server can "comfortably handle" a million sites on it as long the total number of concurrent requests is within its performance range. And asking people to describe their experiences on something does not fit the Q&A format of SE. – Lèse majesté Mar 20 '13 at 03:02

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I do not have experience with mac mini in particular but, from what I can tell...

I have been using cloud servers with 512MB of ram and very low cpu throughput, and a single machine has been able to easily handle around 1000 concurrent connections with lighttpd+fastcgi+mongodb server softwares running, and all of that with a 5-10% CPU usage; can't remember the memory used but I'm pretty sure it was very low.

Problem you might face is installing this software on macOS, otherwise the machine specs would be more than enough for WP websites.

john smith
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You can use Wordpress on Mac OSX there are many different ways of doing that via apps like MAMP or xampp or even use the native OSX, MAMP is probably the simplest to use when creating virtual hosts for your 80 or so domains.

I am not using mamp or xampp. As for <1000 you will be fine you can use 10s of 1000s of connection per hour on a mac with a good upload i.e 50mpbs to 100mbps. Genrally most hosts have a connection of 10 to 30mbps. however that should be more than enough band with with an i5 and 16GB ram.

I am running a Mac Mini to do just that with Hosting Mac Mini but they are Australian (Sydney) based, you also have option of Mac Mini Colo in the US.

If you don't expect to see have a lot of storage use a 64GB or 128Gb SSD as that will really make a diffrence in perfromace of your mac

Hardy
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Why use a macmini server ? When you could probably run it in the cloud - aws, rackspace ect for around £20 a month.

Although in the long run you'll save money it will take you almost 18 months to break even (if bought at the uk price of £850). Baring in mind cash flow, setup and maintenance, a simple cloud server looks much more appealing.

For instance for £22 you can get 512mb ram, 20gb storage, and 100gb traffic, with something like 10p for each addition gig of storage or data per month.

sam
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