
This can be done from System Preferences on the Xserve. IP-Based HostingĪssuming you have already acquired the domain names and IP addresses you’ll be using, the first step in creating an IP-based hosting setup is to configure the Xserve to have multiple IP addresses on the same Ethernet card.
#Web hosting os x server how to#
I will go over how to set up both kinds of virtual hosting.

Name-based hosting depends on a certain header sent by the browser, and as a result it doesn’t work with some browsers released before 1997, but that is less and less of an issue as those browsers become increasingly scarce. IP-based hosting is a little more robust-it allows for secured HTTPS transactions, which are important for Web commerce, reverse DNS, and some other features but IP addresses are scarce, so name-based hosting, which works perfectly well, is probably preferable for most applications. Name-based hosting uses a little trickery so that many domains can be served from the same IP address. With IP-based hosting, each domain name is mapped to its own individual IP address. There are two approaches to this sort of “virtual hosting”-IP-based and name-based. However, it is quite easy to transparently host thousands of domains on a single Xserve, and the users need never know that it’s one machine behind the scenes and not a whole farm. The out-of-the-box behavior of Apache is to have one IP address and to serve one domain.

#Web hosting os x server mac os x#
(You can find the Guide on the Mac OS X Server Manuals page.) Hosting Multiple Domains on One Server This article assumes that you have already followed the steps in the Mac OS X Server Administrator’s Guide to start Web service. In this article, I will go over how to set up Apache to serve multiple Web sites from the same machine-so-called “virtual hosting.” I will also look at ways to optimize the server’s setup for fast, robust Web hosting.

(With a fleet of Xserves, you could host an eBay or an, but that’s a topic for another article.) The Xserve’s Apache Web server software has a multitude of configuration options. A single Xserve is ideally suited for smaller scale Web hosting, where the task is to host a handful of moderate-traffic sites.
