Is there any reason in particular why it’s recommended to run memcached on a Linux server? Is it really that bad an idea to run it on a Windows Server box? What about an OS X Server box?
The biggest reason that I read is about TCO. In other words, for each windows box that we run memcached on, we have to buy a copy of Windows Server and those costs add up. The thing is that we have several servers that have older processors but a lot of RAM – perfect for memcached use. All of these boxes already have Windows Server 2003 installed on them, so there’s not really much savings to installing Linux. Are there any other compelling reasons to use Linux?
Almost all of the FAQs and HOWTOs are written from Linux point of view. Memcache was originally created only for Linux, the ports came later. There is port to Windows, but it’s not yet in the official memcache distribution. Memcache on Windows is still guerrilla style. For example there is no memcache for x64 Windows.
As of memcache on MacOS X on servers: niche of niche of niche.