Indeed, benchmarking is complex and there are lots of ways to skew them one way or the other.

But never mind why MySQL crawls on OS X, that's just one reason why OS X server stinks when you try to do professional hosting with it.

Everytime you need to implement, say a mail toaster or some other necessary custom install, you get one step further in the direction of a plain Linux or BSD system, and can no longer use the GUI tools to admin the whole thing, but you're still without the benefits of apt-get/ports (ok, you could use fink and darwinports).
Instead, every single system or security update may very well mangle carefully finagled files in /etc or elsewhere and break your carefully crafted and perfectly working custom install. Then you get to figure out a way to hack yourself out of that. Very productive.

So why bother to run some tortuous MACH-FreeBSD bastardization that escaped from academia into the Real World for reasons passing understanding, pay a license, have lousy performance and constant admin headaches ?
Run a decent version of Unix in the first place, with timely security patches and a working package management and be a happy camper. If you like the way it looks, you may even buy a Mac Pro, just don't run OS X on it...

Don't get me wrong: OS X is great for desktops, OS X server has its place when used within the limits of what the GUI-admin-tools allow you to do and is a pretty cool solution in LANs to provide services to other Macs (even though nobody in his right mind runs the first couple of dot revisions of OS X server on production machines, the QA is a lot worse than on client and quirks are rarely documented by Apple).

A great Mac OS X host
 

I have been using www.serverlogistics.com - an LA based hosting service with a bunch of XServes in a secure environment. I've been a user on a shared host for over a year and have been very satisfied. They also offer dedicated servers and colocations. Pricing is clear and on the home page.

Technical questions are usually answered within a few hours.

I'm not affiliated with the hosting company, just a satisifed user. Check them out if you're considering a Mac OS X based host.

Well despite the cautions against from some against going with A Mac based service, I just went with ItsaMac. So far customer service has been great. I fished around sample web sites ands and they seemed quick and stable.

I will post further on my experiences.

I just have a simple question.

Does anyone make a web hosting control panel that works on Mac OS X Leopard Server.

I read the theard but I would like to look in to it. We run 100's of FreeBSD servers and 100's of windows servers with over 200,000 clients but I am a huge mac fan and would like to at least try I have searched google and checked out a few sites that are hosting sites using macs but they seem to be using a CP they built.

To anyone that can point to one that is "good" I will give a free hosting account to for free on Windows, FreeBSD or the mac if we get it working.

Thanks
Brad