

Apple deprecates XServe - steilpass
http://images.apple.com/xserve/pdf/L422277A_Xserve_Guide.pdf

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melling
Steve is famous for telling his employees that Apple has to focus on what they
do best. First Java and now the XServe. Apple must be taking inventory.

~~~
nightlifelover
Yes, just look at the iPhone/-Pad sales.. then look at the Xserve sales. Makes
sense.

~~~
silvestrov
I'm guessing that the Mac Mini Server ate a lot of the Xserve sales because
the Mac Mini Server is way cheaper and is sufficient powerful for most
workgroups, when you add a couple of external disks.

The price of a similar loaded Mac Pro is close to the price of an Xserve, so
the only real advantage are the rack mount, lights-out admin and dual power
supply. That might not be enough to keep sales going at the high end, having
the low-end eaten by Mac Mini Servers.

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jasonkester
And in other news, Apple is going to ditch XServe.

Is there any way to condense the five duplicates of this story into one? At
the moment, the top 5 slots on the HN homepage all have an "X" in the title.

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Andrenid
It's 3 duplicates + 2 separate stories about other things that contain the
letter X.

~~~
mortenjorck
It _is_ one of those can't-make-this-stuff-up coincidences, though, that
Canonical would drop the X Server on the very same day that Apple dropped the
XServe.

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jwr
This makes perfect sense. I've been wondering why they keep selling the
Xserves anyway. It's not Apple's market and they can't differentiate
themselves enough in the server market.

~~~
doron
The differentiated themselves alright, by making a substandard server, you
cant virtulize. It looked nice on the shelf.

~~~
sudont
Right. The server software will live on, but it's more for small-mac-based
offices and administering those macs. I've never seen anyone outside of 40-man
design companies with an xserve. Nowadays a mac mini can handle that load
fairly well.

~~~
c1sc0
Make that 40-man design shops & Biotech labs that don't have the manpower to
maintain a decent analysis pipeline. I saw a bio Xserve setup a few years ago
& was blown away by ... how 'shiny' the setup was. But that was about it:
Xserves make no sense if what you're after is raw power.

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patrickgzill
Xserve traction didn't really occur. OSX is different from both Linux and
Solaris, so command line fans didn't appreciate it.

In terms of hardware, the decision to make proprietary drive module trays,
driving up the cost of adding disks, killed any sales to those who were price
sensitive.

~~~
Corrado
On top of that their rack mounting hardware is/was horrendous. It took me 15
minutes to get my XServe mounted and I had to break out the tools. By
comparison, an old Dell PE1650 took about 30 seconds and no tools.

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cpr
Not surprising that they got no traction.

We got one 6 years ago on the theory that one could have the same
desktop/laptop vs. server experience, and then ran into the cold hard reality
that running server software is just plain different than desktop (GUI)
software. Plus, their GUI was just scratching the surface of what one needs,
and even got in the way some of the time (by clobbering command-line work).

Linux/Windows have won for servers (we're using Rackspace/Ubuntu now), so it's
good they recognize that and move on.

~~~
polynomial
> Plus, their GUI was just scratching the surface of what one needs, and even
> got in the way some of the time (by clobbering command-line work).

Having experienced this firsthand, I am wondering how much of an effect this
had on Xserve adoption overall, ie for companies other than smallish design
shops.

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wazoox
Wow, this is a serious blow to all mac shops. There are tons of Xserve around.
And what about the server stuff like FinalCut Studio? Mac Pro are nice
machines, but they're positively huge.

~~~
masklinn
> Wow, this is a serious blow to all mac shops. There are tons of Xserve
> around.

They're clearly saying they'll keep supporting the existing Xserves (as much
as they have so far, which is not much), you can keep buying it until January,
and the Mac Mini Server [0] does not seem deprecated, so I assume there will
be a 10.7 Server.

IOW, no this is not a serious blow to anybody, please RTFA.

[0] <http://www.apple.com/macmini/server/>

~~~
wazoox
Hum. I have lots of customers with X-Serves in render farms (different batch
FX, transcoding, etc), really Mac Pro or Mac mini won't cut it. Ok, any 1U
Dell would be fine, except for all this Mac OS software they already paid for,
and the fact that they'd rather stay Mac only. In the video world, that
definitely is a blow.

~~~
masklinn
> I have lots of customers with X-Serves in render farms (different batch FX,
> transcoding, etc)

And their render farms will not stop working tomorrow will they?

> really Mac Pro or Mac mini won't cut it.

Power-wise, mac pros are strictly superior to xserves at equivalent prices
fwiw. Though they're not rackable (which is probably the main issue) and do
have the issue of no redundant power supply.

~~~
wazoox
> Power-wise, mac pros are strictly superior to xserves at equivalent prices
> fwiw.

Are you only trying to be naggingly contrarian, or is it your true nature
showing? Render farms are made with dense systems, 1U or blades. You can put 6
Mac Pro for a grand total of 72 cores, vs. 44 XServes with 352 cores in a
standard rack. Now please explain to me how better the Mac Pro would be.

------
mcculley
This makes me wonder what Apple uses and will use in their own data centers.
Will they continue to use Xserves and maintain that line for their own use?

~~~
cosmicray
A very fair question. What with the new data center (Maiden NC) I've been
wondering how they planned to populate it. Obviously Google took a different
path with DC infrastructure (custom design, custom build). Could it be that
Apple is going to follow ? Or will they buy large quantities of Sun or IBM
systems. The latter would certainly indicate a sea change (after the AIM
disintegration).

Note that nothing I've read so far this morning indicates that OS X Server is
being deprecated, only the XServe line. XServe RAID went away a few years
back. Is it possible that Apple plans to continue using OS X Server under
virtualization (on other branded hardware) ? That would be a really big deal.

~~~
simonjoe
That would be a big deal if they supported virtualization on other hardware.
Is it possible that it's a first step towards a more open (in regards to
hardware requirements) OS X in general?

I–personally–like OS X server for a lot of applications. But, the bottom line
is important for businesses and private consumers. XServes never fit into that
consideration as well as they could have.

~~~
polynomial
Expect an announcement soon that we'll be able to install OS X Server inside
ESX or similar virtualized environment. (or so a reliable source tells me…)

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jrnkntl
Is 'scribd' a synonym for 'pdf' nowadays? well done, scribd ;)

[edit] I know what scribd is and does, I am referring to the title of this
item which has [scribd] appended to it, although it links to a pdf.

~~~
Corrado
You know, I really dislike scribe; the PDF format really works just fine on
its own.

I wish there was a way to remove it from my Google searches. :(

~~~
invisible
Except when you have a slightly old version of Adobe/Acrobat and get a
virus/malware.

~~~
gloob
Workaround: use any other PDF reader at all.

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ahi
My current employer has a couple of XServes running a WebObjects based webapp.
This might create some headaches for us.

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rasur
Are there 19" racking solutions for the Mac Pro (just on the off-chance one
might want to stick one in a 19" rack)?

~~~
just_a_someone
According to the 'Transition Guide' that Apple released, you can stand 2 Mac
Pros on a shelf side by side, using 12U of rack space.

Sounds practical to me :-|.

~~~
illumin8
If Apple wants to be taken seriously as a server software vendor, they would
be far better off to allow virtualization of OS X Server only and let people
run it on HP/IBM/Dell/Oracle/Sun x86 hardware.

I can buy an 8 socket 8 core x86 server with 64 threads and an additional 64
virtual threads, and 1TB of RAM that only takes 5U of rack space.

~~~
nkassis
"If Apple wants to be taken seriously as a server software vendor'

I really think they don't want to. They've never cared about anything related
to businesses using OS X for servers or even good desktop management.

~~~
illumin8
You're right, but there are Pro users that want a server to farm out Final Cut
rendering and other such tasks. That was the target market for Xserve.

A market still does exist for Apple servers - a small one. This market would
be best served by virtualization of OS X Server.

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protomyth
Apple's pdf link
<http://images.apple.com/xserve/pdf/L422277A_Xserve_Guide.pdf>

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some1else
It's quite logical. Apple is really better at User Experience than Enterprise
level solutions. Getting rid of distractions will reinforce their main
business models.

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bryanwb
my boss literally shed a tear when he saw this

~~~
doron
of joy?

~~~
bryanwb
of sadness, for whatever reason he loves the Xserve line. Perhaps because he
can use the Mac GUI on a server

